Wednesday, February 20. 2008
 I am told that the Surf Hotel on Block Island is for sale. Stayed there once or twice, many moons ago. A funky old Block Islandy sort of place. Fawlty Towers, anyone? Sadly, somebody will probably buy the old place and turn it into condos or time shares, with credible water pressure and walls you cannot hear through.
 Also, I see this modest Manhattan townhouse on E. 68th St. is for sale.
It's the Henry T. Sloane house, built in 1905. If I had the $64 million asking price in my checking account, I might go for it. Everybody deserves a Manhattan pied a terre, so my hope is that Obama will get me one. Three stories would suffice.
Is life more competitive these days? I have no idea how to measure that, but there is no doubt that we live in a nation - and a world - full of strivers. My guess is that it's because opportunity is more widely spread around than in the past. The world has more hopers and dreamers than it ever did, and that is the true gift - or curse - of American civilization to the world. Akst's Strive We Must in the Wilson Quarterly discusses the current state of competition in education, sports, business, and everything else. A quote: Competition has also been rescued to some extent from the class-based doghouse in which it dwelt for so long. In the bad old days, after all, trying too hard was considered poor form; success was supposed to come easily, like one’s wealth and position, and not require any of the sweaty striving associated with the lower orders. Those days are blessedly past—we are all sweaty strivers now—yet we remain ambivalent about this state of affairs. We feel nostalgia for the ethos of good form, and for the freedom from class anxiety we might have felt in a more static society. Who among us has not referred, at some point, to competitive modern life as a rat race? Which of us has not vowed, sooner or later, to foreswear it, presumably in favor of a return to our natural state of romping in the meadows with the butterflies? We want our kids to do well, yet competition is something we want to shelter them from. That’s why, in northern California, some high schools with large numbers of Asian-American students are experiencing white flight among families who find the academic environment a mite too...hectic.
Read the whole interesting essay (link above).
Tuesday, February 19. 2008
A photo of Great Pond, Wellfleet, MA, from this guy's Wellfleet site. I have swum across that old kettle pond many times. 
Sunday, February 17. 2008
The conclusion of Twyla Tharp's masterpiece Push Comes to Shove, choreographed for Baryshnikov. I saw him do this, thanks to the Mrs. Bird Dog's insistence many years ago. (In another life, she was a modern dancer in NYC and, as part of courtship, I have seen a lifetime of dance. Still do. Good stuff, but I think it is difficult - but worthwhile - for a guy to fully "get it." It's not in my blood, so I have to try to appreciate to expand my spirit.) NYC remains the dance capital of the world. I always liked Merce Cunningham, with John Cage in the pit. Totally strange, eccentric, and absorbing. There is a lot happening on the stage recorded below, and it is all joyful and fun and technically impeccable. You almost need to be married to a dancer to understand the mysteries of technique, and how technique expresses ideas and emotion. Dance is hard as hell to do right, and Misha had the best Moscow trainng. Ballet in Russia is like football here.
Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas (h/t, reader). 
Saturday, February 16. 2008
Is the Hillary Clinton campaign the Black Knight? It's not over yet, because she can bite.
Put the youngest Bird Dog pup on the plane to Charlotte very early this morning for the Junior Olympics Tournament. (She does Foil - elegant, but millions of rules. It's like physical Chess.) Gave myself a little treat by taking the Queens-Midtown Tunnel from LaGuardia airport into Manhattan, and grabbed a bag of fresh hot bagels and some good coffee before heading back north to the serenity of Yankeeland. I do love NYC. Who doesn't? It is vitality, even at 6 AM. On a Saturday morning at 6 AM you can drive up Manhattan to the 96th St. entrance to the FDR quite enjoyably, despite having to dodge wacko, reckless, seemingly insane or drunk guys in wheelchairs in the middle of 3rd Ave, disregarding the street signals. Had camera, but too dark. 
Fencing demands a lot from your legs, your brain, and your spirit. The young 'uns all come back with some good purple bruises, so it's a wonder that the goo-goos haven't banned this "violent" game yet. In pitiful Euroland, at least. Bruises = Life. Well, this pup of mine is good at finding her way around new places - a handy life skill - having done Europe a couple of times more or less independently. When she goes to a Fencing tournament, I say "Return with your shield, or on it," or sometimes "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." I want to see blood on her foil.
Friday, February 15. 2008
The Jimmy Bruno Quartet in April, 2007. "Loverman" (forgive his promotionals - it's good marketing):
Thursday, February 14. 2008
Playing this instrument looks like sign language. This gal can play the Theremin, at David Thompson.
 We already posted a Valentine's Day piece, but one more won't hurt.
Fairy-tale romances in the WSJ Want an office romance? Sign the contract first. Marriage: It's only going to get worse. (h/t, Dr. Sanity) Need testosterone? Go shooting. Is settling for Mr. Good Enough really Good Enough? Dr. Helen Marriage pros and cons. Kim Proposed on Imus today, a new book: "What Did I Do Now? A Men's Guide to Menopause." And, finally, Bird Dog's 5-cent marriage advice: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Wednesday, February 13. 2008
I think this might be a fake website, alas: Felonspy. I found some bad guys I did not know about, but none of my friends. If it were genuine, some of my pals would show up there, for sure. They do not guarantee accuracy - read the disclaimer.
