Inspiration Striking

In today's Judge Parker, we see the titular character, or at least the original titular character (his son's the judge now) and his trophy wife as they discover the masked, heavily armed men who are patrolling the jungle location where their son is getting married are not, as they had thought, guards for the bride's father's hospital, but rather, not to put to fine a point on it, violent criminals:

Katherine looks like most people would, but check out the judge. This is a man who's just seen the hook for his next book.

Goodbye, Pete, it was sure good to know you

And at Talking Points Memo, a look back at his career with some great photos, including Springsteen on the inauguration.

Singer, songwriter, and long-time activist, he kept performing and making us think, still wanting us to be better... In 2010 he co-wrote and performed a song "God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You" with Lorre Wyatt, commenting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It's below, along with that Inaugural "This Land Is Your Land" - with "all the verses" - and a few others.

"I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it."

in front of HUAC: "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this."

"Most of my life I have assumed that the kind of songs I sing would not normally get played on the airwaves. I pointed to examples like Woody Guthrie's song, "This Land Is Your Land" to show that they don't have to get played on the airwaves. If it's a real good song, it will get spread around anyway."

On "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" and the Smothers Brothers show incident: "Of course, a song is not a speech, you know. It reflects new meanings as one's life's experiences shine new light upon it. (This song does not mention Vietnam or President Johnson by name.) Often a song will reappear several different times in history or in one's life as there seems to be an appropriate time for it. Who knows."

This Land Is Your Land, with Bruce Springsteen, at the first inauguration of Barack Obama:



"Waist Deep in the Big Muddy":



"Guantanamera":



"Where Have All the Flowers Gone":

Decoded

So, a lot of people are calling that nice Republican lady that did the GOP response to the State of the Union (see, they have a lady speaking, they don't have a  problem with women, they have some! and this one doesn't even seem bat-shit insane) a liar or a hypocrite or both, because she said "Republicans believe health care choices should be yours".

But the problem is that people just don't understand what these things mean.

"Health care choices" mean "procedures I approve of". And "yours" means "and no one should help you."

This is what I would do...

This is what would kill me.

Final Jeopardy Clue: One of two world capitals that end in the letter Z: one is in South America and the other in Europe.

I immediately said Zagreb and started running South American capitals through my mind ... and then noticed. Ends in Z. Ends.

Well, La Paz. (And Vaduz, Liechtenstein, which I didn't remember before Alex said it, but you only needed one.)

But if I was on the show, would I notice that? I fear not.

The kids are alright

Yesterday I rode up to Baltimore Highlands, in accordance with my policy of not standing on the platform at Linthicum for 22-24 minutes in fourteen or more degrees of frost, thank you very much MTA scheduling mavens.

Ahem.

So, at North Linthicum a bunch of twenty-somethings got on. There was only one car, something the MTA does in really cold weather since it allows them to send out new ones when the lines seize up, as they do in single-digits. especially in the city with all the stop-and-go entailed by driving trains in traffic. So the kids were standing in a big group at one end of the car, chattering away. Just after we crossed the Patapsco River (invariably pronounced with a prothetic vowel: Patapsaco), one of them broke off what she was saying and announced, excitedly: "Deers! There's deers! Look!"

"Bears?" said a guy standing in the stepwell with his back to the doors. "There are bears here?"

"Deers," she said. "Not bears, deers. Five or six of them."

"I knew you meant deer," he said, "I was joking."

"Jerk," she said in a friendly tone. "I never saw any for real before."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. I used to live in the city and when I moved down here I was blown away by all the animals. There are so many animals here. Squirrels, rabbits, deers, raccoons ... and so many birds you never see in the city. Like woodpeckers -"

"I love woodpeckers," she agreed. "I really want to see one."

"There are a lot here."

"I love them. The way they sound. Tatatatatatata. Tatatatatatata."

"That's exactly the way they sound!" he said delightedly. "They even stop like that. I don't know, maybe they have to reset their brain or something."

"I don't know how they do it."

A third guy chimed in, "Woodpeckers are basically Pachycephalosaurus."

