Maggie's Farm

A re-post from 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 -

Founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service. It's her birthday.

She said she didn't do it because she was moved by suffering, but because she liked the work.

I prefer people who do fine things because they want to, not because of pious self-congratulatory virtue or grandiose notions of changing the world.

Alas, the man's name does a disservice to the brilliant Florentine Renaissance political scientist and student of human nature that he was.

However, I did not know that he wrote comedy on the side. Another Renaissance Man, as it were.

I like his face: shrewd and discerning, but ready to laugh.

"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than the other elements within society.”

- Niccolo Machiavelli

I tend to think we still live in a Greco-Roman civilization. This from George Mason Prof Steven Davies:

It's an 11,500 year-old temple in southeastern Turkey. h/t to a good piece at Protein.

Few of our readers recall tunneling to the barn during the big New England nor'easter blizzard of March 11, 1888.

Here's the weather story of that snowstorm (which tragically omits the role of AGW - we should never let an ancient weather crisis go to waste).

Some photos:

Longacre Square, NYC (Now Times Square):

Somewhere in Manhattan:

Somewhere in Brooklyn:

Main St., Stamford, CT, from this Stamford history site with more photos:

Train tracks in Norwalk, CT:

William Tyndale was the Oxford-educated polyglot theologian and reformer who produced the first printed Bible in English.

His translation was from Erasmus' Greek-Latin Bible, the same one which Luther used to translate his German Bible. Tyndale's Bible was banned in Britain: you can't trust the rabble to read it themselves. He famously said that he wanted a Bible that "every plowman" could read the Scripture for himself. 

Tyndale was executed by Henry Vlll for his efforts. It is believed that Thomas More was pushing for the execution.

It is thought that up to 80% of the King James Bible - the most printed book in the world - is Tyndale's product. For hundreds of years after the first printings, Protestants avoided the Anglican King James Bible, preferring the Geneva Bible (which is very similar). The Pilgrims used the Geneva Bible and, no, Anglicans are not historically Protestants and neither are their American Episcopalian brethren.

Excellent summary of the history of the Bible in English here.

You probably already knew that the so-called Sphinx had been deeply eroded by rain from when the Sahara was wet, that the Sphinx has been buried under sand through most of its lifetime, and that the face is likely not the original. What I did not know is that the body of the sculpture was not constructed, but rather carved out of a single piece of limestone in the middle of a quarry.

Good update at Smithsonian.

As Mrs. BD quips, "Lorenzo was sort of a Renaissance Man, wasn't he?" Lorenzo took an active role in designing the Villa Medici in Poggio a Caiano, 12 miles north of Florence, in 1485.

The design of this rural Medici farming villa, which so much impressed and influenced Palladio, was revolutionary in several ways, not the least of which were its orientation outwards rather than towards an inner courtyard and its lack of defensive fortifications. (Lorenzo was famously casual about security.)

I do not know how many of Lorenzo di Medici's country villas are extant, but he helped design a few of them, one of which was an architectural inspiration for Palladio.

This one, sitting on the hills overlooking Florence, was built by Cosimo for his second grandson Giovanni, and came into Lorenzo's hands after his brother was assassinated by a cabal which included the Pope. It became one of Lorenzo's favorite hangouts with his philosopher, artist, and poet pals (and girlfriends).

(By the way, we recommend staying in Fiesole when visiting Florence, and it's just a 15-minute bus ride down the hill. November and May are good months.)

In the (now, sadly, defunct) New York Sun:

Given the nearly total absence of fanfare, you could be excused for not knowing that this was the quincentenary of Andrea Palladio's birth. Generally it is a kind of condescension to treat the great cultural figures of the past as though, in some sense, they were, or needed to be, our contemporaries. And yet a respectable case could be made that, of all the architects who lived before the 20th century, few were as influential as Palladio (1508-80) or came closer, in the arc of their reputation, to being what we would now call a "starchitect."

