Maggie's Farm

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.

Do we love hydrangeas at Maggies Farm? Yes, we do. And the mini- version of Snow Queen, Wayside's patented Pee Wee, is the best darn plant. Even the leaves are good lookin'.

James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense made plenty of sense to me: the notion that moral considerations are hard-wired parts of human nature. Harvard's Marc Hauser is working on the inborn "moral grammar," and he is interviewed here, in Am. Scientist. He even gets into the animal precursors of moral behavior:

In many ways, our understanding of animals is not even ripe for the picking, because almost all of the work that is relevant to morality entails studies of what animals do as opposed to how they judge what others do. Thus, we have beautiful accounts of how animals behave during cooperation and competition, including observations of how individuals respond to personal transgression, such as taking food in the presence of a more dominant animal. But what is missing are observations and experiments that systematically address what counts as a transgression or expectation for helping or harming, when the observer is not directly involved. In the same way that we can judge an act as gratuitously violent even when it doesn't concern us directly, we want to understand how animals perceive violations of social norms, including what they expect and what they consider anomalous.

Delacroix's (1798-1863)Diary and Letters are excerpted at Roger Sandall. Learned about his work in art history about 90 years ago, but knew nothing about the man himself. What a tender, strong, determined, and honest fellow.

On life:

Think of the blessings that await you, not of the emptiness that drives you to seek constant distraction. Think of having peace of mind and a reliable memory, of the self-control that a well-ordered life will bring, think of health not undermined by endless concessions to the passing excesses that other people's society entails, think of uninterrupted work, and plenty of it. Nothing is better than having some task to perform each day.

On painting:

The enemy of all painting is grey. To speak truly, there are neither lights nor shades. There is a color mass for each object, reflected differently on all sides. I discovered one day that linen has green reflections and violet shadows. I notice that it is the same with the sea: I expect this law applies to everything. The special charm of watercolor, beside which any painting in oil always appears rusty and yellowed, is due to the inherent transparency of the paper.

On l'amour:

To the studio at nine o'clock. Laure came. We continued with the portrait. It's an extraordinary thing, but although I wanted to make love to her all the time she was posing, as soon as she began to leave rather hurriedly as a matter of fact I did not feel like it at all; I suppose I needed time to collect myself.

I need a mistress to keep my flesh in subjection. I'm terribly worried about it, and struggle with my better self when I'm in the studio. Sometimes I long for any woman to come along. God grant that Laure comes tomorrow! Saw Cogniet, and the picture by Gricault, also the Constables. It was too much for one day. Came home about five o'clock. Spent two hours in the studio. Great want of sex. I am utterly abandoned.

Read the selection here, with some comments. You will like him better afterwards.

Re-posted from August, 2005

"Redskins": One Indian's View

In a piece by Tucker at Town Hall: "The federal Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has already ruled that the word Redskins is racially derogatory and offensive." My reaction to such nonsense:

I am Iroquois, by partial but adequate blood. You can see it in my face if you look carefully, but it mainly comes through in my eyes - I can see stuff outdoors that the Paleface cannot. Baby snakes and quiet birds and a rustling leaf and a turtle just thinking and a canvasback hidden in a snowstorm and a red-tail in a cloud. I love the name Redskins. Or Chiefs, or Indians, or anything that reminds us of our ancestry here in the New World.  I do not know why almost any reference to Indians is racist. And I hate the undignified racial and ethnic whining and victim talk from Indians or from anyone else. Everyone should be thanking their God or gods that they are in America. And every human should grant themselves the dignity to not be a complainer. It is childish and reflects poorly on the complainer.

In fact, I don't even mind "filthy savage," which Mrs. Bird Dog has been known to endearingly (?) label me after an unbathed and unshaven weekend clearing brush and drinking Ballantine Ale and covered with sweat and bloody scratches from prickers and branches. It's sort of a badge of pride - our Indian ancestors were not exactly emerged from the Stone Age and we did not bathe and did not change our clothes, and probably smelled terrible, and, compared to Samuel Pepys, we were savages for sure. We were happy to burn people, cut off their genitals and eat them, scalp them, and torture them, and we were always fighting with our neighboring tribes for fun, for glory, for land, or for no reason at all. Our people looked red because of the red-tinted bear fat we anointed ourselves with in the winter to keep warm. We didn't have central heating, or down parkas. Stone Age, although there was a culture worthy of anthropological study, if pre-literate barbarian culture is your bag. So I say quit it with the hyper-sensitive PC BS in our name - I would prefer that the Indian past be remembered rather than erased, stone axes and all.

