Sunday, October 25. 2009
This is a re-post of an NJ piece from a couple of years ago -
There are people living "deviant" lifestyles in the Northeast, and, sadly, they are frequently invisible and marginalized. After much searching to locate the most deviant family your reporter could find in western Massachusetts, we decided to interview Jim and Sarah D. We summarize our interview with this extremely deviant, euphemistically-termed "traditional family," here:
 Social deviant Jim D. 42, leads what we might best term a paleo life, largely out of touch with modern reality and seemingly oblivious to the exciting opportunities of modern lifestyle choices. Married for 21 years, with three kids, Jim drives 25 minutes to work each morning in his 8 year-old Subaru sedan. A college grad, Jim, on his fourth job, is CFO of a medium-sized manufacturing corporation based in Pittsfield, MA, making around $120,000 per year, not including generous benefits.
"I worked my way up the ladder to reach my level of incompetence," he laughs. "The job is a daily challenge, so I try to meet it each day determined to have some fun with it, and to rise to the challenges with a can-do spirit, corny as that sounds. I go to work every morning wondering what sort of pitch will be thrown to me, and hoping at least to hit a single. When I get stuck and confused, I call Sarah to talk it over." Really? "She's my partner, in every way. We joke that by combining the two of us, we add up to one barely competent human."
Jim claims his wife is "great to me and for me" and says "I love my kids to death." They go to their Presbyterian Church together every Sunday, and they tithe. "Budgeting our tithing is a blessing to us," says Sarah. Jim and Sarah have a date night every Thursday night, and family Sunday dinner with his in-laws.
They have lived modestly, and have accumulated over $500,000 in their 401-K savings. Jim says "Business hasn't been loyal to its employees for 20 years, so you have to take care of yourself. That's fine with me. My Dad did it by always living below his means, which were minimal for a long time, and I do the same. Unlike my Dad, though, I doubt anyone will let me continue working as long as I want to."
What did his Dad do? "He quit high school to join the Army. Hated school. They stuck him in the Corps of Engineers. Then worked up to a construction supervisor as a civilian, which he still does. He will never quit work, although he could retire now if he wanted to. He owns three houses; rents two and lives in one. The job gives him something to grouse about, and gets him out of the house and out into the world."
When asked what were the most important things in his life, Jim answers "Knowing God and being a responsible adult male. Working hard, paying my bills, being a good parent and husband, a good citizen and a good friend." For hobbies, Jim and Sarah enjoy gardening, jogging in the Berkshire Hills, and cooking together. When their first child was born, they gave their TV away and have been without one since. "Brain rot," says Sarah. "It interferes with family time, and we didn't want the kids to be passive zombies."
Sarah was a grammar school teacher until the kids came. "I would never have married a woman who wanted to work while we had young kids," Jim says. "That's an experiment with human nature I would not want to subject them to." As the kids enter high school, Sarah is planning to return to teaching high school English this time, having made herself "an amateur expert" in Medieval and Renaissance literature over the past 15 years. "I polished up my French, and learned Italian." What's her dream job? "Teaching Beowulf and Dante."
"Unlike Sarah, I was the first kid in my family to ever go to college," Jim says. "My first day at UMass, my Mom insisted I wear a jacket and tie. That is how traditional - or out to lunch - my parents were then. Mom baked a huge layer cake when I got my admission letter. They were both children of immigrants, my Dad's parents from Romania and my Mom's from Ireland." He says "UMass set me up for a fine career, but I had no big dreams. I just wanted to be able to support my family, and to find a way to have a fairly good time doing it. Math was easy for me, so I majored in it, but I made sure I got myself educated as widely as I had time for, while staying on the Rugby team and without too many drunken nights. I took some accounting classes to be practical about the future, but I met Sarah in a Chaucer class. She was cute as hell, and I said to her after class 'I don't think I belong in this class.' She said 'Let's discuss it.' The rest is history."
Politics? As Sarah says "We go to every Town Meeting, and we speak up when an issue is important to us. We don't obsess too much about national politics. We are local." When pressed on the issue, they confessed "Well, we do listen to Rush when we have the chance, but we are usually too busy."
Saturday, October 24. 2009
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.
