Maggie's Farm

Columbia College has the chance to stand up for diverse opinions, or to collapse ignominiously the way Grayson Kirk finally did so many years ago, when the lunatics ended up running the asylum.

Powerline wrote the story before we got to it, with the apt tagline "The whole world is watching."

In the meantime, someone should inform these kids that it isn't 1968 anymore. The college is highly competitive - so where are they finding these infantile idiots?

And will the college which prohibits a pussy reference for the hockey team recruiting (what a joke) stand up to these tantruming spoiled brat brownshirts-in-training?

It's time to find out what Columbia University stands for: the mature discourse of civil, educated adults, or delinquent mobs. I think a semester's suspension might be reasonable. A little time to grow up, just like a "time out" for 4 year-olds.  

Your move, Administration.

Update: More from Blue Crab here, and video from Michelle here.

Our contributor Gwynnie is up there this morning, on Lake Winnipegosis.

I wish for the gang far worse weather than in the photo (last October), when we had Bluebird weather five days straight, and the ducks were not flying.

For duck hunting, you want wind, fog, sleet, snow, rain. Things that make people uncomfortable make the ducks uncomfortable, and causes them to think about moving from place to place instead of staying put. My best hunts have been in snow. The expression "good weather for ducks" means good weather for duck hunting.

Otherwise, the ducks just sit in the sun and sleep in the middle of the lake. On such days, in time, the intrepid  hunter, who may or may not have had too much after-dinner port the night before, dozes off, too, leaving a silent lake, the pursuers and the pursued all peacefully dreaming in the October sunshine.

When a man comes home from a difficult day at work, nothing brightens his spirits and makes him feel more appreciated than being greeted at the door by the smiling face of the woman he loves with an ice-cold beer in her hand!

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Maggie's readers know that we love Mark Helprin. A recent interview with him in Doublethink, via Small Dead Animals. A quote:

And by the way, when I was a freshman at Harvard, the first demonstration that I saw was one guy who was carrying a sign protesting. So I stopped and I talked to him, and he told me about how awful America was and everything like that. His case was that his father had been one of the members of the Hollywood Ten, and he had been forced to relocate to the south of France and write his screenplays under a pseudonym. And he says, “Well, it wasn’t right. He was completely innocent.” But the parents lied to their children. They didn’t tell their children. And I said “Well actually, he was a Communist. It was legal to be a Communist. But he should have said so. Or, even if he shouldn’t have said so, your telling me that he was not a Communist does not change the fact that was a Communist.” So he looked at me like he had found a lunatic Red-baiter. Right? “How do you know?” I said, “Because my mother was in his cell.”

The CD of his Carnegie Hall Concert of 2005 is released this week.

Chinin of the NYT visited Jarrett and interviewed him. It is worth reading for Jarrett fans. A quote:

Mr. Jarrett is one of the most renowned pianists in the world, a virtuoso equally at home performing Bach or bebop. And though he had been a child prodigy and a member of Miles Davis’s best jazz-rock bands, it was his Herculean solo improvisations — full concerts seemingly conjured out of thin air — that brought him worldwide renown. His 1975 album “The Köln Concert” (ECM) is the all-time best-selling solo piano recording in any genre, with more than three million copies sold.

In a recent conversation at his home in northwest New Jersey, Mr. Jarrett shed some light on the discipline behind his creative process, which his more perceptive audiences valorize as much as his facility at the piano. And he took a rare clinical walk-through, like a coach reviewing game film, of the spontaneous opus that ECM is releasing on Tuesday as “The Carnegie Hall Concert.”

The album documents in its entirety a performance that surpassed even the hopes of the crowd, which clamored for, and got, five encores. “There was so much comfort exuding from his body into the instrument, and out to us in the audience, that you felt like there were no boundaries at all,” said the pianist Jason Moran. “It was a real reminder of what the possibilities of the instrument are, and what the possibilities of a solo concert are.”

The whole piece is here. Image from the NYT article from this past Sunday.

John and some other Maggie's Farm buddies, standing in front of Class Action at Bud 'n Mary's Marina on Islamorada last Saturday. The fish are mainly King Mackerel, plus a couple of snapper. They released the sharks they caught.

