We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
... it is Europe’s very readiness to acknowledge its faults that prompts self-hatred, for societies that do not engage in such introspection do not lacerate themselves. Europe’s strength is thus its weakness. Although the continent has “more or less vanquished its monsters,” such as slavery, colonialism, and fascism, it chooses to dwell on the worst of its record. Thus his book’s title, The Tyranny of Guilt. The past, with its violence and aggression, is frozen in time, a burden Europeans expect never to throw off.
"After a century of épater le bourgeois, why on earth can’t le bourgeois épater l’artiste primitif? And why is the bourgeois and reactionary management of the Museum of Modern Art stifling the artistic creativity of its customers?"
Plus a reminder: in NYC, despite Nanny Bloomberg, you can still abuse tobacco like an Indian a Native American in the outdoor sections of restaurants and pubs.
I mumbled briefly about Positivism last week, alluding to its potential as a fuel for hubris. No philosophy is the "cause" of human evil and destructiveness, but Human Nature is. Pure rationalism (if there is any such thing) is a frightening way to run the world, or to run anything.
This weekend, in timely fashion, I stumbled on a review of Grayling's latest screed against irrationalism by the esteemable John Gray. One quote from the thoughtful review:
Reading Grayling, it is hard to resist the impression that he believes Western civilization would be much improved if it did not include the Judeo-Christian inheritance. Absurd as it is, there is nothing new in such a claim. It is one of the most venerable clichés of Enlightenment thinking, and Ideas that Matter is a compendium of such dated prejudices. When Grayling condemns religion on the grounds that “a theory that explains everything, and can be falsified by nothing, is empty,” he takes for granted that religions are primitive theories, now rendered obsolete by science.
Farm chores for my aging parents regularly pull me away from church, but this morning we trek down to NYC to meet the pup at Gascogne for a cheap brunch (I'll have the mussels - I always do when they are on a menu - and a healthy and organic Bloody Mary) before treating her to Paul Taylor ll's final day at the Joyce.
Mrs. BD is a big Taylor fan. Our blog pal Neoneo loves Taylor too. Despite being married to a dancer/choreographer for about 100 years, I remain a bit of a dance agnostic. I always did like Merce Cunningham, though, and Meredith Monk. Very quirky.
Follow-up:
It was a wonderful program from the Paul Taylor ll (the 80 year-old Taylor's 6-person touring company), but I would have been fine just seeing Esplanade. In fact, just one dance is really all my brain can process in one day. Powerful stuff, Esplanade. Substantial. Recklessly physical and driven by physical momentum, romance, and gravity and, as I sometimes say about some dances, a poem without words - or like a dream. Mrs. BD could discuss it endlessly; how his Graham background evolved and how ballet training is essential to modern dance, etc., but I lack the skill, the words, and the knowledge. The dance is in my head, though, along with the Bach.
Brunch was good, too. Free Bloody Marys. And it is always a treat to spend some time with the Bird Dog pupette Wall Streeter who returned to work after the performance. Those folks work on weekends, keeping the engines of capitalism humming so that people have money to support Paul Taylor.
I stumbled onto Myron Magnet's fine 2003 essay of the above title. Magnet says that good writing is about higher and deeper truths than "knowledge," "information," or "data" can provide, and I agree of course.
One quote:
What’s wanted is wisdom: the ability to see into the heart of things. This is the kind of knowledge that Plato describes so poetically in that most literary of all philosophical passages, the allegory of the cave: the knowledge that sees through the world of appearances to the Truth, of which the appearances are but an emanation—a knowledge that requires a lifetime of reason and study to attain but that comes finally in a flash of intuition, because the Truth is in us, in an inner nature we can glimpse by introspection and intuition, as well as in the world. And this is the knowledge—a knowledge, one might say, that resides in our souls as well as in our minds—that great literature embodies.
He includes a smack-down of the one-dimensional pomo critics, but that's far from his main point.
And since Magnet mentions Cosi Fan Tutte so often in his piece, here's the truly ridiculous and lovely Act 1 Finale, in which the cheating suitors fake committing suicide to re-engage their girlfriends:
Our Editor recently described himself, and Maggie's Farm, as "resolutely middlebrow." I cannot disagree, but with the caveat that we repeatedy take adventurous forays into the lowbrow.
As confirmation of the above. I have been thinking about Positivism lately and found myself needing to refer to Wiki for a refresher on the late Enlightenment thinker Auguste Comte, known as "The Pope of Positivism," and the inventor of Sociology.
Comte, interestingly and paradoxically, wanted to use a science of society in order to create a new religion for humanity. His grandiose dream lives on.
People smoking and drinking Scotch, and the bow-tied, white-jacketed bartender who knew everybody's choice. A cozy cheerful place on the 6:14 from Grand Central. A smoke-filled decompression chamber between work and home.
