Friday, June 27. 2008
One quote from a piece with the above title by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar: If one of the disadvantages of an elite education is the temptation it offers to mediocrity, another is the temptation it offers to security. When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed. We live in a society that is itself so wealthy that it can afford to provide a decent living to whole classes of people who in other countries exist (or in earlier times existed) on the brink of poverty or, at least, of indignity. You can live comfortably in the United States as a schoolteacher, or a community organizer, or a civil rights lawyer, or an artist—that is, by any reasonable definition of comfort. You have to live in an ordinary house instead of an apartment in Manhattan or a mansion in L.A.; you have to drive a Honda instead of a BMW or a Hummer; you have to vacation in Florida instead of Barbados or Paris, but what are such losses when set against the opportunity to do work you believe in, work you’re suited for, work you love, every day of your life?
Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me? So a whole universe of possibility closes, and you miss your true calling.
Read the whole thing (link above). A photo of the Yale campus, designed to make clever if snot-nosed kids buy into the illusion that they are 19th century aristocrats at Oxford or Cambridge rather than the humble but literate Congregationalist pastors Yale was originally created to produce: 
Wednesday, June 25. 2008
Losing the poetry is losing the soul. Neoneo on how the modern translations of the Bible drain it of vitality, and turn it into a Hallmark card. I rarely use the King James here, even though it's my favorite.
Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are here in Rome, filming the sequel to The DaVinci Code.
Tuesday, June 24. 2008
 This is the old Grand Hotel des Isles Borromee, a 5-star place built in 1863 on the Stresa waterfront.
Sunday, June 22. 2008
Our friend Nathan, whose Aliyah Diary you may recall on this site and who now is based in Jerusalem, gets around. He sent this email note to us yesterday: Who'da thunk that in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the Region VII meeting of the American Guild of English Bell Ringers would meet today? Sioux Falls, ground out by the Sioux River well after the Permian-Triassic, has quartzite boulders that churn-up the river waters which were unable to wear them out 10,000 years ago. Pipestone, used for peace pipes, and cordovan-tinted quartzite remain here. You can go to the remains of the Falls just south of downtown to stroll and be sprayed by the Falls. Best to go when the wind is Southerly, as a Northerly summer wind will suffocate you with the stench of carcasses from one of the largest packing plants in the US. While levees are undermined or overflowed in bordering Iowa and Missouri, the quartzite here holds up to the tumultuous torrents.
But bell ringing? I slipped into the rehearsal last night around 830, after they had heard a performance by the group from England. The night before, the hotel manager revealed to me, the Brits had gathered for tea around 10 pm in the cafe at the base of the Hyatt-like atrium. Then, they burst into music, filling nearby empty wine glasses with carefully aliquoted water, then rim-ringing the glasses. A glass harmonica they transformed into. This high-pitch rose in the atrium and arose the other denizens of the Sioux Falls Sheraton, who generally dress cowpokey. The manager, a sliver-coiffed Mr. Russo, who dresses in stylish Italian silk and tassled loafers, quietly grumbled that he has had to toss rowdy drinkers from the atrium. But, tea-drinkers, Tea? Russo was incredulous.
Nevertheless, by Thursday night, the bellers were gathered in the nearby conference center, which, in fact, is an indoor sports stadium with signs for "Ticket Purchase" or Ticket Pick-up" and "No Outside Liquor Permitted" guarding the entrance. I was porting my J. Lohr Cabernet, which I could not finish at dinner and no one challenged me. But, there was no booze being served here. Perhaps tea later.
Continue reading "Guest author: The Bell-ringers of Sioux Falls"
 I had the great pleasure of attending the 50th wedding anniversary of an old pal, a NYC lawyer and role model and his wonderful and beautiful wife, down at the Larchmont (NY) Yacht Club last night.
Yes, he still takes the train to the city each morning. One of their fine daughters read a quote from the excellent book Corelli's Mandolin, in which Dr. Iannis discusses his marriage: Love is not breathless, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day... That is just being "in love," which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident...we had roots that grew towards eachother underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
Here are just a few of my observations and thoughts about our trip to northern Italy: 1. There must be a law that, in settled areas, there can be no spot from which one cannot hit a Gelateria with a stone. 2. Essentially no American visitors up there. Lots of Scandinavians, Germans, Swiss and Brits - and Italians from the south. Plus some French and Japanese. A small handful of American honeymooners. All of the trattorias have some German stuff on the menu, like wiener schnitzel with French fries. 3. Never eat a pizza in Italy, except maybe around Naples. The Italians make terrible pizza. Domino's is far better, and Domino's ain't so good. The Dyl says that the California Pizza chain is the best, California Pizza Kitchen or whatever it is called. They should open some in Italy. 4. The driver who drove us to the airport in Milan (who had been a sous-chef in London in a previous life and who is planning a trip to Montana in September) brought us up to date on the Wall Street arrests. He said that the Italians were mightily impressed. "Here," he said, "businessmen and politicians never get arrested. That is why we have no trust in our institutions." 5. The microclimate around the large lakes of the Piedmont permits the growing of palms and citrus within view of snow-capped Alps. Quite unique. You can grow anything there, hence all of the famous gardens. 6. Internet access there is a major pain. They don't seem to have wireless anywhere, and the hotels charge you between 15-22 Euros per hour to use their half-assed and temperamental connections. 7. It was great fun to hang out with the Dyl. He has big energy and a strong sense of adventure, and his Italian came in handy at times, too. He beat me at chess on one of those outdoor giant-size boards you can walk on, on the edge of Lago Maggiore. I played White: my attack was overly aggressive and I stubbed my toe with my bishop. He knows how to exploit somebody's error. More observations to come over the next week or so...and more photos, including ones from our side trip into the Italian Alps. Here's one of the albino peacocks that inhabit the Borromeo islands, perched on an urn in the rain in the incredible gardens of Isola Bella. The cliche "proud as a peacock" is not without merit. The baroque style Italian gardens of Isola Bella are among the most famous gardens in the world, and parts of them are reminiscent (I think) of the hanging gardens of Babylon. 
