Wednesday, May 26. 2010
 I am not a big fan of pasta dishes anymore (used to be, but have pretty much tired of them - especially with red sauce). Still, a favorite snack for me is pasta with garlic and oil - Pasta Aglio et Olio. Simplest thing in the world.
Tips: For this or any other spaghetti recipe, use thin spaghetti - never the full size. For this recipe, the amount of chopped garlic you use, and the extent to which you brown the garlic, is to your taste. I like tons of garlic and I like it brown. I do it with coarsely chopped Italian parsley, and plenty of it. Plenty of fresh ground pepper too. Lastly, make spaghetti the Italian way, by throwing the spaghetti into the hot saucepan and tossing with the sauce. That's the right way to coat the noodles and heat up the pasta at the same time.
A pal told me at a guys' night out barbecue dinner last night that his favorite pasta is Pasta alla Norma, the hamburger of Sicily. I've never had it.
Tuesday, May 25. 2010
A view of the farm this weekend -
Had too much work to do to spend much time birding this weekend, but I tend to have outdoor situational awareness:
Yellow Warbler, Yellow Throat Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Blue-grey Gnatcatcher, Mallard, Wood Duck, Canada Goose, GB Heron, B Oriole, Turkey Vulture, Wild Turkey, Wood Duck, Red-Tailed Hawk, RT Hummingbird, Blue Jay, Chickadee, Mourning Dove, Catbird, Cedar Waxwing, Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, Tree Swallow, Barn Swallow, Bluebird, Robin, Kingbird, Phoebe, Wood Pewee, Wood Thrush, Veery, Hermit Thrush, Song Sparrow, Ovenbird, Crow, Raven, Downy WP, Brown Thrasher, Pileated Woodpecker, House Finch, House Wren, RE Vireo, Black and White Warbler, and numerous unidentified warblers.
Did not see any Meadowlark, Killdeer, or Bobolink. Probably passed through already, but I wish they would make summer homes here. I do not know why they don't.
 AVI reflects on Me 'n Limbaugh.
My only meaningful disagreement might be that I do not see Rush's bragging as genuine, but as radio shtick. Nobody who says "I speak with half my brain tied behind my back, just to keep it fair" is a serious braggart.
I think what drives Lefties nuts about Rush (besides his opinions) are his cheerfulness, infectious optimism, fair-handedness and kindness with callers, and his regular-American (as opposed to elite American) points of view.
The lack of angst and anger is simply not fashionable and is, indeed, repugnant to the elite Liberal mind.
Monday, May 24. 2010
Till Bruckner worked for NGOs in Georgia and Afghanistan before managing Transparency International's Georgia’s aid monitoring programme in 2008-2009. He writes in Aid Watch: Just Asking That Aid Benefit The Poor about Secret NGO Budgets.
Are you ashamed of your organization’s budgets? Do you think your supporters would be shocked if they could see exactly how you are spending their money? Do you feel the need to keep your finances hidden from your local partners and clients? If you answered all three questions with “yes,” you might be working for an international NGO.
Bruckner also writes at NGO Watch, "How Corrupt Is The World Food Program?"
Private donors in wealthy countries simply lack the information needed to hold aid and development NGOs to account for how their donations are used thousands of miles away. The only information available is that which is voluntarily provided by the NGOs, which are extremely reluctant to open their operations to scrutiny....
Institutional donors like USAID usually do have a presence on the ground in developing countries, but they rarely directly monitor NGO activities in the field. Instead, they usually, though not always, rely on information provided by their grantees. Interviews with dozens of donor and NGO representatives in Georgia, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan suggest that neither NGOs nor donor country offices have an incentive to document instances in which aid money is stolen, wasted, or unwisely spent. Projects are almost invariably portrayed as successful, irrespective of realities on the ground....
Aid organizations have responded to concerns about their lack of accountability through a variety of initiatives and mechanisms intended to create transparency within the aid community. Senior staff members at NGOs’ global headquarters readily sign up to noble-sounding initiatives and commit their organizations to meeting certain standards. But these measures lack teeth and often require organizations to act as a whistleblower against a partner agency. As a result, they are almost universally ignored in practice.