So Hello Atlanta, Hello Dartmouth - quit erasing us - we were tough deer-hunting, enemy-slaying, stoic, happy-to-die and short-lived braves, and hard-working squash and corn-planting and oyster-picking squaws. Our old ones crawled off into the woods to die when they felt they couldn't keep up. We had a concept of dignity. We learned to handle pain and a difficult life was what we expected. In the Northeast, our greatest discoveries were maple syrup, corn, squash, and tobacco. Good things. We got here first. Probably by mistake, while chasing a herd of Musk Ox across the Bering land bridge and getting lost in a snowstorm, and losing our GPS in the snow, so we deserve no credit for adventurous exploration.

So call us whatever you want, (I prefer being called "Chief") but just don't forget us. We are part of the American heritage, but we were on the wrong side of history. It happens, and we died, mostly from new diseases like colds and flu introduced by the earliest fishermen and explorers long before the Pilgrims, but alcohol didn't do us much good either: Indian Brave like firewater too much. Not your fault, white man - you had your own problems and your own views, and we had no idea what was happening, and in a sense, we are lucky that you English saw us as even human, with souls, thanks to your Christian educations. True Indian braves, like cowboys, never complain.

(Photo: An Ogalala Chief, 1907)

Re-posted from August, 2005

I will not defy the copyright to post the New Yorker cartoon in which a scholarly, bored-looking gent in his armchair tosses his half-read book over his shoulder, with the caption "The man who knew enough."

The immediate issue is whether you know enough about cement and concrete. Here are some facts, with some links to read more.

Cement is the glue of concrete, which is a sort of man-made sedimentary rock. When an "aggregate" or "filler" such as sand, gravel, etc is added to cement, plus water, it's called concrete, or mortar when the aggregate is fine sand.

Cement is produced by heating - burning - limestone and clay. The addition of  a little gypsum at the end makes "Portland Cement," which is what all cement is nowadays. The trace of gypsum slows the curing, so it can be worked with more easily.

Water is a critical ingredient of the final product, not just to make a usable mix, but as an actual ingredient of the chemistry of solid concrete, which is a (non-organic) hydrate. Thus, during curing, concrete likes some splashes of water from hose or rain to gain maximum durability. (Thus cement doesn't "dry", it "cures".)

Concrete takes 28 days to mostly cure, but it continues to slowly cure for months thereafter by integrating water molecules into its structure.

Various versions of cement were around long before the Romans, but they were masters of its use, producing theirs with lime and burnt brick or ash. When they wanted to make light-weight structures, as for the roof of the Pantheon, they put empty clay jars amongst the concrete. They didn't think of reinforced concrete.

The art of cement production was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire, and its use only resumed in Europe in the mid-18th C. Reinforced concrete was patented in 1849 by a French gardener who used wire mesh around which to build concrete flowerpots.

A brief history here. Story of Roman concrete here. The chemistry of cement here. Photo of new partially-completed front path leading to a local wigwam, demonstrating a nice foundation of reinforced gravel concrete, with the stones being mortared on top.

A prince decides that he is ready to get married. Determined to marry a very smart woman, he sends his pages to scour the kingdom to bring him the three smartest candidates they can find.

When the three are bought to him, the prince puts them to a test. Either a white hat, or a red hat, is placed on each of the ladies - but they cannot see what color their own hat is.

The winner is the first to name the color of their hat. They are given one more piece of information: the prince says: "Everyone who sees one or more red hats, raise your hand." All three raise their hands.

After two hours of deep pondering, one lady finally raises her hand with the correct answer.

What was her answer?

Answer tomorrow. This one is not as tricky as the one last week, but it does take a little bit of thought. The Dylanologist got it in three minutes. When you get it, please do not post the answer on Comments.

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