Was in Nashville for the long weekend - found the big Home Depot, and of course the Outdoor World of Bass Pro Shops and Redhead. Saw Music Row twelve times, and passed by the Opry on I-40 about the same, but heard none of the music except from the speakers at the gas station and the hotel lobby. Do they have music in Nashville?

Something about the South: the wives go to Outdoor World with their hubbies. Overheard: "Honey, don't you think you want that same thing in the waterproof version? You could get wet and miserable out there, sweetie. It's only a little bit more. We can put it on the Mastercard." Will some feminazi shoot me if I say "The women are women and the men are men  boys  men whatever."

And we, at Maggie's Farm, love the Southern mentality, and the accents, too. And biscuits 'n gravy. We like to believe that the gravy provides a nice, smooth, healthy, slippery coating to those major arteries.

This photo of the Nashville Outdoor World was early in the morning, before they open. But, as with Cabelas, you always wonder why there are so many people INSIDE on a weekend when it's about being OUTDOORS. The parking lot fills up fast.

I know the answer: Guys love gear the way women love shoes.

Did they have anything I needed? No. Did I buy a few things? Yes. It's the American Way.

Time to return to the old duck camp in Manitoba, on Lake Winnepegosis - the lake with the name that sounds like a rare infectious disease.

Bird Dog, regrettably, will miss the trip this year, but Gwynnie will not. Boats gassed up and warmed up, and ready to go. No need to go out before daybreak - the ducks there like to sleep in. Weather is either Bluebird weather or sleeting in late September, but breakfast is coffee, scrambled eggs, home fries, bacon, toast, left-over steak from dinner, cereal, and fruit, and should suffice.

Plenty of ammo, apples, granola bars and water on board our duck boat. Let's go. Wait...I left my gun in the gun-room. Anybody got their camera? And hey, where's the dog at? And did we remember the radio? Where the heck are my gloves? I thought I threw them in my bag...

And my favorite, after you depart the dock: "Did anyone remember to grab the ammo?"

Were any other of our horsey readers there? I know one who was at the auction on Sept 16th. Sounds like it was good fun. Mostly weanlings, I guess, but others too. Some people in the East love Quarter Horses as trail horses but, these days, you have to go west to buy a good one. The Weavers are said to breed the best.

Originally bred for sprinting (quarter-mile) races in the Eastern US, their smaller size, maneuverability, lithe muscularity, delicate feet, and cow-sense made them the standard cowboy horse. They come in good colors, but the Grey and the Blue Roan are my favorites:

We have commented on American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk in the past, and termed him the first American rock star. Terry Teachout has a piece on Gottschalk in Commentary.

Trollope, the Gardener. South African Colin Bower profiles his excellent gardener in The New English Review.

Watch the women's finals last night? Is it true that Maria is 6'3"? Once she loosened up, she was darn impressive. Nice tennis dress, too. She makes 20 million/yr on endorsements. Deserves every penny.

Cranes and barges salvage boats in CT ripped from their moorings during last week's storm. (Thanks for photo, Chris)

My late great local Italian gunsmith, who died a couple of years ago, could machine a new part from a hunk of steel, or build a new walnut stock. He didn't just "fix" guns - he could build one from scratch.

Niccola was a grouch ("The customer is always wrong"), he always acted as if he were doing you a favor to do a job, and his English was imperfect for sure, but he became a pal to his customers, and to me. White-collar men have a natural respect for those who can DO REAL THINGS.

In time, it got so I would waste an hour of Saturday morning errand-time hanging out in his shop, watching him work, and talking nonsense. He probably wished I would just leave, but the work was very interesting. The very cool but primitive machine tools. The layers of oil and sanding on a fine Turkish Walnut stock.

Before he got sick, he told me that he had ads at the High School job bulletin board for years - "Learn Gunsmithing locally, as an apprentice. Expert gunsmiths earn up to 100+/hour".