Thursday, October 22. 2009
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 -
Continue reading "Central Ohio #3: Kenyon College"
Tuesday, October 20. 2009
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?) -
Continue reading "Ohio's Central Highlands #2: On the road"
Monday, October 19. 2009
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.
Sunday, October 18. 2009
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:
Saturday, October 17. 2009
More fun ads from the wonderful but dangerous 1950's at Doug Ross.
Friday, October 16. 2009
 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.
Wednesday, October 14. 2009
Tuesday, October 13. 2009
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
Sunday, October 11. 2009
Mrs. BD had to make a quick trip to Cleveland this weekend. She was amused by this tourism video:
I’d be more interested in what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman tells his daughters about serving in the military than his telling President Obama to accept the Nobel Peace Prize “on behalf of the most important peacekeepers in the world for the last century — the men and women of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.”
His young daughters, and President Obama’s, are about the same age as my older son. My son asks me if he should enlist. I answer that it will be his choice, there are important personal and citizenship benefits and prices, and the benefits may or may not work out for him and others. My son will make his own choice, and he will know from his father’s life that he can rely upon me to walk the talk, whether in a promise to him or by my example in how I live. He will decide if that is the suitable example for his way of living.
It is relevant to our children whether they’ve seen us walk the talk in our lives and with them when by our words we properly honor those who serve and may encourage others to serve. That neither Thomas Friedman nor President Obama chose to serve in the military, or that I did, is the past. The now our children see is how our words to others match our words to them.
Another top national columnist recently asked me, “if you'd ever had the thought that we are losing the best people our country has to offer” in our current wars. I replied:
What I would say is that in my experience in and with the military (I served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam and come in contact with many in my Encinitas area just south of Camp Pendleton), meeting and overcoming the challenges and realistic fears of enlisting, of training, and of serving in a war, all under the risk of severe harm or death, causes one, each one, to exert themself to rise to be the best Marine or soldier they can be. That creates a mature, focused person with a special appreciation for their citizenship and country and freedoms, as well as for the welfare of others one serves with and the people in the country serving in.
In short, it is their training and service and sacrifice that makes them, all who serve, the best we have to offer, and upon their return the best citizens. Those who fall are, thus, of course a severe loss.
The possible loss of one’s child is calamitous. So is the loss of others’.
If Thomas Friedman or President Obama do not believe that how they counsel their own children is more telling than how they counsel others’ children, that tells me all I need to know about whether they walk their talk, really care about others’ children, or are worth taking seriously.
If literally every effort is not made to support those who do serve to survive and accomplish the mission upon which sent, that is the most serious dereliction possible by a parent or columnist. Words may be enough for the Nobel Peace Prize, or a New York Times column, but not enough for any responsible parent.
P.S.: Ed Morrissey relays who is saying what about what to do in Afghanistan.
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.)
Saturday, October 10. 2009
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.
Thursday, October 8. 2009
The Doers vs. The "Thinkers". Well said. A point I have tried to make many times. I once used a talented, design-oriented architect who knew little about construction, and it did not work out well.
So when we did the addition to the barn, I designed it with the builder. Perfect, and on budget.
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 -
Tuesday, October 6. 2009
 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.
Monday, October 5. 2009
At First Principles. I still read books. Plenty of 'em. So does Lisa Schiffren: Are books archaic?
Mark Twain hated Jane Austin, but I am happy to see that Norm likes Wallace Stegner. So do I.
And here's a book every Canadian needs to read.
Sunday, October 4. 2009
5th in series on ethnic firsts in US sports
Who better to be the best US athlete of the 20th Century than a sportsman of melting-pot heritage, child of part Native American, Irish and French parents. In 1950, the Associated Press poll of sports writers named Jim Thorpe as the best American athlete of the first half of the 20th Century. For the second half, the AP named him third, behind Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan.
With all respects, neither Ruth nor Jordan won the Olympic gold in pentathlon and decathlon, and starred in football, baseball and basketball. Nor did Ruth, Jordan or any other such supremely gifted athlete suffer worse abandonment by the sports at which he excelled and the notables who’d lauded him.
Educated in assimilationist Indian Agency schools, Jim Thorpe’s native name was most appropriate: Wa-Tho-Huk or Bright Path. Unfortunately, the trail's end wasn’t.