"Those dome-headed ones! Yes!" the second guy said as I got off the train.

Average this

The comic strip Frazz features an extremely annoying child named Caulfield. In today's strip (select for a larger version) he once again tries to get over on the system. If he were my student, he'd learn about averages all right. "100 for Wednesday's, which you did, and 0 for Thursday's, which you did not do. That's 50%." "I did it!" "Perhaps, but you turned it in on Friday, and the grades were posted Thursday. When it was due."

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Argh. This so annoys me. They ping contestants on Jeopardy! all the time for mispronouncing (Oh, I'm sorry, but you added a T...) ... but only when Alex (and/or the judges) catches it.

And given Alex's well-known trouble with Russian... like pronouncing ukase as "you case". (Certainly not in Russian, but Merriam-Webster says the A is like the o in mop or the a in ash. And it's a Z, not an S... which is coincidental with my main point, which is:

They are NOT the Brothers Karamatsov. They are the Brothers Karamazov. Z. Z. Z!

Just a matter of looking things up

A colleague of mine (a Russophone from Belarus) just walked over and showed me a student paper, written in Russian. She was baffled by a sentence:

Нет прямые галстук.

I knew instantly what the student had meant to say. But only because I'm a native English speaker.

Нет is "no" of course, but at the beginning of a sentence like this it means "there is no / there are no". Прямые is "straight" - a plural nominative form; the word is often used for things that are direct or unmediated or, sometimes (as in English) candid. And галстук is a necktie.

"There are no direct ties", meaning "connections".That's what the student wanted to say. Unfortunately, the Russian sentence cannot mean that at all. (For one thing, "there are no" takes a genitive predicate, not a nominative one.) What this means, if it means anything, is "Nope, straight neckties" - as if answering the question "Were they wearing crooked scarves?"

So, yeah, no. You can't just look up each English word in an English-Russian dictionary and get a good translation.

The Week in Entertainment

TV: Sherlock - squeeeeee. I loved the way John punched him out. I loved the way he tried to get Mycroft to want a friend. I loved his parents (played by his parents). I loved Mary.  I loved his little smile in the subway car and the way he reacted when he realized John hadn't caught on - the conversation that didn't mean what John thought it did. And I loved him actually going through fire to save John. It wasn't perfect, perhaps, but .... Sherlock! Sean Saves the World: "I don't like that man. Twice he lured you in and then broke your heart and we had to pick up the pieces." "Yes but at the coffee shop he said he'd changed. And I haven't so I still want to sleep with him." I loved Modern Family's showing us Hayley's plan for her future, along with her picking up the tab. The Mentalist - we have sort of reset to "the way [Jane] was at the beginning", haven't we? Which is fine, because the first couple of seasons were so much fun. Psych literally went back to the beginning, with a remake of a first season episode, which was fine though pointless.  Grimm: Oh #*@%!!! indeed. We have to wait till the end of February??!? Though that's not as bad as Sleepy Hollow - after a very short season and a helluva cliffhanger they're done till fall! And a delightful surprise from Cartoon Network - a new episode of The Powerpuff Girls! Radically different drawing style, but the same writers and actors. Yay! Once again, the day is saved!


Read: Death at the Bar and Night at the Vulcan, both by Ngaio Marsh, and The Treasure at Poldarrow Point by Clare Benson, as well as another third or so of The Bully Pulpit.

Such a deal!

So out of curiosity I went over to Amazon to look at the book referenced on Occupy Richie Rich here, which was described as "the most ridiculous shit you’ve ever seen". There were a few copies available - new starting at $288.80 and used starting at $59.07, prices not totally unexpected for a book over forty years old. But here's the deal Amazon is offering me if I own the thing:

Such a good deal, too.

Religious liberty

Why aren't conservatives crying about clergymen like this one not being able to follow their religious conscience and perform weddings for gay and lesbian couples?

Could it be that they're only interested in their own religion?

Houston Mayor Annise Parker has married longtime partner Kathy Hubbard in a sunset ceremony at a private residence in Palm Springs, Calif., Parker's office announced.