A respondent to Bruckner's top piece says he's afraid to alarm the natives:
Although open accounting can seem like a good practice, it is very tricky in poor countries. I have been running international projects for twenty years. The rent on my house is higher than the salary of many of my staff. My salary is nearly triple the highest local salary. Additionally, my top staff is paid well–many times more than what our beneficiaries receive. I think that telling our beneficiaries how much we earn would reinforce the gap between them and us. It would also complicate relations with our government partners (who earn less). I am always happy to share general information about costs (our program in the Haitian-Dominican borderlands is around $650,000/year), but see little upside to sharing details.
I bet he votes Democrat.
Today is the birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, ranked as one of the technological wonders of the world for its great span and innovative construction methods. Next to the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge was iconic of the United States’ reach for freedom and for advancement.
Gabriel Cohen tells the history of the con game named after the bridge.
Since the bridge was completed in 1883, the idea of illegally selling it has become the ultimate example of the power of persuasion. A good salesman could sell it, a great swindler would sell it, and the perfect sucker would fall for the scam.
Today’s political con artists don’t have a bridge to stand on. They peddle the illusion that spending money one doesn’t have is the path to freedom and advancement instead of to digging holes in the water that will drown us and our children in debts that will enslave and regress us to the control of those who direct our labor and choices to feed their power.
Sunday, May 23. 2010
Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, author of Jews and Power, argues that the defensive self-blame and even self-abasement that Jews adopted in the millennia since the fall of the Temple is counterproductive to survival.
This argument is at the heart of today’s critiques of Obama’s feckless and failing foreign policy.
On May 20, Wisse addressed the thirteen Jewish cadets graduating West Point.the Naval Academy. The Weekly Standard has the text.
Wisse uses the humor about schlemiels to make her point. There are many definitions of the Yiddish term, mostly varying in emphasis, but basically a schlemiel is naïve, gullible, even a simpleton.
Wisse starts with some Old World jokes about schlemiels in combat who don’t recognize they are in a mortal situation. Then Wisse comments:
Hilarious in Yiddish, this joke hardly works in English, which has trouble imagining someone so unworldly that he cannot grasp that a man may be shot just for stepping on the wrong side of a border. The joke may likewise fall flat because we now know what happened to the people who created those jokes. They were slaughtered in the millions. What we call the Holocaust targeted precisely the population that created schlemiel comedy. We learned from that episode that sweetness was no laughing matter and that joking—which momentarily releases tension—offered no defense against real belligerents. The schlemiel who initially made us laugh also taught us to raise our guard.When I wrote about the schlemiel in the 1960s, I had in mind the culture of Jews, but nowadays, we Americans similarly confront enemies who intend to destroy our way of life. Like the Jews of Europe, we are tempted to ignore them. We enjoy getting along with the rest of the world. We have no passion for war, favoring peace and prosperity. Like the schlemiel, some among us think that warfare is a ridiculous pursuit….
A schlemiel doesn’t know how to find the notch in a saw. Sound like Obama? Oy vey!
But, it's even worse than that among many leading Jews, as Jennifer Rubin points out about the Rabbis selected as safe for Obama to meet with:
This is what passes for “leadership” in American Jewry. A kabuki dance is orchestrated by an Obama fan to gather other Obama fans to air the mildest criticism and to avoid challenging the factual representations of an administration that is the most hostile to the Jewish state in history. As one Israeli hand who definitely isn’t going to be invited to any meetings with this president put it: “They may be fine rabbis, but they are out of their league here.” And by not directly and strongly taking on the president, they are, in fact, enabling the president’s anti-Israel stance. It is, come to think of it, more than an embarrassment; it is an egregious misuse of their status and it is every bit as dangerous as the quietude of American Jews in the 1930s.
Same goes for the Americans of the 1930s.
Saturday, May 22. 2010
The New York Times report on President Obama’s speech today to West Point’s graduating class is headlined “President Lays Out Security Strategy Based in Diplomacy.”