“Pop” Warner tried to dissuade Thorpe from injuring himself playing football, because Thorpe was already the track-and-field star of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, but the football players were unable to catch up to him. Thorpe even excelled at ballroom dancing, winning the 1912 inter-collegiate ballroom dancing championship. One of the football teams Thorpe almost single-handedly beat was Army’s in 1912. An opposing player, future President Dwight Eisenhower, in 1961 recalled, “Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw.”
At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Thorpe won the gold at the pentathlon and decathlon. A silver medalist observed, “He was the greatest athlete who ever lived….What he had was natural ability. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. All he had to see is someone doin’ something and he tried it…and he’d do it better.” Czar Nicholas II presented Thorpe with a special award for the pentathlon, and King Gustav V of Sweden a special award for the decathlon, telling Thorpe, “You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world. I would consider it an honor to shake your hand.”
Thorpe returned to the US for a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in NYC. Thorpe said, “I couldn't realize how one fellow could have so many friends."
King Gustav and the International Olympic Committee turned out to be the “Indian-givers.” Ignoring its own rules for when a challenge to an Olympic medal may be considered, and ignoring that other college athletes did the same but under aliases, the IOC revoked Thorpe’s medals and took back the Gustav trophy for Thorpe having participated in a few baseball games for pocket-money while in college, voiding his amateur status.
Jim Thorpe then played professional football and baseball, drawing huge crowds. He retired at 41 from pro sports, but continued touring with exhibition teams in football, baseball and basketball.
After his sports career ended, Thorpe found it difficult to find and hold jobs during the Depression. He worked as a laborer, security guard, bouncer, and even as a movie extra as an Indian chief.
By 1950, when diagnosed with cancer, Thorpe was broke. On March 28, 1953, Jim Thorpe -- living in a trailer park -- died from his third heart attack.
Only after his death was the racism and unfairness publicly recognized with which Jim Thorpe was treated. Sports Illustrated’s 2004 retrospective, “Jim Thorpe cruelly treated by authorities", for example, concluded:
Racial prejudice was undoubtedly a factor. Snobbery was another. Brundage [president of the US Olympic Committee, who rebuffed restoring Thorpe’s medals] rigidly adhered to an amateur ethic designed to keep workers in their place which was long out of date by the time of his death in 1975.
Revenge may have been a third. Brundage finished sixth in the pentathlon and 15th in the decathlon behind Thorpe at the 1912 Games.
A teammate of Thorpe’s on the New York Giants recounted Thorpe, in tears, visiting his room, telling him about the taking away of his Olympic medals. “It broke his heart and he never really recovered.”
Hollywood made a movie about him, starring Burt Lancaster, and paid him nothing for being a consultant. A town in Pennsylvania he’d never been in renamed itself after him, to gain tourism dollars. His statue is in the football hall of fame. His Olympic medals were stolen from a museum. In my opinion, the only true honor to Jim Thorpe is the large park in central Flagstaff, Arizona where my kids played every day while we were touring and generations of other kids play for the joy of sports that too many adults forget is what they’re about.
From Wikipedia, Native Wiki, Sports Illustrated
Via Mr. Free Market, we learn that the furthest point from a McDonalds in the USA is 145 miles by car.
I have read some negative reviews of the new season of "House" lately. Apparently he went to rehab for his Vicodan addiction, and is no longer as difficult of an attending physician as he used to be. Well, let's hope he relapses.
I also learned that Laurie's character was inspired by Sherlock Holmes (Holmes-House). How did I miss that? Holmes, you recall, was an addict too.
What has been fun about ex-Marine Special Agent Gibbs in NCIS and Dr. House is that they are both cranky, tough, non-PC SOBs who are always alert to interesting females, and that they get away with it because they are so good at what they do. Gibbs, of course, has a military sense of honor, decorum, and dignity which Dr. House seems to lack.
Saturday, October 3. 2009
Why are we still reading Dickens?
Better question: Why wouldn't we be? He's the best story-teller in all of the world's literature (except maybe for Homer - but Homer cheated: he used a lute or an electric guitar, or something).
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All artists steal and borrow. 