More photos of Isola Bella below:
Continue reading "Isola Bella, etc."
Saturday, June 21. 2008
Nice trip. Saw a lot. Nice to be back, too. Will share some thoughts about it shortly, and some photos, but I don't have time to do that right now. Many thanks to Dr. Merc for pitching in to help Team Maggie. Also, on this trip I think I managed to persuade our Dylanologist (by plying him with Barbera D'Asti and plenty of food) to post, in the near future, some pieces about 1) The historical white slave trade in Africa 2) The new questions about Continental Drift theory and 3) The final days of the Roman Empire (with special attention to the last chariot race in the Circus Maximus and to the day that the aqueducts ceased to carry water to a dying Rome). The Dyl has a wide range of interests - as we all do, here on the Farm, and the catastrophic collapse of Roman civilization in the West is of great interest to all of us. But, first, this unique and historically symbolic photo which demonstrates my successful delivery of the Skippy Peanut Butter (one Extra Crunchy, one Smooth) to the Dyl and his peanut butter-deprived friends in Italy, from my hotel balcony overlooking lovely Lago Maggiore. Where else would you find such an odd photo except here at Maggies? 
 I have liked making money since I was a kid. Still do. Finding honest and satisfying ways to make money has always been an interesting and amusing part of my life. Bird Dog asked me the very simple and direct question of why making and saving money pleases me.
- It gives me choices
- It makes me feel secure and independent to have it
- I can take interesting trips
- I can buy toys if I want to (but being able to afford them makes me covet most things less - it's what I
term the "choice effect.")
- I can feed the wife's horses and dogs
- I was made to work. Always thought resting was for the grave. Love working on anything, from a complex tax-dodging trust to a tractor carburetor. Compensation is the icing on the cake.
- I can provide a nice environment for the family
- I can educate the kids - and help with the grandkids - without taking charity or other people's hard-
earned money
- I can give plenty of money away for causes that matter to me
- I can have fun fussing and worrying about my goofball investments
- I can enjoy work more if I don't have to work, and I don't need to go into a depression when the barn
needs painting or when the tractor breaks
- I can buy some art that I like to look at How's that for starters?
Friday, June 20. 2008
Good grammar doesn't reveal your IQ, but it does reveal the quality of your reading and your education - or your absorption therof. So, to refresh my grammar, I shall review "will" and "shall", and you shall listen to me. The important verb "will" has two conjugations: for plain future, it's "(I or we) shall..." and (You or they) will...". For commands, promises, and assertions, it's the reverse. Simple.
This is the Fin-Duck Sauna Cruising Boat. It's probably a bit large to function as a decoy: 
Wednesday, June 18. 2008
Leonard Bernstein's acclaimed 1973 lecture series at Harvard, The Unanswered Question, was directed towards a general audience rather than towards musicians. You can buy the DVD at Amazon, or ask your library to buy them. Here's a sample:
An official distinction between formal and informal essays. We mostly do the informal, here.
 The Gulf Stream (as compared to the related North Atlantic Drift) is of as much interest to blue-water sailors as it is to fishermen.
Many years ago, I regularly fished for tuna with friends off Montauk on Long Island. We would usually leave at night, steam East, and hit the edge of the Stream by morning. There seemed to be a water color change, but the tell was the water temperature change. I did not know that Ponce de Leon was the first to take advantage of its 2.5 knot current, or that Ben Franklin mapped it in detail. In any event, the Gulf Stream is particularly relevant to yachtsmen in the New York Yacht Club's annual Newport-Bermuda Race (aka The Bermuda Race), because their southeastern route tends to buck the current, and because the Stream is a "weather breeder." The Stream is not static: it wiggles and throws off arms and segments. UConn Oceanographer W. Frank Bohlen has been providing updated Gulf Stream tutorials to the Bermuda Race race committee for years, for the use of the sailors. Here's a sample of his reports, this from his June 2, 2008 report on the Gulf Stream. Image is borrowed from Theo.
