Maggie's Farm

Who was this Missouri newspaper columnist?

Her sensible opinions on housekeeping, marriage, husbandry, country life, and, more rarely, on politics and patriotism were expressed in a plain style, with an occasional ecstatic flourish inspired by her love for “the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” A work ethic inherited from her Puritan forebears, which exalted labor and self-improvement not merely for their material rewards but as moral values, was, she believed, the key to happiness.

Answer and story below -

Our Editor wanted me to post this draft of a reminiscence about my wonderful boarding school (which will go unnamed), so here 'tis:

My boarding school had a required 4th form - sophomore - course we called "Shit He Wants Us to Know," which we labelled "Shwuk." Real name of the course was something like: 4th Form Required Headmaster's Course. That's where I got my love for stats, and lots of other things.

Besides How to Lie with Statistics - and a week on Liebnitz (who amazed him), the course also involved reading about half of the Bible - with a focus on Samuel - he made it great fun - and Moby Dick, plus one Shakespeare play which changed every year - and whatever else our Headmaster thought any person educated in his school ought to know. The history of Baseball, the history and chemistry of plastic, wood, and cement, Aristotle's Poetics, and how sails and windmills supposedly work. It also included the math of the Parthenon's design (those guys knew the keys to perspective way before the Renaissance), and every tiny detail of The Last Supper - including a discussion of the meaning of cannibalism in religion up to the symbolism of the Mass.

His class was like a real Intro To School. He was a Brit, an Anglican priest with an apparently blissfully affectionate marriage to a beautiful, reserved, distinguished lady who occasionally did book reviews for the NYT and The New Republic, and who loved to shoot grouse in Scotland. They were both shooters. They had four Ivy League boys, who, as I recall, who did extremely well forging their paths in life - at least one of whom returned to the private school world after making bags of bucks on Wall St. Another went to Yale Theological Seminary after Harvard College. I forget the others.

About The Last Supper, I remember him saying something like this "Would you eat human flesh, if cooked properly? Would you? Humans used to do it every chance they got. The Maoris called it "Long Pig" in the south Pacific because it tastes like pork. So they say. They made a feast of it when they were able to spear an enemy tribe in the jungle. Well, many claim you do it every week, if you are a believer, in Communion. In some spiritual sense, I do consume this human flesh too, but from a hunger of the spirit, not the hunger of the flesh. How wonderful it is that we reach back to stone age times for our most powerful ideas to nurture us. Drink this, this is my blood, shed for you. That is powerful stuff, ladies." And then "Now, Miss Bliss, tell us why Leonardo has Christ pointing to a glass of wine, and the what and why of the emotional reactions of the people at this Passover dinner. It's not a great painting, nothing to be nervous about - just a too-famous picture by a hugely talented mind. Explain to us what Leonardo might have had in his mind - besides wanting to get paid - when he painted this scene on the wall of the refectory. Begin on the left side." He was good fun, and there was always a twinkle in his eye.

The only political science was Plato's Republic and Burke's Reflections. Oh, a bit of Locke too. We all had to shoot rifles and shotguns, and learn the basic physics of ballistics. We learned renal physiology, because he though the kidney was a miracle in its ability to make sea-born creatures like us capable of maintaining ocean levels of salts under our land-dwelling skins.

We took a bus to West Rock (same geological formation as the Hudson Palisades) to learn Triassic paleontology and geology. Nothing superficial, he made us dig into it - with real shovels. A serious Christian (he wanted us to know Jesus, but he did not try to convert anybody because he assumed many or most of us were religiously-rebellious teens anyway). He loved Darwin and his Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals - we had to read it along with modern research on the topic. And Orwell's Politics and the English Language.

Class met twice a week in small groups of around 15-20, around a circular table. It was the best and perhaps most demanding course I ever took in my entire education. The volume of reading would be incredible to kids today. The guy was interested in everything - Adam Smith, baseball pitches, kidneys, aviation, chlorophyll  - and he treated it all as an adventure and infected most of us with his curiosity about everything. His attitude was "Let's figure this out" because he never claimed to be smart. Never "This is what it is."  For him, everything was "What the heck is this?" - whether a butterfly, Hamlet, Freud, God, Newton, or ballistics.

Plus, through this course, the Headmaster got to know each one of us personally, and he was one shrewd dude to do that. No slacker escaped his gaze, and committed slackers were sent packing for good, because he did not believe in offering treaures to those who did not wish to partake in treasure-hunting. If your mind wandered, he would say "Miss Bliss, I Will Throw No Pearls Before Swine. You can day-dream later, or you can do it at home with your Mommy and Daddy if you want." Then he would make you stand and try to explain what he had been talking about. Tough. Love. Loved life and loved people. A lifetime role model.

I recall there was no hiding in his classes. He just said "Stand and deliver, Miss Bliss. You have one generous minute. Tell us everything you know about the Bernoulli Effect." There was no paper and no exam: all based on class performance. That's the great potential of private schools: you can demand performance. And he had a school to run, so could not be bothered with reading puerile or stolen papers. He wanted to know what you had to say for yourself, and he only gave one "A" per group. For that A, he'd write you a gracious college recommendation.)