That “security strategy based in diplomacy” is actually based in both self-delusion and believing that other nations and foes can be similarly deluded.
“Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system,” the president told graduating cadets. “But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation. We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice, so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don’t.”
Mr. Obama said the United States “will be steadfast in strengthening those old alliances that have served us so well” while also trying to “build new partnerships and shape stronger international standards and institutions.” He added: “This engagement is not an end in itself. The international order we seek is one that can resolve the challenges of our times.”
On the other hand of reality, as Belmont Club’s Richard Fernandez sums up the dysfunctional Obama foreign policy, that no one abroad wants much part of:
It’s easy to believe the dysfunction is real. Faced by the linked yet separate crises in the Middle East and in Northeast Asia the Obama administration is acting like it was shot through the central nervous system, acting in uncoordinated jerks. The alliances with Korea and Japan and the special relationships with Israel and Britain lie almost forgotten like neglected toys on the floor of a spoiled child distracted by his latest bauble. Gone are the heady prospects of Grand Bargains with the Muslim world kicked off by dramatic speeches in Cairo. Gone is the idea of a swift drawdown from Iraq; or of a comprehensive solution in the Middle East. Gone is the promise of catching Osama Bin Laden. Gone is the notion that Europe, which once hated America because of George Bush, would turn like a blossoming rose to Obama. In their place are half-finished begun threads without closure: a growing Hezbollah menace in Lebanon; a defiant Iran; a belligerent North Korea; a buffoonish but menacing Chavez; a drug war on the southern border; an Eastern Europe with the shadow of the Russian bear growing ever longer across it.
Good luck, West Pointers.
Friday, May 21. 2010
Stift Melk, along the edge of the Danube, is one of the world's most famous abbeys. Founded in 1069, it remains a Benedictine center. The current early 1700 baroque buildings do not charm me, but it's an impressive structure - and it's on my August trip.
 Something valuable for your garden: a dwarf Buddleia called "Blue Chip." This new Buddleia (Butterfly Bush) is only 2' high, max, and thus can function like a perennial flower in a border while drawing butterflies from miles around. Plus they claim it blooms all summer, unlike my full-sized Buddleias. I have a spot for a few of these guys.
Wayside is the only place I know that has them. Loony Greenies should avoid them: they are genetically-engineered. Like Labrador Retrievers, corn on the cob - and cotton.
Hummingbirds like them too.
Wednesday, May 19. 2010
My good friend, Captain Wayne Beardsley, with a 35 pound Mahi Mahi caught 50 miles West of Puerto Rico off the stern of his 49’ Grand Banks Classic “Long Legged Lady.” He caught it using a classic form artificial squid streamer on a Ugly Stick 8’ fly rod and Van Staal C-Vex reel with weight forward #8 line tipped with 20 lb fluorocarbon leader.
The Mahi Mahi, also known as Dolphin or Dolphinfish, is one of the prized sport fish which also happens to be an excellent fish for dinner. Commonly found in temperate, tropical and sub-tropical waters, mahi are voracious eaters and will swallow almost anything from crustaceans to larger bait fish. Fishing for mahi is somewhat rare up here in New England, but in late summer when the waters are warmer and/or the Gulf Stream wanders in closer to the coast, mahi can be hiding and/or hanging around weedlines, floating objects like trees, loose buoys and/or anchored navigation buoys.
Down south, looking for bird activity around floating structure will usually indicate the presence of mahi – in open ocean, you can bet on it. In shore, it will be hit or miss – watch water temps for warmer than normal levels and inspect the floating structure for weeds and incrustation.
Rigging for Mahi on either spinning gear or fly is fairly straight forward. 7/8’ Medium to Medium Heavy rods with quick (fast) taper, sufficiently heavy large capacity reels like the Penn 460 large spool series or the above mentioned Van Staal and 30/50 lb mono with fluorocarbon leaders for spin and #8/9 forward weight fly line will survive a good fight. Bait throwers will do well with large spinner baits and fly throwers will always find that Clouser imitations, white or fluorescent, the larger the better, will always work if you can find the fish. They are an incredible aerobatic show and their colors will dazzle you (but fade rapidly at death).