This is an old re-post: I stumbled onto this old Auster review on the View from the Right yesterday. He reviewed Brookhiser's The Way of the Wasp, (which I read when it came out in 1991, with the hope that I might understand myself a little better). America has been historically a WASP culture, in the best sense of the term, and that is why it is such a fine country. Does anyone doubt this? It's the culture that dares to interrogate itself. One quote from Auster's piece: In his account of the degeneration of this pattern of useful virtues into an opposite set of vices, Brookhiser illuminates our current disorder. Conscience, the monitor of the self, has given way to the untrammeled self, along with the attendant liberationisms; lower-class welfare mothers and upper-class S&L con artists are equally products of a culture that has thrown away the constraints of conscience. Instead of industry rewarded by success, we have ambition striving for gratification. Civic-mindedness has been displaced by the group-mindedness that now dominates our politics, while the objective test of use (which implies a moral standard derived from nature) has given way to diffidence: "[Things] are, therefore we defer to them"--a neat characterization of America's timorous response to every minority demand.
Consider reading the book, or at least Auster's review, whether WASP or not. It's the story of America's strength and freedom and traditions and manners, all based on stern Protestant moral codes of modesty, duty, sacrifice, self-sufficiency, courage, self-denial, integrity, work, respect, honor, and emotional restraint. With a strong, monitoring, rather punitive conscience to watch over it all. It is impossible to be a nation or a community without shared behavioral codes, and these are still the core of our culture, despite endless assaults upon them from a variety of directions. It's just too damn bad if these codes aren't always fun or instantly gratifying or ego-enhancing: They are for the grown-ups.
 St. Johnsbury, VT is about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, and with a population around 7000 it is the main town in Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom. Calvin Coolidge went to school there and Dr. Bob of AA fame grew up there.
You drive through St. Johnsbury on the way to somewhere else, such as grouse hunting in NH or Maine. It's a sad, run-down old town today, with plenty of poverty and few jobs, and it gives you the feeling that those with the inner resources to leave, do so. Except for the farmers, the logging truck drivers and the Maple sugar bottlers, it's lots of folks on Vermont welfare who would have much better lives if they took a deep American breath and left the squalor behind by taking a bus to Atlanta, Alabama, or Arizona to find a new life and a real job where they could be of use. This 1900 fixer-upper pictured can be had for $89,000. I wouldn't take it if you gave me $89,000, unless it was wintertime and I was desperate for shelter. No amount of money could make this house charming or homey, but shelter is shelter and, in VT in the winter, ya gotta have some and to hell with charm.
Why are New Yorkers the way that they are? Joan Acocella in Smithsonian. And an annoyed response by the Chicagoan Huston.
This 1866 Currier and Ives print depicts the "miniature ship" Red White and Blue. Details as listed on the print: Length 26 Feet. Breadth of Beam 6 Feet 1 Inch. Depth of Hold 2 Ft. 8 In. 2 33/100 Tons Register. On her Voyage from New York to London, August 1866 with Capts Hudson & Fitch & dog Fanny. Sailed from New York July 9th arrived at Margate, August 16th 1866 
Tuesday, June 17. 2008
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car."
-Author Unknown Advice for the day: If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "Take two aspirin" and "Keep away from children."
-Author Unknown "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
-Drew Carey "The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house."
-Jeff Foxworthy "If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base."
-Dave Barry
"Relationships are hard. It's like a full time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, and the day before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp."
-Bob Ettinger" A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: "Duh."
-Conan O'Brien "Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God...I could be eating a slow learner."
-Lynda Montgomery "I think that's how Chicago got started. Bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.'"
-Richard Jeni "If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."
-Johnny Carson "Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."
-Paul Rodriguez "My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that's the law."
-Jerry Seinfeld "Remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?"
-Warren Hutcherson "Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same."
-Oscar Wilde "Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Afghanistan "
-A. Whitney Brown "You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, 'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'"
-Dave Barry Do you know why they call it "PMS"? Because "Mad Cow Disease" was taken.
- Unknown, presumed deceased "Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer."
-W. C. Fields
This is an elegant 2003 70' Hinckley. Hinckley builds sailboats to order, but it makes sense to buy a used one. Her details here. They are asking $3,400,000., and worth every penny. 
Monday, June 16. 2008
Something I stumbled on: My worst date ever. A fairly bad date, but if that's his worst, I won't worry about him too much. My best first date was a blind date. (Future) hubbie picks me up and takes me sledding at night in New Hampshire. 12 degrees (F). Had his toboggan tied to the roof of his old wreck of a Jeep, and a six-pack of beer on the back seat. You just had to like the guy. Tall, dark and handsome too, with plenty of interesting quirks. I guess it was a test of my gumption, but, to his credit, the toboggan on the steep hill made me end up holding on tight to him - a total stranger (well, with the introduction by a close family friend). But it did feel pretty good. Only the beer was wrong. For nightime sledding, brandy is the thing, but he was a poor student at HBS at the time.
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