You cannot be a powerfully inspiring teacher without being a natural learner who assumes his own stupidity. His unique course followed his inquisitive nose, and the model remains with all of us. He did not teach so much as share his enthusiasm and curiosity, but you had better have the answer about how kidney tubules handle sodium concentrations - with the math: he had a talent for integrating things, from the biochemical level to the math to the culinary - he gave us his favorite recipe for steak and kidney pie with his method for not making it smell like a urinal as part of his sessions on the kidney. According to his interests, he would alter the course a bit each year.

It was his personal introduction to the life of the mind, to a life of curiosity. Doing this course was his great joy in life, probably a greater joy to him than his little old farmhouse in Greece.

Did we make fun of his enthusiasm? Of course. Young people do stuff like that. It means nothing.

----and her two sisters were educated at home by English and French tutors, in the royal India tradition, as well as in Switzerland and in India. Her family had a house in Belgravia in London, where she later attended the London College of Secretaries.

She once recalled, “I learned shorthand, to type and to write decent letters.”

After six years of covert courtship, and defying family disapproval (he already had two wives) in 1940 she became the third wife of the maharajah, Sir Sawai Man Singh Bahadur, a renowned polo player. He proposed in the back seat of his Bentley as it circled Hyde Park in London.

A very interesting lady. h/t, Synth.

The "health care" war - and it is a war - attests to the extent to which Americans are divided on the proper role of government in their lives, not to mention in the most personal and sensitive areas of their lives.

For example, Coyote in a piece titled US Medicine - The best in the world, he said this:

I had a professor that used to poll his class — he would ask them if they would prefer a society where the gap between rich and poor was narrower but where the poor were, on an absolute basis, worse off than in the less equal society.  He reported the vote almost always split about 50/50.  (of course the is a purely utilitarian formulation of the question.  Adding in individual liberties issues makes the question far more stark, as to achieve an egalitarian society one must give up both wealth and liberty.)

As a more-or-less Conservative person who was raised in the heart of the American Revolution, my instincts are to distrust centralized power (power is a zero-sum game, unlike money and wealth) and the wisdom and trustworthiness of politicians - and to trust the people to figure out their own lives as best they can (while providing the abundant safety nets we have now for those who stumble and fall).

I know that Lyndon Johnson's Medicaid and Medicare (for the poor, the chronically disabled and the old - imagine considering 65 to be old!), were viewed as first steps towards universal government medical care. Those measure took care of those people that everybody felt badly about.

The Left, which pretends to see "market failures" everywhere as an excuse to place as much as possible under the control of the State (see Dr. Clouthier: Simply put, the government needs to relearn its place, who notes the Left's tendency to promise the sun, moon and stars for free, for all.)

Does Government Know Best? I doubt it very much. There are few people in government, I believe, who are as educated, honest, informed, or thoughtful as I am (and that's not saying much). Regan at American Thinker asks Does Government Know Best?. One quote:

Frighteningly, team Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress -- who have taken on the role of the prudent parents of juvenile Americans -- have proven to be more than occasionally wrong for the country. In their desire to completely control American lives, they have progressed from losing their tempers to losing their way. Americans are now living in a nanny state in which the Democrats in power are implementing policy after policy designed to reduce freedom of choice and increase government control. Big government, socialized institutions, and sharing the wealth are policies supported by the Democrats - the party whose membership includes academics, Hollywood pseudo-intellectuals, and community organizers. The members of the Democratic Party are those who believe that they are smarter and wiser than the average American and that government intervention in all aspects of our lives is necessary in order to prevent social and economic catastrophe.

William Anderson at Weekly Standard says what I wish to say much better than I can in his Who Owns Your Body? One quote (my bold):

We are berated, ad nauseam, with imprecations that America is the only advanced nation that fails to have universal health care. This statement is often followed by the rueful remark that the debate over government controlled health care has been going on without progress for 60 years and, ipso facto, it is time to settle it. All right, let's do that. Let's look a little deeper. Why is there no settlement of the issue, and why is America unique in its obstinate reluctance to follow the example of our older cultural brothers in Europe? When a debate continues for decades without resolution, it is prudent to consider the deeper underlying assumptions. Principles which underpin the arguments are likely being ignored and marginalized rather than addressed in a forthright manner. America is the only advanced country whose founding assumption is popular sovereignty. This is a proposition that stands with hardly a seconding voice throughout the contemporary international community. Yet it is the taproot of American exceptionalism. Even here, however, the principle of government subordination to the people is by no means universally accepted. It has never been firmly ratified by our political class, those spiritual descendants of Europe's nobility. Our soi-disant elite appear to view with dismay their countrymen's continuing preference for self-rule. Thus arises the question of corporal ownership. For Americans, the answer has been settled. Since the terrible bloodletting of the Civil War, and now excepting military service, ownership of one's body is a matter between the individual and God, with no intermediation by government. Yet assertions are now being made that government should have responsibility for, and thus authority over, the maintenance of our bodies. It necessarily follows that government must have the power to approve or withhold care. This concept collides destructively with the founding principles of individual responsibility and autonomy upon which popular sovereignty depends. This is the reason that the debate never ends. It is also the reason that any resolution of the question will necessarily either confirm or deny the original intent of the Founders.

I have occasionally posted here about the sad, if not pathetic, willingness of some to sell their American birthright of individual sovereignty and freedom for a bowl of lentils. This is especially sad for a shrink because part of our job is to help people emotionally mature. It is no help to a shrink's job for government to be an enabler of perpetual childhood and dependency. Read Anderson's whole good essay (link above).