Cautionary note on Mahi. They are considered a moderate mercury fish so limiting your intake to once or twice a month is a good idea. They can be a carrier for ciguatera poisoning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciguatera) which has some flat out nasty neurological and physiological effects. Open water fish are generally ok, but those caught in/around reefs should be considered suspect.
Tuesday, May 18. 2010
I have been working on ways of talking about personality traits and relationships which avoid all psychobabble, fancy convoluted theorizing, and obscure terminology and latinate or greekified jargon. That means trying to invent better, more intuitive, metaphors. This is just a first draft to help get me thinking about what it is I really want to say -
 For 40 or 50 years, Psychiatry and especially Psychoanalysis has tended to view the formation of a person - their pathology and their normality - as being founded in their relationships during development. I do not agree with that premise.
However, as a shrink I am naturally interested in peoples' relationships. It's one of the main topics I listen to, and it is one of the main arenas in which people live out their personality tendencies, for better or worse.
A patient of mine, 59 years old, was married at 21 to his high school sweetheart on their college graduation. He comes to me because he has let himself fall in love with a younger co-worker in his office, and feels torn up with the conflicts. So torn up that he cannot work or concentrate. He is an entrepreneur and has built a series of multi-million dollar businesses during his life, some successful, some not.
Naturally, I inquire about his marriage. A picture gradually forms in my mind of a relationship which is frozen in the past. Two young folks, mad about each other, created a romantic relationship template - their manner of relating and interacting at the time - which has neither changed or grown much since then except, of course, a marked cooling of the passion. Meanwhile, everything else in life has changed: raising kids, financial ups and downs, deaths of parents, new activities and new friends and relationships, etc.
The relationship model that worked at 20 didn't do much at 59, but they unwittingly clung to the original template they had formed early on.
Everybody has had the experience of seeing an old friend after many years, and thinking "Gee, we picked up just where we left off ten years ago." Or, even more commonly, "I feel a bit like a 14 year-old or a 16 year-old when I spend time with my parents."
It's neither a good nor a bad thing; it's just a fact that we have a limited number of relationship templates on hand to apply to our different sorts of relationships, and we tend to keep using the same ones.
Often, in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, this is termed "transference." I just call it recycling of old templates. Mental efficiency, however imperfect.
Sometimes we are forced to form new ones, regardless of our age. Getting a new sibling requires a new one (an evil and unwelcome interloper), becoming a parent requires new ones, as does becoming a grandparent or an in-law. New love relationships sometimes do, but more often tend to draw on past templates, modified a bit, and superimposed on a new relationship. Even a new house dog demands a new template (unless one imposes one of one's human templates on the relationship - as I do. I seem to use my "toddler" template for dogs.).
Sometimes we do things on purpose to create new, more mature or more satisfying templates for our arsenal, or to adjust old ones (relationship templates have wiggle room on the edges). That's one of the purposes of marriage encounter, marital therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, etc. Much of what can feel sterile in relationships is our clinging to old templates - clinging for comfort and familiarity.
People usually form new relationships on their pre-existing templates, and the lack of perfect "fit" of mental template to reality is what makes for all the fun and challenge and mess. (You can generalize that metaphor to lots of things in life...most of what we do and how we do it is from an existing pattern.)
Humans stick to their patterns most of the time - creatures of habit - and usually prefer venturing outside of them (adventure) to a limited extent - just enough to keep it interesting, depending on where one falls on the timidity-recklessness spectrum.
More later about what our templates are made of...
Sunday, May 16. 2010
Woody Allen: "It Would Be Good If Obama Could Be a Dictator for a Few Years".
As he sometimes does and has done, usually with humor, Woody captures a certain arrogant, elitist, Upper-West-side Manhattan world view of the world. I, for one, at this point, find it despicable, hateful, and anti-American. Furthermore, it shows a condescending contempt for relatively decent and ordinary people like me.
With the history of western Socialist dictator-types - Robespierre, Bismarck, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, etc, it is remarkable to me that somebody like Woody would long for another.