The famously alcohol-fueled and adultery-fueled bar car on the branch line from Stamford up to New Canaan and Ridgefield, CT used to have their own web site, but I can't find it now.
Photo below from the NYT photo essay. I never saw a bar car like that one, though. In my time, usually more packed with people (including chic gals and MILFs on their way home from shopping and hair-dos at Kenneth's) and so full of fragrant and wholesome tobacco smoke that you couldn't see from one end to the other.
I was there when Spock uttered his first iconic Live long and prosper.
We'd heard about some cool new space series coming up and eagerly tuned in for the first episode. It certainly did not disappoint. The show looks pretty corny now, but everything about it was state-of-the-art for 1966, from the concept to the design of the ship to the aliens.
And over the ensuing half century, while starlets and action heroes rose and fell, one of the true constants in the Hollywood universe was the logical mind of Spock. Whole continents could roil in upheaval, but Spock would know what to do.
He was an anchor. A hope. A symbol that one day mankind would cast aside its petty grievances and jealousies and grow up.
Yes, I was there when Spock uttered his first iconic Live long and prosper.
1. Watch that Speed Dating video 2. Don't get the wrong idea from the comments - Merc and I do not watch this show together - it just turns out we both watch it. Merc and I never watch TV together. 3. House's character is Sherlock Holmes (get it? House - Holmes). Holmes, you will recall, was an addict too, who did not tolerate fools gladly and who had his own sidekick, Dr. Watson (Dr. Wilson-Dr. Watson). 4. Hugh Laurie does a pretty good American accent, doesn't he? 5. There are plenty of Docs with brains and arrogant, prickly personalities like House (minus the addiction). Rarely in private practice, though. House's bedside manner, or lack thereof, would not work. He is not Dr. Marcus Welby.
Suddenly, flying 30,000 feet above the ground, a massive depressurization takes place and the airliner starts to break apart. It tumbles toward the ground, bucking and spinning, as the last seconds of your life turn into a living nightmare.
The only good news is, in the chaos around you, your mind would be so overwhelmed that you'd be in shellshock, with no time to contemplate what could have been, no time to regret what never will be, and no time to say goodbye to life, itself.
But, as ugly as that is, there is one scenario that might even be worse.
You're flying along at 30,000 feet when suddenly...
Click.
All four engines stop.
You don't like the depressurization scenario? Well, lucky you, you now have minutes upon minutes to contemplate what might have been, to regret what never will be, and plenty of time to say goodbye to life, itself, before you cartwheel into the sea and disintegrate.
Lucky you.
A few weekends ago I decided to wig out and watch every single 'airline disaster' show on YouTube. There were about twenty of them.
And, as terrifying as many of them were, there was one that stood out above the rest.
I asked Sipp what living in Maine was like. He did not reply to my email, but offers us a Maine Update, as of yesterday (with music, global warming snow, and deep-snark commentary about Life and Mozart).
I like the street. It's what I call "American." Hope my pal Sipp has a few fireplaces.
Down in more southern New England, I spent the weekend gardening while he spent hours producing that video, smoking Cuban ceegars and good Maine weed as the snowflakes fell, and sipping an ancient cognac by his cozy fireplace while the scent of osso bucco wafted from the kitchen where his sexy barefoot Goddess Mrs. Sipp was lovingly cookin' up a storm on the olde wood stove with nary a "Get off that damn computer and come help me, you lazy cyber-Yankee-would-be-Mozart-redneck."
It's on the Maggie's list of Best Maine Home-Made Videos of 2010.
A friend of Maggie's is interested in urbanism websites, and found a good one.
This fellow spent a few years driving through all of the neighborhoods of St. Louis with camera. Good for him. Some neighborhoods are as bad as Detroit: Built St. Louis.
In my view, government construction of endless highways destroyed the American city - and the railroads. Why? I never heard of a huge national pro-highway Movement. Unless it came from...Detroit.
Gourmet pizza nowadays often comes without tomatoes and with all sorts of other toppings, but it was the basic tomato-mozzarella mix that made pizza so popular, beginning in the 1950s, in the US. It was made for beer.
That basic format relied on the importation of the tomato - originally a yellow fruit, the "pomi d'oro," from Mexico to Europe in the 1500s. Cortez brought more than gold to Europe.
From its Greek origins to Chicago's Pizza Uno, the story of pizza is about immigration, entrepreneurialism, and invention. Now, "93 percent of Americans eat pizza at least once a month."