The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Paul Fromberg, rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. The couple chose Thursday for their wedding because it was the 23rd anniversary of the beginning of their relationship.

Oh, snap

From Paul Krugman:

Suddenly the buzz is that the Heritage Foundation is coming back to its senses. The supposed evidence of this shift is the foundation’s decision to hire Stephen Moore, formerly of the WSJ editorial page, as its chief economist.

And to be fair, on some issues — mainly immigration — Moore does seem relatively moderate. But he’s being hired as an economist — and his position there is deeply, irredeemably anti-intellectual.

... The point, anyway, is that the newly non-crazy Heritage will now have a chief economist who is the equivalent, for the dismal science, of having a chief scientist who denies climate change and evolution. If this counts as a move toward sanity, think of what that says about the starting point.

Virginia - in memory of Loving?

The new attorney general in Virginia will not defend the state's ban on same-sex marriage. In fact, he's joining the other side - and the new governor is backing him up.

Herring said his chief duty is to defend the U.S. Constitution.

“The Supreme Court is clear: The United States Constitution is the law of the land, the supreme law of the land,” Herring said at a press conference. “I believe the freedom to marry is a fundamental right and I intend to ensure that Virginia is on the right side of history and the right side of the law.”

...“As attorney general, I cannot and will not defend a law that violates Virginians’ fundamental constitutional rights,” he said.

As Herring points out,

the state has been on the wrong side of landmark legal battles involving school desegregation, interracial marriage and single-sex education. He made the case that Virginia should be on the right side of the law and history in the battle over same-sex marriage.

Virginia Republicans are of course outraged, claiming that Herring has the duty to defend Virginia's constitution - apparently at the expense of the US's. Democrats point out

that Cuccinelli refused to defend one of then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell’s education reforms in court, saying he believed that the legislation (for state takeovers of failing schools) was unconstitutional.

At least one Republican admits that

“I don’t think he should do it, but I think he can do it, and I think it’s probably within his job description to do it” if he thinks the ban conflicts with the U.S. Constitution, said state Sen. Thomas A. Garrett Jr. (R-Goochland), a former prosecutor.

Though of course there's always one guy who's so threatened by his impending loss of privilege that he loses it.

“I don’t know what the difference between a dictatorship and this is,” said state Sen. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun).

Mr Black has clearly never been within shouting distance of a dictatorship if that's true - and if he really believes that an attorney general joining an appeal to a federal court is "a dictatorship", the people of Loudoun are ill served by their state senator. Though, on the bright side, the imminent dictatorship won't be all that onerous...

The Pendulum Swings

A friend of mine is reading Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now (1875), and sent this with a remark that "The beginning of this chapter echoes, as Mark Twain said about history."

And indeed it does. (Note: "The Ballot" refers to Reform Act of 1867, an extension of the franchise which effectively gave the vote to working class men.)

CHAPTER LIV.

THE INDIA OFFICE.


The Conservative party at this particular period was putting its shoulder to the wheel,--not to push the coach up any hill, but to prevent its being hurried along at a pace which was not only
dangerous, but manifestly destructive. The Conservative party now and then does put its shoulder to the wheel, ostensibly with the great national object above named; but also actuated by a natural desire to keep its own head well above water and be generally doing something, so that other parties may not suppose that it is moribund. There are, no doubt, members of it who really think that when some object has been achieved,--when, for instance, a good old Tory has been squeezed into Parliament for the borough of Porcorum, which for the last three
parliaments has been represented by a Liberal,--the coach has been really stopped. To them, in their delightful faith, there comes at these triumphant moments a conviction that after all the people as a people have not been really in earnest in their efforts to take something from the greatness of the great, and to add something to the lowliness of the lowly. The handle of the windlass has been broken, the wheel is turning fast the reverse way, and the rope of Radical progress is running back. Who knows what may not be regained if the Conservative party will only put its shoulder to the wheel and take care that the handle of the windlass be not mended! Sticinthemud, which has ever been a doubtful little borough, has just been carried by a majority of fifteen! A long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether,--and the old day will come back again. Venerable patriarchs think of Lord Liverpool and other heroes, and dream dreams of Conservative bishops, Conservative lord-lieutenants, and of a Conservative ministry that shall remain in for a generation.