Heck, maybe we could have a utopia if I were dictator for just a few years. I am fairly intelligent, Ivy-League educated, and knowledgeable, and have lots of experience about how things work in the real world (far more than most career politicians), and I have informed opinions on almost everything too.
Problem is, I have no interest in having power over anybody else. I hate power, except over my own life. I have studiously avoided power during my entire fairly-successful career, and have refused a number of offers of power, large and small. Power over others is revolting to me. That's why I post on Maggie's Farm.
Woody's attitude is just freaking amazing to me, and says a lot. As much as I enjoyed Sleeper, I am done with the guy. He had no morals anyway but I tend to give "artists" a little leeway. Why? Because I am stupid and like to be entertained.
Authoritarian Leftism is a sickness, and as evil as sociopathy. Maybe it is a form of sociopathy. I don't know. These people need to learn a little humility...and a few other things too.
MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) brings us an exceptional debate in Kuwait over whether a performance in Kuwait of the internationally enjoyed song Hava Nagilah, performed by all races and nationalities, should be forbidden as legitimizing Israel.
What makes the debate exceptional is that, for a change, more than one side is heard in an Arab country. Highlights of the debate are below the fold. Worth reading. (Or, be doomed to endlessly dance to the Macarena.)
Meanwhile, here’s Harry Belafonte sharing the song’s joy with an audience in Italy in 1988.
Translation of the objectionable lyrics:
Let's rejoice
Let's rejoice
Let's rejoice and be happy.
Let's sing
Let's sing
Let's sing and be happy.
Awake, awake brothers!
Awake brothers with a happy heart.
Continue reading "Debate In Kuwait: What's Wrong With Hava Nagilah?"
For those who feel that they do not have enough Bob Dylan in their lives, there is always Dylan Radio. All Dylan, all the time. A bit of an overdose, in my opinion. They never mix it up with any Schubert concertos.
It brought to mind an interview with the late great Lena Horne which Mark Simone replayed on the radio the other day. She was saying that she approached a song as a short play, and that she focused on telling the story more than on the music. She said she talked the song-story before she ever added the music. Simone told Horne that Sinatra had once told him something similar; that he wanted to distinguish himself from other singers by making the the words more important to him than the tune or the notes. He disparaged other pop singers as note-hitters wedded to the tune, rather than good story-tellers. Of course, Horne and Sinatra could do both.
You obviously cannot compare Dylan's singing to those two masters, but you can compare his phrasing, word-handling, and story-telling to anybody's. Plus he writes his songs himself. Writing a good song that sticks to the soul is lots tougher than writing a good poem - which is plenty tough itself.
But I don't know what I am talking about...I truly do not.
As you know, Lena Horne died last week.
Saturday, May 15. 2010
One of the songs mocking the old daily, then weekly, then merged, then gone, Worker, “Our Line’s Been Changed Again”, referred to the slavish contortions of its adherents as the approved line from Moscow veered and twisted to fit whatever was deemed its current self-preservation.
Such genuflective transmutive party line writing today is steered from Washington where its anointed leader is in the White House, its main apologist is Ezra Klein at the Washington Post – and its disappearing irrelevant Newsweek, and its dissemination is via his network of quick parroters assembled at Klein’s secretive JournoList of Left writers at blogs and major media.
Their God -- that is failing, again -- is that the Democrat Party and its President is the most progressive force to alter mankind and its institutions, and that this end justifies the means of increased central power over the economy and individuals’ lives.
Five years after graduating college with a political science degree, with no work experience except for writing, Ezra Klein churns out advocacy that excuses the latest line or attacks uncomfortable facts, and his disciples echo his sleights of hand.
In rebuttal one might hear that other writers are slavish to the Republican Party or have a following. That smacks of old attacks on the fractious Trotskyists, Republicans actually containing disparate and battling interests, political figures, and writers, inherently unable to cohere around any line except vague restraints on central power.
Neither socialists nor Trotskyists brought down communism or Moscow. Rather, communism and Moscow were unable to maintain their spin in the face of their flailing failures recognized and rejected by the true masses living in the real world when coupled with firm resistance from those with power.