Read the whole thing.

Here's Wiki on Palladio. Below is a photo of Villa Capra, aka Villa Rotunda, in Vicenza.

It's not what you think it is.

We have it pretty good these days. From Gene Expression:

Geneticists have long known that the ancestors of modern humans numbered as few as 10,000 at some time in the last 100,000 years. The critically low number suggested that some catastrophe, like disease or climate change induced by a volcano, had brought humans close to the brink of extinction.

If the new estimate is correct, however, human population size has been small and fairly constant throughout most of the last million years, ruling out the need to look for a catastrophe.

Assuming an average census size on the order of 50,000, it seems as if our species stumbled onto a rather "risky" strategy of avoiding extinction. From what I recall conservation biologists start to worry about random stochastic events (e.g., a virulent disease) driving a species to extinction once its census size reaches 1,000. I suppose the fact that we were spread out over multiple continents would have mitigated the risk, but still.... It also brings me back to my post from yesterday, it seems that for most of human history we are a miserable species on the margins of extinction. For the past 10,000 years we were a miserable species. And now a substantial proportion of us are no long miserable (it seems life is actually much improved from pre-modern Malthusianism outside of Africa and South Asia). If only Leibniz could have seen it!

Part of an extraordinary long quote from A Woman in Berlin in a piece at Never Yet Melted:

...I long ago lost my childhood piety, so that God and the Beyond have become mere symbols and abstractions. Should I believe in progress? Yes, to biggger and better bombs. The happiness of the greater number? Yes, for Petka and his ilk. An idyll in a quiet corner? Sure, for people who comb the fringes of their rugs. Possessions, contentment?

I have to keep from laughing, homeless urban nomad that I am. Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again I would always be anxious, could never find true refuge, would never again dare hope for permanence.

Perhaps art, toiling away in the service of form? Yes, for those who have the calling, but I don’t. I’m just an ordinary laborer, I have to be satisfied with that. All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. What’s left is just to wait for the end. Still the dark and amazing adventure of life is beckoning. I’ll stick around, out of curiosity and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my healthy limbs.

Magnifico: The Brilliant Life and Violent Times of Lorenzo de' Medici by Miles Unger.

What are y'all reading?

Jacob Burkhardt did. First Principles.

To set the record straight, a brief photo history of Israel.

Related, Michelle on The myth of the poor, oppressed jihadist

Two approaches to transitioning economies, by Gregory and Zhou at Hoover's Policy Review

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America, by Russell Shorto (2005).

A wonderful story. The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, owned and run by the Dutch West India Company, was a quickly growing and boisterous commercial settlement of over 200 when the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. When the Dutch sent a friendly delegation up to Plymouth in 1624 or so with goodies and gifts of sugar, William Bradford sent a letter back with the delegation saying that he was sorry that he had nothing desirable to offer to return the favor.

On quote from the book re the Wickquasgeck Trail:

Broadway does not follow the precise course of the Indian trail, as some histories would have it. To follow the Wickquasgeck Trail today, one would take Broadway north from the Customs House, jog eastward along Park Row, then following the Bowery to 23rd St. From there, the trail snaked up the east side of the island. It crossed westward through the top of Central Park; the paths of Broadway and the Wickquasgeck Trail converge again at the top of the island. The trail continued into the Bronx: Route 9 follows it northward.

The Customs House was the site of the original Dutch fort to protect them from the Indians. The Lenape Indians turned out to be friendly to the Dutch (believing them to be potential allies against other tribes), so the fort was never well-maintained. Hence the Brits had no problem taking the town in 1664.

Today the Customs House is the home of the Museum of the American Indian. Worth a visit.

Related, years ago I read Beverly Swerling's City of Dreams: A Novel of Nieuw Amsterdam and Early Manhattan, which does a great job evoking the times - and the medical care of the times. Many would argue, I think, that NYC remains more of a Dutch heritage city than an English one.

Image: New Amsterdam, c. 1660