This story of Sinatra begins like this: Frank Sinatra, the greatest vocalist in the history of American music, elevated popular song to an art. He was a dominant power in the entertainment industries—radio, records, movies, gambling—and a symbol of the Mafia’s reach into American public life. More profoundly than any figure excepting perhaps Elvis Presley, Sinatra changed the style and popular culture of the American Century.
Read the whole thing at The Atlantic while listening to one of his masterpieces below (music, no video):
I refer to Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which I have just finished. It ain't littercher, but it's an absorbing read. He is a master storyteller and permits no let-up of tension. It's in the historical fiction genre, set during the Civil War of 1139-1153. That war of succession was prompted, you may recall, by the foundering of the White Ship with William, the only legitimate son of Henry l, on board. The book does a good job of putting you in a time and place. The gravitational center of the book is the building of cathedrals during the time when pointed arches and ribbed ceilings were first used, and when it was realized that pillars could support the weight of the buildings without relying on thick walls, thus permitting large windows. Has mankind ever built anything to match the grace and artistry and grandeur of a gothic cathedral? 
As I was reading the book, I kept wishing I could find our copy of David Macaulay's Cathedral. It's here somewhere...
Tuesday, February 12. 2008
 A new and useful hobby: Coin Stacking.
Many photos of his glue-free structures at the link.
Monday, February 11. 2008
Words: The hidden inferences in words, at Overcoming Bias: It is a common misconception that you can define a word any way you like. This would be true if the brain treated words as purely logical constructs, Aristotelian classes, and you never took out any more information than you put in. Yet the brain goes on about its work of categorization, whether or not we consciously approve...
The whole thing here.
 Stormy afternoon house cleaning yesterday after church and Lenten Group study, including putting away some Christmas stuff. Decided to pick up and re-order the CD mess - hundreds scattered everywhere and many loose, homeless orphans separated from their jewel cases.
I wondered whether anybody still buys, or uses, CDs very much. I still like them, because I have three quite high-end sound systems around the place (including my precious Legacy speakers) which I enjoy more than computer speaker sound. Anyway, I collected every CD in the house and put them all back in their cases, and made stacks. To Keep it Simple, Stupid, I made five categories: Pop (incl. rock), Classical, Roots (eg folk, blues, country - including every Emmy Lou - , Jazz, Irish, etc) and Misc (religious, Christmas music, Broadway, Cole Porter, Shakespeare plays, random home-made mixes, etc) and, finally, a Dylan stack. The Pop, Classical, Dylan, and Roots stacks (many stacks of each so they wouldn't topple) were about the same height. How did the Dylan stack get so high? Because the Dylanologist has given me so many CDs of live performances (on top of all of his production recordings), which are far more interesting than the commercial CDs despite the iffy sound quality. Creating order out of chaos is both mindless and satisfying, like doing the wash. I did find a Highway 61 Revisited in a Schubert case. I did end up with about 20 loose CDs without cases, and about ten cases without their CDs, which ain't bad. I have enough Creedence. I need more Schubert, though.
Sunday, February 10. 2008
Utterly irreverent, but I have no doubt that God and Christians can appreciate the silliness, and that no threats of beheadings will result. Gotta love "Bertha-I'm-better-than-you":
Saturday, February 9. 2008
We dedicate this piece to all of those who are still seething about McCain. This will soothe the injured heart: Anderson and Roe piano duo with Saint-Saens' The Swan. (h/t, Classical Virtuoso)
Re-posted from our archives: There seem to be Bellow fans and Nabokov fans. I'd have to place myself among the Nabokov, but only because I've read more of his. Lolita's fame - more the fame of shock value than the literary - is probably undeserved. Are older guys attracted to younger women sometimes? Indeed. Historically, it was not uncommon for girls/women to be married at Lolita's age. From the NYT: Legal considerations aside, not everyone took to the book. Edmund Wilson was repulsed; like many, he had trouble untangling author and narrator. Evelyn Waugh thought the novel without merit, except as smut. (On which count it was "highly exciting." To E. M. Forster those same pages were "rather a bore.") Rebecca West found the novel labored and ugly, a diluted blend of Peter de Vries and S. J. Perelman. Worse, she found in "Lolita" a great deal of Dostoyevsky, whom Nabokov abhorred.
Hmmm. I'd tend to take the Rebecca West comment as a compliment. Anyway, read entire Lolita update in the NYT.
From Building a Shed (h/t, Theo). It begins: This week I have been mostly engaged in helping my old mate Colin build a shed. I'm enjoying it immensely; it's honest, manly toil with cement mixer and saw in pursuit of erecting an honest, manly structure wherein honest and manly things may be done.
The tale brought to mind the interview with Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson:
Francisco Barrera, 1643. I would like this painting hanging over my dining room mantle. 
Friday, February 8. 2008
His new record, Dirt Farmer, is up for a Grammy. If you are in the neighborhood, his band (with Larry Campbell) will be performing in Woodstock, NY, tonight. This video from a recent performance on the Don Imus radio show.
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