Today’s Tea Partiers lack a manifesto except for crying out “BS” to the transparent excuses of any – Democrat or Republican -- who go along with Washington’s self-serving funny business as usual. Those – either Democrat or Republican – who are seen to pay lip service but not consistency and will to actually reversing statism’s growth are not trusted.
As with any revolution from below, the big question remains of whether anyone will emerge to lead and be followed who will not waver, accommodate or sell out.
As with the Worker and their "God That Failed", there is no question that those who align themselves with state power will find new “progressive” rallying points for their same-old, same-old.
Ezra Klein will become an obscure footnote in the tedious history of the Left. So may the Tea Partiers as a temporary insurrection join the Trotskyists in the dustbin of history.
But, the real masses never will submit, and stand ready – armed by the vote in a democracy -- to emerge in strength when their primary interest in personal freedoms is trampled. The powerful or monied who are wise enough to see their fate as tied to the masses need to step up to the podium and to contribute heavily to the pot of clarifying insurrection before their narrow self-interests are eliminated. Their feeding at the trough in Washington will not save them, but transform them into lackeys.
(There are too many allusions and references above to weigh down with links, footnotes, and detailed explanations. Enjoy the learning experience, unless repeating the past is preferred.)
Some sauce:
I was asked two questions at dinner last night, both on the "Feelings aren't facts" theme.
1. "Do people with strong insecurities and feelings of inadequacy tend to be people with plenty of inadequacies - or not?" A good question.
My reply: "Some people who feel inadequate are quite "sufficient," and some are wise to doubt themselves and their life skills. Bear in mind, though, that every human has his share of inadequacies and shortcomings. Some people magnify their own for neurotic reasons and some deny their own for neurotic reasons. The best thing is to be realistic about our strengths and weaknesses, and to get to work on the weaknesses - if we want to."
2. "Do people with strong self confidence tend to be people for whom it is justified, or not?"
My reply: "Could be either. However, I tend to be a little wary of those who project noticeably strong general self-confidence. But plenty of people learn how to give the appearance of strong self confidence when they need to, to fake it; a game face is a good thing, when needed. Also, strong confidence in a specific area in which it is merited is one of the finer things in life."
Then I finally said, "So tell me, what are you and your kids up to this summer?"
 That was an email late last night from the pupette I mentioned here yesterday, informing me that she just got another call-back for a Hollywood movie role for which she has, unbeknownst to me, been auditioning.
I thought her summer plans sounded perfect, so I do not know what to say except "Break a leg, babe."
Having kids keeps life from getting dull, routine, and inexpensive. There is always something to ponder; good and bad and neutral.
Now, back to the gardens to be an outdoor slave to Mrs. BD. (Perhaps The Wagoner's Lad had it backwards? Well, in the right mood, I will do anything for the Mrs. In the wrong mood, nothing. Doesn't bother me at all to be a difficult person sometimes, and I often feel I need to be more so.)
Thing is, I have always enjoyed manual labor, especially the semi-skilled sort when the tasks are well-defined. Brain-work fatigues me, but physical labor invigorates me.
Next weekend, a big invigorating 2-3 day job at the farm. I sent out a flash email to all sibs, telling all to bring all tools (chain saws, hedge-trimmers, weed-wackers, etc.) and promising to provide beer and water and gas and cigars and lunch. We have a 25-acre field up on the hill to clear, now that the tractor bridge over the trout stream is fixed after the big wash-out two winters ago. The meadow will need a twice-over with the tractor and the brush hog, and the wind-fallen White Pines will need my baby bro with his 3' chain saw and his cutting skills. He won't say much and he is not overly friendly, but he is a youngish retired exec and he likes to work non-stop. Always in motion.
My Mom always tells me "Your Grandpa would use a scythe for that." I say to her "I love my power tools."
The swimming hole needs to be dredged out too. We have a small but adequate dredge that will hook to the tractor with chains, but I am not sure we will have time to get that done next weekend. Not sure where the long chains are either.