Such a time was now present. Porcorum and Sticinthemud had done their duty valiantly,--with much management. But Westminster! If this special seat for Westminster could be carried, the country then could hardly any longer have a doubt on the matter. If only Mr. Melmotte could be got in for Westminster, it would be manifest that the people were sound at heart, and that all the great changes which had been effected during the last forty years,--from the first reform in
Parliament down to the Ballot,--had been managed by the cunning and treachery of a few ambitious men. Not, however, that the Ballot was just now regarded by the party as an unmitigated evil, though it was the last triumph of Radical wickedness. The Ballot was on the whole popular with the party. A short time since, no doubt it was regarded by the party as being one and the same as national ruin and national disgrace. But it had answered well at Porcorum, and with due manipulation had been found to be favourable at Sticinthemud. The Ballot might perhaps help the long pull and the strong pull,--and, in spite of the ruin and disgrace, was thought by some just now to be a highly Conservative measure.

On closer inspection

So, I saw this on Facebook - on a friend's page, sourced from one of those big pages that basically just post pictures with remarks like 'what do YOU think?' or 'So True!' I didn't feel like getting into it there, but ...

Think what you like about Bikini Babe here and why she's dressed like that, but if she were to put on a one-piece, beach-jacket, or even (gasp!) kimono, no one would throw acid at her or beat her to death. So... not really comparable.

The Week in Entertainment

TV: Psych is back! Terrific episode with Despereaux and London. Lassie's in uniform? That's not good. And then another good one - this crazy new captain may be all right, in show terms. His reactions and press conferences were very funny. All the comedies, nice and entertaining. What a nice moment at the end of Modern Family with Alex and Claire, and another good one for The Middle. The Mentalist was intriguing, though I certainly hope that they're not (in years show time) resurrecting that organization. Still, nice to see Van Pelt and Rigsby again. Almost Human - caught up with two episodes, one kind of goofy (seriously? Are they really trying to tell us that the DRNs are emotional and human-like, while simultaneously showing the destroying an MX is not even reprimand-worthy?) and the other my possibly least favorite cop-show plot (the guy who makes a game out of killing random people). Agents of SHIELD - whoa. First Coulson, now Skye... there's a lot behind the scenes here. Grimm - nice one, though they should have known the colonel was not getting chemo - he had all his hair!

Read: Abandoned Roosevelt, Taft, and McClure's for the latest Flavia deLuce, which was a wonderful coda to the series. I loved the immediate transition from the last one's cliffhanger, and the de-Lucian insanity of the way that the resolution was reasonable (Harriet's back!) and yet absolutely not. Plus, Flavia's descriptions of her father in his grief are amazing. Then I reread Surfeit of Lampreys aka Death of a Peer, one of the early Roderick Allyen books by Ngaio Marsh (Nigel Bathgate still minorly present, Troy nowhere in sight and obnoxious child not dreamed of); I didn't remember who did it, which was nice. Then back to Roosevelt & Co: it's somewhat disheartening to see the parallels as regards corruption, big money, and social injustice. 

yeah, no, not necessarily

The victim in this week's Grimm had "an honorable discharge, an Iraqi service medal, and two Purple Hearts." "A hero," says one cop.

Yeah, no. Those medals don't mean heroism. They mean he was in Iraq for a month and got hurt twice. You can have a chest full of "medals" (I had half a dozen myself) just for doing your job. 

Heroism has a higher bar.

Oops. *@$% spelling

Today's 'Rubes':

Didn't get it

Category: Asian Nations
Clue: In 1991 this became the first former Communist country to reinstate the monarchy, which it still has.

I didn't get it. I didn't have enough time to work my way to Cambodia.

