Maggie's Farm

Lots of stuff about unhappy feet recently. For one, there was that teen in Kentucky who lost her feet on an amusement park ride.

Here's neoneo on ballerinas' feet. The pain and destruction are worth it, she feels.

And here's John Hawkes on cosmetic foot surgery: "Now I can wear whatever shoes I want."

Photo: Croc shoes. Our readers seem to like them. Is it comfort, or the anti-fashion thing? Or is it a rubber shoe fetish, like wearing latex clothing?

The stupidity of the Beautiful People. The Shelf. A quote:

There is no doubt that entertainment effects the development of the younger generation. I see it everywhere when I'm out and about and as my children get a day older every 24 hours I get more and more worried about this influence on them. It is important that we play a large role in the lives of our children. They need to learn about life and it's mysteries from us, not Sheryl Crow or Rosie O'Donnell. Values are timeless, yet pop culture changes their interpretation every decade or so. The popular consensus of what is good and bad, right and wrong are changed slightly every so often by that dirty tactic of "pushing the envelope". Where did the envelope come from and who said we wanted it pushed? The values that were taught to my father and his father are the values I should teach my children. Right and wrong does not change, so why do the Hollywood elite feel the need to mask it as if it does?

Photo: Sean Penn, a "Beautiful Person"

Since when does "the public," ie the government, "own" the airwaves? A radio operator buys or leases a frequency, and then transmits radio waves on that frequency. Who gave the government ownership of frequencies? The government took them over in a weird example, I guess, of eminent domain, in the 1930s. However, the arguments used could just as well have been used for government ownership of news print.

Boortz makes the history of the notion very clear. Perhaps it would be analogous to the government taking ownership of bandwidth. How long until political use of bandwidth is regulated by Washington?

We wrote about this yesterday.

Photo: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The first transatlantic radio message from the US was sent from Teddy Roosevelt to King Edward Vll in 1909, from good old Wellfleet on Cape Cod. The beach location is now called Marconi Beach, and it is surrounded by protected land - part of The Cape Cod National Seashore - thanks to JFK.

Addendum: For fascinating historical detail about the early goverment intrusion into radio, read the first comment on this post.

Buffalo Hunt, 1897. More of his work here. (thanks, reader). Two wonderful things about Montana (among others) are Russell and A. B. Guthrie. Yes, that painting is what the Montana high plains look like. They are desert-like, since all the rain gets dumped by the weather as it rises over the Rockies, heading east.

Volunteers at Good Samaritan Hospital (not sure which one) in 1957, delivering cigarettes and candy to patients. I'll take two packs of Luckies and a Clark Bar please, Ma'am, and some matches.

One Hundred Years of Solitude turns 40 as Gabriel Garcia Marquez turns 80.

From an essay on the novel, by Ilan Stavans at The Chronicle Review:

In my 40s, I've returned to García Márquez's masterpiece. Now it seems to me that, like Cervantes's Don Quixote, it decodes the DNA of Hispanic civilization. It's a "total" novel, designed by a demiurge capable of creating a universe as comprehensive as ours.

1874. L'allee au Bouffan

The purpose of this unsatisfactory and unsuccessful photo in the rain on Saturday was to try to capture the excellent and highly-varied Hosta beds in front of the little antique farmhouse. How many sturdy, self-reliant Connecticut Yankees have been raised in this humble 1720 home?

As narrow-minded, knuckle-dragging traditionalists, we Maggie's Farmers honor fathers: fathers that stick around and do their best to do what grown men need to do for their families and for their communities.

Few of us can reach the Atticus Finch ideal.

Here are a few Dad-related links from our archives:

The Incredible Shrinking Father

A few pretty sailboats

M200 carbine

Are boys just defective girls?

Bring back dueling!

Fine powerboats: This one and this one

David Grossman's Ode to his son Uri

What do men want?

Banging around Yankeeland in the rain all day, and ended up driving through a hailstorm like I have never seen in New England. It looked as if it had snowed, or as if God had dumped his largest box of mothballs on us.

There's a herd of Black Angus in the distance on this farm in beautiful Litchfield County. Taking photos in the rain is evidently not my thing.

Icarus, 1947

Humble Brit cell phone salesman takes the stage at the UK's version of American Idol. Story and video at Anchoress.

(Wolf Flywheel of The Shelf notes in our comments that this fellow, Paul Potts, is not exactly a newbie. He studied with Pavarotti, has toured in Italy. Oh well, still a good story, and I suspect the guy can quit his day job now.)

Comment from The Barrister: The moral of the story (or should I say "narrative"?) is that we listen to too much lousy pop music. When we hear the real thing it makes a big impression.

I happen to be one of the few people who dislike going to Whole Foods (except for their cheese department), but they will, no doubt, have an impact on Brit marketing of food. Samizdata. Brit marketing is like American marketing in the 1930s, from what I have seen.

America takes the art and science of Marketing very seriously. Americans can sell anything, from Snake Oil to Windows software to Ford automobiles to Global Warming Hysteria. America creates and invents like crazy, but our ace in the hole is our sales and marketing genius. What good is an idea if you can't sell it?

Whole Foods, like the A&P's Food Emporium years ago, is all about Upscale Marketing: you take a little Balducci's, a little Food Emporium, plus a little Yuppie Health Food Store ethos to make the customers feel like they are eating wholesome stuff and therefore their precious selves will stay young and live forever - and stir.

"Organic" is the "New! Improved!" of our era. 

The art of retail sales, I have been told by master salespeople, is all about appealing to people's narcissism - and never letting them admit that they have been "sold". "Let them feel good about themselves for choosing our stuff."

Photos taken at a pick-up at the U.S. Military Academy's Summer Leaders Seminar, today. It's a week-long picnic only for those who want to be pushed hard, and who hope to have the right stuff. If you are not familiar with West Point, that is the great Hudson River down below.

The site was selected by Washington himself, and it is the longest-used military location in the US. At the time, it was a highly strategic site, commanding the water route to the inland northern colonies.

An architect friend recently designed this molding, called Rolling Wave. I like it. I guess it can be made in whatever size you want. Amazing the way they can translate a design into a plaster molding, but it has been done for a long time. Useful skills. And such fine custom things cost less than one might think.

He's fine - he's just Astral Travelling. (h/t Right Wing Nation). Indeed he is.

Candidates for the Darwin Awards?

As they say, There is no cure for stupid.