Modern pizza originated in Italy, although the style favored by Americans is more a friend than a relative of the traditional Neapolitan pie. Residents of Naples took the idea of using bread as a blank slate for relishes from the Greeks, whose bakers had been dressing their wares with oils, herbs, and cheese since the time of Plato. The Romans refined the recipe, developing a delicacy known as placenta, a sheet of fine flour topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves. Neapolitans earned the right to claim pizza as their own by inserting a tomato into the equation. Europeans had long shied away from the New World fruit, fearing it was plump with poison. But the intrepid citizens of Naples discovered the tomato was not only harmless but delicious, particularly when paired with pizza.
Cheese, the crowning ingredient, was not added until 1889, when the Royal Palace commissioned the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three contenders he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pie swathed in the colors of the Italian flag: red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella).
Read the whole American Pie at Am. Heritage. 1960s image of Miss Rheingold (a bigger deal in NY than Miss America) from the article. Extra-dry Rheingold Beer - the beer of New York baseball, brewed on the east side of Manhattan until the 1970s.
It's something new and different this year: a trip down the Danube. Vienna, Ravensberg, Linz, etc. with the entire Bird Dog family crew and my excellent and adventurous in-laws.
Linzer torte. Sacher torte.
I have always been amazed by how the crazy Norsemen (Roger de Hauteville's gang of Normans) circled around the Med, into the Black Sea and way up the Danube. Where else did Barbarossa get his red beard? I think they just liked getting away from their families and being on boats.
A patient recently told me that she had been invited to join a neighborhood wife-swapping club about six months after she and her husband moved into a middle-class Boston suburb. The invitation came quietly, at a lady's coffee.
She replied that she was flattered, but thought it probably wasn't a good idea for her marriage. In fact, it made her so uncomfortable that she decided to move away.
I thought it sounded quite retro, 1970s, like Ice Storm. Key Parties and all that. I had not been aware that these things were still happening. I restrained myself from asking her whether the neighborhood husbands were hot, and from asking whether it might better be described as husband-swapping.
A re-postfrom June, 2008. Was it that long ago? Seems like yesterday...It was a fine trip.
We took a day, last week, to hop the train over to Lake Como (and to stop by the Como Duomo), and took the fast ferry up to Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo - and then across the lake to Bellagio to see the equally renowned gardens of Villa Melzi.
The 17th-18th century Villa Carlotta and its gardens were a traditional and necessary stop on the "Grand Tour" of "the Continent." We anglophiles like to follow in those old paths.
It is impossible to capture on camera the feel of such vast and varied gardens, which are, in effect, both botanical gardens with worldwide collections of plants, and ornamental gardens designed to impress as much as to delight - some formal Italian and some English-style.
For example, these gardens have bamboo groves, Sequoia groves, acre-sized plantings of azalea, palm collections, collections of cacti, citrus arbors, etc. Even a turtle pool with happy and smiling American southern Red-eared Sliders and Cooters.
This photo is the entrance:
More of my mediocre photos on continuation page below -
Video of Market St., San Francisco, 4 days before the quake. The camera is mounted on the front of a streetcar. I cannot embed it...but maybe Dr. Merc, our Embedder In Chief, can figger out how to.
The population of SF was 400,000. Some traffic, eh? No lights, no crosswalks, no rules. Everybody dodging cars, horses, and streetcars. Total chaos, and wonderful. I love the two guys running to jump-start the car in front of the streetcar.
Also, dig the serene dude on horseback weaving through the people and the traffic. Reminded me of the absurd end of the already-insane Blazing Saddles.
“I’m tired of hearing about the Holocaust.”Be close enough to most people for them to be honest, even Jews, and you’ll often hear that said. What they most usually mean is they are tired of hearing hypocrisy.
Sunday is Holocaust Day, Yom Ha-Shoah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe, sadly commemorated in many nations so we don’t forget.The actual full title is Yom Ha-Shoah Ve-Hagevurah, Day of Remembering the Catastrophe and the Heroism.
Yes, there was heroism.Among the parents and strangers who kept spirits alive ‘til death. Among the relative handfuls who risked all to shelter or aid escape. Among those who escaped to fight.Among those who tried to alert the Allies and get their help, failing but persevering.
Apart from blenders, toaster ovens and computers, another realm the microchip has improved immensely are the new state-of-the-art metal detectors.
Metal detectors have been around for a long time, about seventy years or so, but until relatively recently they've been severely limited as to the type of ground they could penetrate. All of the iron in the ground in California, Nevada and Colorado has been like a solid wall to metal detectors, until now. This new wave of metal detectors can now penetrate these ferrous-rich areas, and great discoveries await those who try.
The technology has also enabled metal detectors to work correctly in salt water. The old style worked somewhat, but not nearly as well as the new ones do.