But at least I didn't go with the first name that came to mind - Spain. It only meets one of the criteria (two if "reinstate" and "still has" are separate), being neither Asian nor former Communist (rather decidedly not former Communist), and reinstated their monarchy earlier than 1991 (much: 1978). I'm not sure why it was what I thought of, but it was.

One of the contestants said "Lithuania", which only meets the "former Communist" part. )I'd have rather left it blank or guessed wildly than said that - it's worse than Spain!) The others said "Viet Nam" and "South Korea", both of which left me blinking. 

I'd probably have said "Laos". It's not right, and at some level I'd have known that, but those 30 seconds do go by fast.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: A thoroughly delightful (even the updated clowning by Frosch) Die Fledermaus at the Met. A new English translation, great sets, wonderful singing - very funny production.

TV: Modern Family - Hayley cracks me up. Sean Saves the World - two eps. It's still funny. Michael J Fox Show - continues to be sort of mediocre, though Fox is talented. Grimm - I enjoyed both eps, especially the one about the gangs; it had nice character moments for everyone.  The Neighbors, which has managed to get me invested in Amber's heartache.The Crazy Ones - this show is pretty dumb, but it really makes me laugh, which may be due to Williams and Gellar, or the writers, or both. The Middle - "I want to spend every moment I can with the things I cherish the most. So I'm going to my room and my books. Try not to bother me."

Read: Finished The Diplomatic Corpse Mystery, which is about a diploma, not a diplomat. Started Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest, Bully Pulpit, which is fascinating. I've gotten to the McClure's Magazine founding.

Give a person food stamps...

An aside from Paul Krugman:

Give an only moderately poor person food stamps, and she’ll probably be willing to use all of it on food. Give a very poor person, with hardly any other source of income, food stamps and she’ll try to convert part of it into cash to be spent on other things. This doesn’t say that they’re getting too much help; it just says that they’re pretty desperate across the board, not just in their food budget.

How true that is.

Wherefor art thou a window?

Category: Windows Clue: But soft! This question precedes "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."

Okay, I don't demand that you know the answer ("What light through yonder window breaks?") but not only does "Where art thou?" (or "Wherefor art thou (Romeo)?") not reference a window in any way, but it doesn't prompt the answer "It is the east...".

Christmas list

Pretty much the usual feathered suspects this trip - too damn cold to go looking specially! One standout: a flock of Eastern bluebirds! They were all over the big holly bush in my father's front yard one afternoon, but they didn't stick around. Others:

Crows
Starlings
Turkey Vultures (probably a few black ones as well)
Red-tailed hawk
Cooper's hawk
Cardinals (a pair lives in the aforementioned holly)
Mockingbirds
Song sparrows
White-throated sparrows
American Robin
Eastern Phoebe
American Goldfinch
Tufted Titmice
Chickadees (probably Carolina)
Mallards
Muscovy ducks (crosses/mongrels)
Canada geese
feral geese of several varieties
Herring gulls
Coots

I wonder what they were thinking

Category for Final: The Titanic
Clue: A member of parliament said, "Those who have been saved have been saved through one man", this Italian.

There were two Galileos and one Fermi. I'm having a hard time imagining why. Fermi would have been 11 when the ship sank, and Galileo... what, I wonder, were they thinking of?

It was Marconi.

Duck Dynasty

I was going to write a longish thing about how repulsive Robertson's racist, misogynistic worldview is: his advocacy of marrying 15-year-old girls and why, and his Jim-Crow-was-happy-days reminisces. (I did link to Fred Clark talking about those things.) I was going to write about how the media is reluctant to address those things if they can grab the flash of anti-gay instead. And I still might.

But I can't bring myself to do it just yet. So instead, since the real point of this man is that he and his supporters claim that his Christianity allows him to say all that without criticism, I'll just point this out:

The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, Chapter 11, Verses 14:

Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?

The Long-Term Unemployed

A short but sobering piece in Slate on the prospects for the long-term unemployed. In a word: bleak.