This migratory bird, resembling a miniature Mockingbird in appearance, in habits, and even in song sometimes, summers in the Eastern and Southwestern US. The last one I saw was quite tame, flitting around the top of shrubs along our stream, occasionally uttering his "spee" call.
You can read about this bird here.
Do our readers ever see these little guys?
Friday, May 14. 2010
 The BD pupette, finishing her freshman college year in a week or so at her beloved small rural liberal arts college, will be promptly flown down (on the camp's nickel) to her super-most-specialest-favoritest traditional (daily morning flag ceremony with prayers, etc) 100 year-old girl's camp down in the wondrous Smokey Mountains so she can take the NRA shooter training course before camp opens. Her camp counseling duties will include running the shooting ranges and training the gals for competition. I know she is good with a .22. They are paying her surprisingly well, too.
I think they do shotgun and .22. She is no stranger to guns, but has never taken the NRA course for trainers. Wilderness camping and hiking, kayaking, etc. are no problem for her. She can as easily drive a John Deere tractor as she can do the subways of NYC, and brushes off rain and mud on the farm like a true Yankee. Except when she is dressed to do New York...
I thought that this Shakespeare- and drama-intoxicated (and two-time Oxford Shakespeare summer) pup was planning a theater internship in NYC where she could earn some Actors Equity points, but perhaps that is afterwards but before our Danube trip. What do I know? (Nobody ever tells me anything around here - but I am OK with almost anything if it has some vitality and adventure and self-testing in it. Sitting around the house shooting farts into sofas and chairs, as I am wont to put it, is not permitted in the BD household: life is too short for that, and the big world is beckoning, saying "Come on out here and give me your best shot, and take yer chances - and yer punches.")
Well, what I do know is that certainly prospective justice Kagan never took the NRA course. She opposes the Second Amendment, so I doubt she knows how to have fun with guns, or how to defend herself.
Somebody recently opined to me that only governments should be entrusted with the use of force. I just bit my tongue and smiled. Doing a lot of that, lately.
I like having daughters who can handle firearms.
 San Diego’s tourism industry leaders are in panic, and some politicians too, as some Arizonans cancel their summer trips due to the San Diego City Council and School Board condemning Arizona’s illegal immigrant enforcement law.
The summertime influx of Arizonans to San Diego’s balmier weather is a major source of tourism revenue. Tourism is one of San Diego’s main industries, off during this recession.
Tourism officials are advertising in Arizona an open letter urging Arizona residents to overlook local politics and come to San Diego just as they always have to escape Arizona's summer heat.
The San Diego Union-Tribune report remarks:
In some cases, it appears that Arizona residents misconstrued the votes taken by San Diego’s elected leaders as calls for an actual boycott of Arizona as opposed to statements of opposition.
The reporter should look back a few days to her paper's own reporting:
At the urging of board Vice President John Lee Evans, the board eliminated an Arizona travel warning that President Richard Barrera had proposed for students and their families out of concern they may be subject to harassment or racial profiling. However, the San Diego Unified School District will develop a policy restricting travel and participation in conferences in Arizona.
The San Diego School Board is in the hands of union tools. It schools, mostly poorly, a high percentage of immigrants, 44% of its students are Hispanic, 75% ethnic minorities. The School Board President says, “Certainly, we know how important tourism is to San Diego, and it wasn’t my intent to impact the tourism trade.” The tourism industry employs many immigrants.
Seems the School Board voted to place the parents of some of its students in the unemployment line. The School Board should have stuck to the Three “Rs” and not the “I” that tourism officials call “political posturing.” Similar for the City Council, not paying attention to the City’s severe budget deficits, largely the result of pensions for unionized workers. One hotelier comments:
“I understand the City Council was being passionate about their politics, but I don’t think they thought it through,” Holladay said. “If it negatively impacts hotel revenue, it impacts the transient occupancy tax, and that goes right into the general fund, so they’ll have less money for their programs.”
P.S.: So far, 93% of those voting in the LA Times online poll oppose similar "posturing" by the LA City Council.
