Maggie's Farm

My friend the piano-man Jimmy Maddox played and sang this song for us last week - with heart, along with a few other tunes we requested (No Dylan requests, tho. He is more of a Hoagie Carmichael guy.) He's a darn good fellow, fun to talk to, seemingly full of good cheer and with keyboard talent to burn. Nice girlfriend too, who flew back with us to NYC.

Every guy has a pirate inside of them - plus his share of regrets, sorrows, and demons. The trick is to keep on keepin' on, and to try to stay on the sunny side of the street. With God's help.

Mrs. BD thought our readers might enjoy this brief bit from Jose Limon:

From our veranda, near the ship's bridge:

Just two more photos of Naples below - 

Some snaps of a glove shop in Rome. Mrs. BD thought our readers of the feminine persuasion might like these top-notch gloves, soft as a baby's bottom. It's Sermoneta Gloves.

Cool colors, I must admit.

 More glove photos below -

Thanks to all Farmers for pitching in so energetically over the past couple of weeks to keep Maggie's fresh, entertaining, and informative.

Our frenetic writers can throttle back this week because everybody will be back on board.

I, for one, will begin a little series of snaps of my travels. The plan is to not make it dull. I know that other peoples' travel snaps can be. I aim for informative.

For some doggone reason, regardless of the camera used, my photo skills seem to have achieved a new low in quality while the places I have visited have been remarkable. So be it.

Photo is your Editor, perusing a hefty wine list last week. (As is too evident, I do not use fake bow ties when dressed properly for dinner.)

I loved The Avengers.

This episode is a classic, linked via SDA.

A re-post from 2007 -

Paul Davis, author of Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life, has an opinion piece in the NYT: Taking Science on Faith. It begins:

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

Read the whole thing. Jonah Lehrer at The Frontal Cortex in a piece titled The Faith of Scientists expands on the topic, referring to the ideas of philosopher V.W.O. Quine. A quote:

When Quine came up with his holistic version of knowledge, he also demonstrated that our most necessary scientific principles are actually the least provable. For example, most scientists, when asked what constitutes the starting principles of reality, will probably say something about one of nature's fundamental laws, like gravity or the theory of natural selection. But these are precisely the same things that we will never see directly. (As Gertrude Stein once wrote, "The laws of science are paper laws, they make believe that they do something.")

Read this whole thing too. The notion that the laws of nature have no existence seems obvious, but it turned on a lightbulb for me. The point, as I see it, is not to discredit the scientific method or scientific theorizing, or to glibly equate science with religion: the point is that we must have humility about the depth of our knowledge.

Photo: Starburst Galaxy NCG 3310 "blazing with star formation", from the Hubble site.

h/t, Wilkinson

When I was coming up, "Ask Andy" was the first thing I read in the afternoon papers after school, even before the funny pages.

Along with my Dad's interests, Andy was the one who got me interested in science. He even used one of my questions once. I think it was about animal camouflage, but I cannot swear to that. I eventually went on to love chemistry and biochem and geology and every miraculous thing in Creation - as a dilettante, of course.

I was delighted to find this piece on Ask Andy. Good memories from an innocent time.

Do any of our readers remember him?

This 1947 22' wood Chris Craft Sportsman is for sale here.

Another reminiscence from our buddy Nathan (now a prominent Psychoanalyst living and working in Israel) from his years working for the Indian Health Service -

A crushed chest, bolo tie and porcupine quill earrings marked my exit from Eagle Butte, Lakota Sioux Reservation.  Only tie and earrings were planned; the crushed chest was almost preordained, however. Mrs. Alpren was the organizer, the mover of my goodbye bash. A sheet cake smeared heavily with white frosting, a Sioux warrior astride his horse dressed the top.  The regular docs were covering the floor and E.R. so that I and La femme de ma vie - of the moment (LFDMV) were feted.  The nurses filled the doctors’ lounge, as did former patients and their family members. I recognized some of the women who had snaked around my first clinic, waiting quietly, somberly, with some embarrassment for their first Birth Control Prescriptions, the plastic rings marking each day of the cycle. John Running Horse, still limping, but without a cast.  Before many words were spoken, before I had to face that awkwardness of how to say goodbye, mean sincerely how moved I was by these  people, yet leaving them, the call came.

Being flown in by Tim, the cropduster, was John Captured Alive (how these names endured, I never learned), who was found after being run over by a truck. He had fallen asleep beneath the truck after a heavy drunk.  John was known for the heavy drunks, but this was his first doze beneath a truck. He arrived with his chest flailing, both sides: he had a crushed chest. This flailing is a desperate movement, like the mad fluttering of a damaged moth, while the person strains to get air into his chest: it won’t expand.  For this, I recalled, one needs to “inflate” the chest, stabilize the fractured ribs, by negative pressure. Then, he could be evacuated to a bigger hospital, perhaps Mobridge. But, Mrs. Alpern said that there was no modern vacuum to reinflate. I knew he would not survive without this. I remembered my old professor of anesthesiology once taught us to care for the patient before worrying about the respirator. He also told us of the “old days” when they had to make do. When babies in Africa were dying of cholera and it was too difficult to place IV’s in their veins, he would sluice fluids subcutaneously under the skin of their backs; most revived within hours and many survived. And for crushed chests, old vacuum bottles. Big, gallon-sized, thick-walled vessels whose wavey glass revealed its faults and heftiness. Such bottles my mother had used to brew sweet wine in the kitchen, lined up along the wall, rags stuffed in their mouths, emitting a sweet, almost vinegary fragrance.