Mailing unemployment insurance checks to people who aren't so much unemployed as unemployable is obviously not an ideal public policy. But simply doing nothing for them is cruel and insane. The time-tested way of re-employing a large mass of long-term unemployed is to fight a major world war with Germany and Japan. The circumstances of mobilizing for major armed conflict in 1940–42 proved that when you really want to put people to work, it can be done. So it's always possible that the Senkaku Islands will come to the rescue. But large-scale armed conflict has a lot of offsetting negative consequences. What we need are targeted "mobilization" programs that don't rely on the outbreak of an enormous war. That would take, I think, two major forms.

Cutie in the snow

What a seasonal cutie!

Oops. Unintended consequences...

Tennessee (still here!) is an "at will" state, meaning that employers have to offer no reasons for firing employees. Conservatives love this, since it plays into a lot of their core notions, like letting the market rule and firing people for being the wrong religion/sexuality/color/whatever. But it's biting them in the butt now.

You see, Tennessee is one of the states that has a new "gun in the trunk" law.

It was supposed to resolve a yearslong fight between gun-rights advocates, who said they need protection from employers' anti-gun prohibitions, and business groups, who argued such a law would violate their property rights.

But apparently, if your boss doesn't want guns on his property, his right to fire you for violating his no-guns rule still trumps your right to bring your arsenal to work (on the way to wherever you think you're gonna need it). The AG said last spring

that the new “guns in trunks” legislation amends only the Tennessee law governing criminal offenses. He explains that the legislation “does not address and thus has no impact on the employment relationship between an employer and an employee.” Op. Tenn. Att’y Gen. No. 13-41 (May 28, 2013). The opinion letter states that employers often are permitted to establish policies that restrict otherwise lawful activities and that the plain and unambiguous language of the new provision does not address the employment relationship.

In other words, it's not a crime to leave your guns in your car. But property owners can still say they don't want you to do it. Just like they can say they don't want you to do other things that aren't crimes.

So now, unhappy gun owners want to revisit the legislation, though the lawmakers are sick and tired of the whole thing:

A Tennessee gun-rights group is firing at top Republican leaders for displaying insufficient enthusiasm for major changes to the "guns in parking lots" law enacted earlier this year.

Tennessee Firearms Association Executive Director John Harris, in a recent letter to members, called it "shameful" that "the Republican establishment leadership plans to continue ignoring the constitutionally protected rights of law-abiding gun owners, including the right to defend themselves and their families against criminals."

House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, and Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, said earlier this month they did not intend to take the lead in revisiting the Safe Commute Act, although they expect the issue to emerge.

What's funny to me is, the gun people are willing to throw property-owners' rights and "at-will" firings under the bus just to have the "constitutionally protected rights of law-abiding gun owners, including the right to defend themselves and their families against criminals" - though how a gun locked up in your trunk helps you defend yourself is more than I can see... Somebody steals your car, you just gave him weapons, too. Anyway. The point is, next thing you know, somebody else will want to be able to keep his job because of his constitutionally protected right to, I don't know, free speech or something.

I guess they're only "special rights" if somebody but you is getting them.

The Week in Entertainment

Film: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which is about equidistant from the Thurber story and the old Danny Kaye film, which was pretty removed from Thurber itself. I enjoyed it; Ben Stiller has always been one of my favorite actors even though there was a time I couldn't say I liked any of the movies he was in. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug... well, it was enjoyable enough, though the action sequences were too long and what the hell is this Kili-Tauriel subplot? In fact, what is this Legolas-Tauriel stuff? Tolkien didn't do romance - there were some very bare bones in LOTR that you could hang a decent story on (I think Jackson & Co much improved the Aragorn-Éowyn-Faramir story), but there was nothing in the book of The Hobbit to justify this, and a great deal not to. (Plus, red hair on an Elf?) But: Smaug. Smaaaaauuuuuggg. So lovely. Yes.

DVD: A couple of the Warner Oland "Charlie Chan" movies.

TV: Some first-season Leverage, back when they were all getting used to each other, and Nate was drinking so much. An old movie with Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty Grable called How to Marry a Millionaire; Bacall stole what is actually a fairly funny film.