Thursday, May 13. 2010
Quote from a post at One Cosmos:
...to be a secular extremist is to be a fully horizontal man, and thus, to commit not only spiritual, but intellectual, suicide. It is the ultimate cosmic inversion, for it is to elevate our fallen state to the highest virtue. It is "to love only terrestrial life, to the detriment of the ascending and celestial path," to be "exteriorized," and to "love only outer things, to the detriment of moral and spiritual values." Ultimately it is "to sin against transcendence, thus it is to forget God and consequently the meaning of life; and outwardness is to sin against immanence, thus to forget our immortal soul and consequently its vocation" (Schuon)
Read the whole thing, and be tolerant of Gagdad's rambling and his idiosyncracies. I like the parts about Truth, and about intelligence.
We often reflect here on what our secular, pop-culture horizontal gods are today: ideologies, Gaia, science, self, governments, etc., even orgasms. When I consider the things that help me locate myself on a point above the x axis, "to fly like an eagle while being chained to the floor," I come up with poetry, song, prayer, moments of communion with others, and random moments of self-oblivious immersion in some aspect of Creation. My links to the vertical and to the things that cannot be touched. It's the job of preachers to assist that link too, isn't it? Alas for me, much of Scripture tends to speak more to my mind than to my soul, and True Beauty only blinds me. Working on those things, though.
Hubble photo is Messier 101
Wednesday, May 12. 2010
From a genetic standpoint, why is mental illness so common?
- The wiring is very tricky. Lots of teensy tiny wires, all tangled up.
From Robin of Berkeley's The Left's Unbearable Darkness of Being:
My clients are astonished when I tell them that life is not supposed to be easy, and that we carve out our characters and our souls from the hard times. Further, suffering is the great uniter: It has the potential to connect us to people all over the world. Pain reminds us that everyone is, at times, pierced by grief, loneliness, and sorrow.
- If you are over 18 and haven't learned that life is tragic, you may have a learning problem.
From Had Enough Therapy, Victims No More.
- Most of our problems are of our own creation - often unwittingly. That was just one of Freud's insights - borrowed from the ancient Greeks, of course.
Also interesting, The F*ck Feelings Manifesto. The home of that site is here.
- The attitude is similar to what is summed up by the AA aphorism "Feelings aren't facts."
One very clever idea for a site is GraphJam, which puts our crazy American culture in graph format.
From the silly:
To the serious:
To something every blogger can relate to:
There's also a very funny area on the site called "Lol Celebs", where readers can put captions on pics of celebrities:
There's another celeb example below the fold as well as a few originals I whipped up just for the occasion. Go to the site, slap it in your bookmarks, then save it for a rainy day when you're looking for something to do. I went through every single graph and celeb page and had a great time. Some of the stuff is exceptionally clever.
Continue reading "Our culture in graphspeak"
I have been through four cords of firewood in ye olde office this season, and fireplace season is not over yet. Chilly mornings, chilly evenings, in the low 30s (F). 38 degrees with a cold rain this morning. I do not live on Cape Cod (where I was a young lad for a while when my Dad was in the service), but one good thing about the Cape is that you can use a fire every night, even in August. Takes the damp chill off, or seems to.
My wood supply is down to fresh green wood felled by the Nor'easter a while ago. I cut and scavenged it. Mostly Maple of various types. I haven't even had time to split it yet. However, I figured out how to burn green wood effectively and pleasantly. All it takes is to throw a handful of charcoal briquettes into your starter fire. They get the heat up so that your green wood dries and burns at the same time. A nice, slow fire with plenty of wood-steam and an enjoyable hiss. You may have to freshen it with a new briquette or two now and then.
It works great. Sort-of. A hot wood stove will burn green wood just fine, but a fireplace is trickier. Once you have enough heat with a good bed of coals in there, green burns well.
What other blog would offer such a handy tip?
Monday, May 10. 2010
A reader introduced us to Theodore Roethke's 1957 "Last Class," an amusing rant about teaching literature to rich girls at Bennington College.
I cannot find the whole thing, but here's the first page. Roethke wrote it under the pen name of Winterset Rothberg.
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