Mrs. Alpren remembered these; had used them years back; got two and hooked them together with heavy rubber tubes, one in, one out between the bottles. From the first bottle a tube went to the patient; from the second, to a vacuum in the O.R. wall. While she assembled, I quickly draped and prepped the chest with Betadine.  As I swiveled left to repeat, the hospital priest, truly named Father Casper, had tip-toed behind and to my right: while giving last rights, sprinkled water on my sterile site. I said, a bit too sharply, “He’s not yours yet,” and re-prepped.  A sharp incision between the ribs, a tube inserted, a few stitches to make a tight skin seal, the vacuum turned on, Captured Alive’s chest stopped flailing and rose, and filled.  The O2 into his nose now could flow into his lungs.

We called Mobridge; an ambulance arrived with a diminutive electric-powered pump to take over our bottle-array. Dr. L. agreed to ride shot-gun with Captured Alive and I returned to my goodbye party.  LFDMV was styling the porcupine quilled pierced earrings. Mrs. A. explained that the needles were flattened by the artist’s teeth.  LFDMV slipped the noose of the beaded bolo tie over my head. The knot itself was beaded and she slid that snugly to my throat. I felt a bit hybrid: cowboyish and Indianer.

I try to say something felt: how warmly I was received by the Sioux, how they trusted me with their children’s well-being, how appreciative they were. But, when I say that it would be hard to leave, Mrs. Alpern – reliably honest Mrs. Alpern – asks, “So, why are you leaving?”  To this, I am speechless.

This was the tribe Erik Erikson had studied in the 1930’s, this German-Jewish refuge to America, learning about childhoods. He described the quiet despair of the Sioux versus the robust resilience of the Yurok after the White man arrived. The despair I still saw. The people I left. The bolo? Gone with the earrings and the LFDMV.

But, not the memories. Not gone.

If my teeth were not half-rotten, I would still be a regular Lifesaver consumer.

Regarding the 5-flavor packs, I always appreciated the person who observed that "The orange ones don't taste like oranges -they taste like orange color." That guy understood the magic of Lifesavers.

Here's one fact you don't know about them: The candy was invented in 1912 by the poet Hart Crane's father, Clarence Crane of Garrettsville, Ohio. He was a chocolate manufacturer who, in the resourceful American way, was looking to invent a summertime candy - one which wouldn't get soft or melt in the heat.

Here's another factoid: Their first flavor was Pep-O-Mint. 

From 1920-1985, Lifesavers were manufactured in the handsome Lifesaver Building below on Main St. in Port Chester, NY. Now condos, it is still known as the Lifesaver Building. For a few generations, anyone riding the New Haven Line would see those giant, cheerful, colorful Lifesaver models on the grass in front of the copper-green trimmed building.

He tells some of the tricks he uses. He is permitted to lie to you. Talk to him, and you are screwed - even if you are as pure as driven snow (which nobody is).

One great line: "If I follow you in my car long enough, eventually you will do something to give me legitimate reason to pull you over." Another: "Let's talk off the record." (There is no such thing as "off the record.")

I am convinced. The correct response to cops of all sorts is "With all respect, I wish to consult with an attorney."

Via Retriever via Neuroanthropology, an essay on The Adaptive Function of Literature. A quote:

Consider the reality of our experience. We live in the imagination. For us, humans, no action or event is ever just itself. It is always a component in mental representations of the natural and social order, extending over time. All our actions take place within imaginative structures that include our vision of the world and our place in the world—our internal conflicts and concerns, our relations to other people, our relations to nature, and our relations to whatever spiritual forces we imagine might exist. We live in communities that consist not just of the people with whom we come directly into contact but with memories of the dead, traditions of our ancestors, our sense of connection with generations yet unborn, and with every person, living or dead, who joins with us in imaginative structures—social, ideological, religious, or philosophical—that subordinate our individual selves to some collective body. Our sense of our selves derives from our myths and artistic traditions, from the stories we tell, the songs we sing, and the visual images that surround us.

Fascinating and thoughtful essay on a complex topic. Humankind's hypertrophied cortex is a blessing and a curse.

The leap from the genetics of adaptation to the arts is too large a leap for my pay grade, but the fact that humans exist in their imaginations is entirely clear to me. It's clear to my imagination too.

Mysterious 1922 photo via Dr. X

From our high veranda.

A couple more Napoli photos below -