Read: A mystery called No Stone Unturned, the first of a series I will not be reading any more of, as there was not a character in it I liked, a faint whiff of homophobia pervaded the story, and the narrator was given to incredibly stupid actions. Also, cops roughing up witnesses, yay? Started Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan, but was unable to get past the first section. It's an over-the-top, overblown, frenetic assertion that Barrie exerted some sort of Svengali-like "malign power" over of the Du Maurier family, filled with breathless accusations in the "but why would he commit suicide when he was so successful??" and "does this sound like a man 'destroyed' by the war?" vein and based on precious little fact. There is a great deal of "must have" and "probably" in the telling. When Dudgeon writes that Arthur Davies repressed his anger at Barrie's influence with his, Davies's, wife until it turned into cancer, well... please.So I've picked up another Asey Mayo to cleanse my palate.

Red Bird!

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,
those dun-colored darlings
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason —
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens —
I am glad

that red bird comes all winter,
firing up the landscape
as nothing else can do.

-- Mary Oliver

Goodbye, Phil...

All I Have To Do Is Dream:



When Will I Be Loved:



Walk Right Back:



Crying In The Rain:



Wake Up, Little Susie (1957):



Wake Up, Little Susie (2004 Live):

Three birds

Three kinds of birds, anyway: buzzards, coots, and ducks (mongrel marina ducks, muscovy and mallard crosses).

First, the December turkey vultures at the water tower. One of them was (again) by itself in a tree. He's handsome.







Next up, the ducks. I particularly like the mallardy one with the green cap, but the black muscovy and the little white one are also striking.







This muscovy is particularly attractive.



And coots!

Franklin Graham: Destroying his father's work

I cannot say that Billy Graham was ever my favorite person in the world, but the man knew how to do outreach. He knew how to run a evangelizing crusade. He knew how to avoid the culture wars, because he (like the current Pope) knew that they antagonize people when you want to be attracting them. He probably had many of the same beliefs about race and sex and women as his contemporaries, but you didn't hear about them.

But his son? Well, as Fred puts it:

So, OK then. Phil Robertson is a creepy old man who preaches white supremacist myths defending segregation, preaches Bartonian lies endorsing sectarian government, endorses child marriage as a way of disallowing independent adulthood to women, refers to his own wife as “a vagina,” equates being gay with bestiality and terrorism, and says that all Muslims and “Shintos” are “under control of the Evil One.”

And Franklin Graham says it’s wrong for Christians to condemn those views. Instead, Graham says, it is our Christian duty to rally around those views because these are “the biblical truths we stand for.”

It's too bad that Robertson's anti-gay remarks grabbed all the spotlight, because the man is despicable on a number of fronts, and that racist stuff was much worse... And I think it's a fair bet that were Billy Graham the lion he was once, he'd not be allowing anybody sharing his name to defend those remarks. (He might just flat ignore them, yes, but he'd never defend them.)

(That link in the blockquote? It goes to nice set of Robertson quotes and even videos.)

Two thoughts

One: we should go to all the people whose health plans were canceled and ask them: "Did you like that plan? Did you really like it? You like your $5,000 deductible and a maximum out-of-pocket costs of $8,500? You like only two doctor visits a year? You like no maternity and no prescription benefits? You really like that? Okay. Fine. Keep it. And don't come to anyone else anywhere when you get in a car wreck, or have a serious illness that means more than a week in the hospital (or more than six days in a couple of visits). Because you like this plan."

(We won't. And morally we can't. But maybe we should.)

Two: I totally support Justice Sotomayor's ruling. Because omg people: what has America come to when nuns - nuns - can be made to fill out forms?

Racism? Civilizationism? Something, anyway.

Everybody is up in arms about the Olympics being held in Russia, thanks to that country's "gay propaganda" law (which is both wider and less damning that it's made out to be, though very likely the camel's nose for Russian legislation).

But Qatar, which has a World Cup coming up, is much worse. And India just criminalized homosexuality. Uganda's draconian law passed without much, if indeed any, mainstream media attention.

