Saturday, March 1. 2008
Some good explanations of some common cliches. How many of those explanations did you know? I saw some errors in there.
Friday, February 29. 2008
"Own a complete library of the most influential books of all time!"It's remarkable that things like this are produced today. Gutenberg would be pleased. Of course, there is Project Gutenberg too.
Pirate King: | | For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal, | | Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal, | | Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, | | | twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, | | One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty. | | Through some singular coincidence – I shouldn’t be surprised if it were owing to the | | | agency of an ill-natured fairy – | | You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, | | | on the twenty-ninth of February; | | And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you’ll easily discover, | | That though you’ve lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, | | | you’re only five and a little bit over! |
That entire section of The Pirates of Penzance is here.
Thursday, February 28. 2008
Vote for your favorite English landscape (h/t, Theo). This is Dorset: 
Wednesday, February 27. 2008
Something for me to remember Bill Buckley with: the Contrapunctus 1 from Bach's The Art of the Fugue, with Glenn Gould.
From So What?, by Sippican: The stage is exactly three inches and a galaxy away from the dance floor. Dance? Please. Stumble around with a woman that ain't your wife, I think. I like the old dude that looks like Batman's butler or a fruity sort of baron or something that conducts or sways or whatever it is he's doing. He's possessed with it, same as me. He's usually possessed of plenty of cake, a desire to buy a man a drink, and an aversion to arithmetic, too. The waitresses adore that.
The curtain is dirty from wiping your hands on it. Me included. It's dirty like life is. Up high, it's dirty with cobwebs and dust and corruption because you can't reach up there. Down low it's dirty with the grubby hands of all of us trying to wipe off the sweat and grease of what you're doing.
I listen for the cornshucks of the brushes on the snare. He hits it, but I don't care about that. In between -- the faint circular sketching he does without thinking -- that's what I'm after. He's lathering the dry face of the song so I can shave it with the sharp edge of the brass. The bass rumbles like thunder in the distance.
I can taste metal and blood and booze in my mouth. Tastes like life.
 William F. Buckley Jr, who we have quoted often at Maggies (including, by strange coincidence, multiple times yesterday), died today at his home in Connecticut.
Over many years, the man has been an inspiration through his fiction-writing, his non-fiction, his sailing, his piano-playing, his passion for Bach, his passion for God, his love of life and of freedom and and of his fellow man. And his love for his remarkable wife Pat, who died last year. Yes, also for his cheerful political energy and pioneering efforts on behalf of Conservative views (he, seemingly single-handedly, made these views respectable), but these efforts were always lower on his list than devotion to God and living - and enjoying - life to the max. A superb human and a superb life. I am most grateful for the things this brainy, witty, refined and joyful Scotch-loving Connecticut Yankee added to my life, but what I will remember most vividly is his description, in one of his sailing books, of his successful effort to install a piano in the parlor of his sailboat. Many comments at Memeorandum.
Monday, February 25. 2008
 These folks make remarkable toys.
The roller coasters and ferris wheels are remarkable, but the main thing with k'nex is putting them together. It's a challenge, a 3-D puzzle, and that's the fun of it. Like Legos.
It ain't Baryshnikov - it is square-dancing tractors and a real Maggie's Farm sort of simple, county fair entertainment (h/t, Theo):
Game with hunting equipment, by Willem van Aelst, 1660 
Sunday, February 24. 2008
Another shot of Cannon Mtn. Ski Area, where cannonistas appreciate the lack of upscale amenities: 
and a shot of the Franconia Inn, not far from Cannon Mtn. and Rte. 93: 
Friday, February 22. 2008
 A friend laid a box of the Ashton coronas on me last week to try, and I burned a few today while bumbling around. Very mild but a tasty flavor.
They are Dominican with a Connecticut shade wrapper. Funny how often those CT-grown wrappers return, eventually, back to New England. Not expensive for the quality. An excellent everyday smoke.
Do you want Google to store your medical records? I don't. Now I fully recognize that nobody in their right mind would want to find out anything about me and my utterly normal life which is remarkable only for its relative contentment, but there are privacy principles here: it's nobody's business. A security and intel analyst decided to find out what he could about himself. The piece begins: In 2006, David Holtzman decided to do an experiment. Holtzman, a security consultant and former intelligence analyst, was working on a book about privacy, and he wanted to see how much he could find out about himself from sources available to any tenacious stalker. So he did background checks. He pulled his credit file. He looked at Amazon.com transactions and his credit-card and telephone bills. He got his DNA analyzed and kept a log of all the people he called and e-mailed, along with the Web sites he visited. When he put the information together, he was able to discover so much about himself—from detailed financial information to the fact that he was circumcised—that his publisher, concerned about his privacy, didn’t let him include it all in the book.
Read the whole thing at Popular Science.
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.
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