He never received a single phone call - and this High School has white kids, hispanic kids, black kids, poor kids, rich kids, - the works. "College-bound"? Haha. Anyone can go to some college, but most of them are glorified high schools themselves, desperate for bill-paying warm bodies. Foolish kids, not to welcome such an offer. When Niccola died, all of his art and skill and wisdom and knowledge and irreverence died with him. "Another Purdy? Piece of homemade English sheet. I do what I can with thees, OK?, when I finds the time. You wait, maybe 6, 8 month, we feex. Pain in neck, kappisch? No want to work on, but we do."

Our schools, and maybe our dopey culture, make everyone feel like a loser if they don't push paper and stare at screens, in a cubicle. This is so wrong, and really so condescending and contemptuous, that it makes me sick.

Matthew Crawford of UVa makes a case for manual labor and the trades:

So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable.

Entirely agree. Whole thing here, Shopcraft as Soulcraft, in The New Atlantis

By coincidence, this week Betsy posted a piece on the same subject, in which CNN reports a resurgence in Vocational Education. It's about time that our kids, and we, remember to respect real honest skilled work. I have never seen a gunsmith who was laid off, or not in control of his destiny, or unhappy with his work.

Images: Top: Gunsmiths building Virginia rifles from scratch at Colonial Williamsburg.  Bottom: Carpentry crew of PBS' This Old House.

I doubt that even cat-lovers consider "pussification" to be a compliment.

Being "a man" isn't the same thing as being male. Manhood must be practiced and learned. Responsibility, courage, strength, honor, honesty, dignity, dependability, emotional restraint, physical competence, risk-taking, determination, independence, handling failures, self-discipline,  endurance, not complaining, pitching in, doing the hard thing, doing the right thing, sacrifice, the willingness to kill or die to protect things you treasure - none of these virtues is an automatic gift of the Y chromosome, even if the genetic foundation is there.

They are difficult skills to learn, and most guys have to learn them the hard way - through their failures and disappointments - even if they have good role models. They are at least as difficult to learn as it is to learn how to be a good mother, or how to be a good citizen. I do suspect that they are more difficult to master, but those skills, and others, are the foundations of male self-respect. Guys have to have a code to live by, and it isn't "their feelings." Animals can live by their "feelings." And it goes for women, too.

A "feminized" culture (I use quotes because it's the term people use, but I don't think that strong, pioneer-minded women need to be weak or childish at all) which values emotional gratification, and gratification in general, over sturdy, adult, and demanding virtues, is lame and decadent.  I do not even need to bring religion into the discussion to say that life is not about our gratification. That's for little kids, social workers, Californians, and many of our lost-in-the-wilderness European and Canadian cousins (who seem to still want Kings to take care of them while they lounge in cafes and complain about their "benefits," for which better men and women are paying ...but being taxed to death for your achievements doesn't exactly inspire effort and risk, or any other admirable qualities. It just inspires a pathetic, and profoundly un-American and infantile "gimme mine" attitude).

Who could imagine Atticus Finch protesting about his benefits? Or wanting to get paid for his aching back?

 Classical Values reminded us of an archival and classic Kim du Toit piece, "The Pussification of the Western Male."

We have become a nation of women.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. There was a time when men put their signatures to a document, knowing full well that this single act would result in their execution if captured, and in the forfeiture of their property to the State. Their wives and children would be turned out by the soldiers, and their farms and businesses most probably given to someone who didn’t sign the document.

There was a time when men went to their certain death, with expressions like “You all can go to hell. I’m going to Texas.” (Davy Crockett, to the House of Representatives, before going to the Alamo.)

There was a time when men went to war, sometimes against their own families, so that other men could be free. And there was a time when men went to war because we recognized evil when we saw it, and knew that it had to be stamped out.

There was even a time when a President of the United States threatened to punch a man in the face and kick him in the balls, because the man had the temerity to say bad things about the President’s daughter’s singing.

We’re not like that anymore.

Read it all, and enjoy it.

Preparing for crime, from Alphecca:

You're awakened in the night by the sound of someone breaking into your home. Do you know what you would do first, second, etc. Does your spouse know what to do? Your kids?

Well, in my opinion the first thing you do is to get a loud dog. Second, either wire your house for security, or at least just get some security company stickers for the doors and windows. Third, be armed, because anyone who gets by those needs shooting. It's a guy's job - or a gal's, in some cases - to protect your castle. Anyway, read the whole thing.