Below the fold, I'll list out some popular ways in which this new metal detector technology can be used for fun and profit. You don't have to buy the fanciest one on the shelf, but you'll certainly get more options, the more you pay. A more-expensive model can not only tell how deep a coin is buried, but even what type of coin it is. It can also tell basic metal types, such as "iron", "silver", "gold", and can even isolate and identify pull-top tabs, the all-time bane of the treasure hunter. So, a few extra dollars spent now could save you endless hours later in the field.
I guess that even I, who does tend to be a skeptic about everything, have been a bit influenced by the RC-hating MSM, because I have to admit that this somewhat surprises me.
My Mom recently mailed me a stack of letters, postcards, etc that my Grandpa had mailed to his kid sister from a June-August 1940 trip he had taken his two kids on - my Mom and my late uncle. (My Grandpa's lovely wife died after giving birth to my Mom, and he never remarried. Not sure he ever got over that loss.) A single parent.
He wrote about three letters or postcards per week to his dear Sis in Bridgeport, CT. It's a delight to read these travelogues. Seems like the fellow (who was a good pal to me when I was young), a great yachtsman (also a fine horseman, polo player, and shooter), spent much of his time on the bridge with the officers during the cruise part of their trip. He reported all the warships he admired en route - Sis' husband was a naval officer in the Pacific at the time. Probably spent the rest of the time in the bar playing poker, which he reported was pleasantly air-conditioned.
He also reported that my Mom, as usual, won the shipboard trap shooting contests (she has always been good with a horse and a shotgun, but now all she does is tennis and gardening). At the time, my Mom was in high school on the riding team and my Uncle at Dartmouth on the drinking team.
Their cruise took them from NYC to San Francisco via Baltimore, Havana, Cristobal, Balboa, Acapulco, Los Angeles on the Panama Pacific Line'sCity of San Francisco. From his letters, they also stopped in Colon and Panama City.
As I do, my Grandpa loved the shipboard life, especially the coasting up from Panama to California. Then they spent a few days at the Hotel Empire in SF, then variously trained and drove to the Yosemite Lodge, the Grand Canyon, spent a couple of weeks at the still-wonderful old Eaton's Ranch in WY, thence to the New Lawrence Hotel in Chicago and then train back to NYC.
Nice summer trip.
Christmas, mid-1950s, in Grandpa's parlor I think. My cuz added some color to the B&W. My Grandpa with pipe in hand on left next to Sis, and other relatives:
A bit more about this one of my two fine Grandpas on continuation page below. One day soon, we will do a post inviting readers' Grandpa reminiscences. Not today.
A friend of mine was recently pulled over for speeding. The constable, ambling over to his driver's side window asked "Are you carrying, Mr. Smith?"
"No, sir. I am not carrying today. But why do you ask?"
"I ran your plates. Have a good day, sir, and watch your speed."
The cops around here know that if you have a carry permit, it means you've been well-vetted by the local PD, the State Troopers, the FBI, and who knows who else - and that you have been found to be a solid citizen.
Found these at the Bass Pro Shop in Nashville a couple of years ago. In my case, their message happens to be true. Yes, there are still some Farmalls in New England, and my Grandpa's is still running fine even though he stopped running long ago.
The ones with the close-together front tires creep me out on Massachusetts hills, though. I prefer a "wide stance" on the hills.
Several years ago, Rockwell International decided to get into the heavy duty transmission business. They were getting ready to tape a first introduction video, so, as a warm up and sound-check, the professional narrator began ad-libbing what has become a legend within the trucking industry. This man should have won an Emmy for his stellar performance. Now remember this is strictly off the cuff, nothing is written down.
Talk about a Gift of Gab.
President Obama and the Democrats in Congress should have hired him to explain their version of health care reform to the American people.
A powerful report from Heather MacDonald: Chicago’s Real Crime Story - Why decades of community organizing haven’t stemmed the city’s youth violence.
I cannot pick out one juicy quote because the whole sad thing is of a piece: moral, family, and cultural breakdown since the 1960s. These kids are growing up in something between anarchy and Lord of the Flies.
I posted this early Sunday morning:
Here.
I asked Sipp what living in Maine was like. He did not reply to my email, but offers us a 
Gourmet pizza nowadays often comes without tomatoes and with all sorts of other toppings, but it was the basic tomato-mozzarella mix that made pizza so popular, beginning in the 1950s, in the US. It was made for beer.
Apart from blenders, toaster ovens and computers, another realm the microchip has improved immensely are the new state-of-the-art metal detectors.
My Mom recently mailed me a stack of letters, postcards, etc that my Grandpa had mailed to his kid sister from a June-August 1940 trip he had taken his two kids on - my Mom and my late uncle. (My Grandpa's lovely wife died after giving birth to my Mom, and he never remarried. Not sure he ever got over that loss.) A single parent.
A friend of mine was recently pulled over for speeding. The constable, ambling over to his driver's side window asked "Are you carrying, Mr. Smith?"