I can't help but wonder how much of this is because - maybe only subconsciously - we hold Russia, as a European country filled with white people, to a different standard. (Or maybe figure we can harangue them with impunity, unlike the others.)

Submitted for your consideration

So, many Tennesseans are up in arm over bias in the Common Core:

Earlier this year, parents in Williamson County raised concerns about a question in a world geography textbook that asked students to consider whether a suicide bomber attacking civilians in a cafe in Israel was terrorism or retaliation for military actions against Palestinians. Critics say the question is among passages that display bias.

I realize that the biggest sin here is the implication that just maybe Israel has done something to merit retaliation. But - correct me if I'm wrong - but after you "consider" this, you can answer "It's just plain terrorism" or even (gasp!) "Well, maybe it was retaliation but such retaliation is never right". In fact, perhaps consideration of the question will make you a better thinker, a stronger advocate of your cause, and someone who doesn't stick their fingers in their ears and say "Lalalala, I can't hear you!" when someone disagrees with you.

This panicked unwillingness to let one's children even hear some other point of view seems to be growing stronger (and not just in Tennessee, where I'm currently visiting, hence the paper). It's behind the unwillingness to let kids go to "liberal" colleges, or be taught evolution, or even consider that somebody might not want to pray "in Jesus' name."

And it seems grounded in the experience of losing one's children to alien ways of thought. Not just fearing that - experiencing it, or seeing others experience it.

Some people might say that a position which cannot withstand even the mild challenge of discovering that it is not, in fact, universally held isn't worth adhering to. But not these folks. They just double down on making sure their kids never find that out.

Of course, they fail. The world is not cut to their pattern.

But that's why they so desperately want to get control.

Oh, right - one more thing: these are the next three paragraphs of that story:

Emily Barton, assistant commissioner of curriculum and instruction for the state Department of Education, acknowledged during one of the hearings that more public input is needed and suggested instituting online reviews "so that all citizens can have equal access to reviewing these materials and sharing their comments and feedback."

Michelle Farnham was at the hearing and said that's something she'd like to see.

"My daughter will be in public schools at some point and I want to make sure they (books) are up to standard," Farnham said.

In other words, the reporter didn't even pretend to address the issue of whether that question really was "bias", or what that would even mean. Just as he didn't address just what Farnham meant by "up to standard". He just kept to the 'Tennessee Eagle Forum promises change! - Dept of Education official says we need to hear from parents, yes - Supporters say the changes are needed' story.

On the other hand, he did close out with this, so well done, there:

Whether it's Common Core or the textbook commission, Vanderbilt University political science professor Bruce Oppenheimer said tea partyers and groups linked to them seem to have a "distrust of anything government designs."

"Their initial assumption is there must be something wrong with it," he said. "In some cases it's conspiratorial, but in other cases just an immediate distrust."

Good omen?

It probably doesn't portend an easy year, but today's Jumble was very easy, and it's the first time in a while I've been able to make a sentence using no other content words, and in order!

The mogul's relic was chosen in flight .

Some things never change ... except when they do.

Here's chutzpah for you:

[Utah] said it was asking for a stay in part to protect gay couples, saying they would suffer financial harm and a loss of dignity if their marriages were voided on appeal. 

Yeah. Utah is concerned with the "dignity" of gay couples.

Here's hypocrisy:

The Mormon church was one of the leading forces behind California's short-lived ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8.The church says it stands by its support for "traditional marriage" and hopes a higher court validates its belief that marriage is between a man and woman.

Like, we stand by it until we get a prophecy telling us not to, like we stood by polygamy. Which is more "traditional" than not, by the way. Not to mention that no one is telling the Mormon Church, or any other church, that they have to allow same-sex marriage. (Just like no one is forcing, say, Catholic priests to marry divorced people, Baptists, or Hindus in their churches.) They can keep on being as "traditional" as they want. They just want to force their notions of "tradition" on the rest of the state. Errrrr, country. World.

And here's outrageous double standards:

In the papers filed Tuesday, Utah argues that children are best raised by a mother and father in a good relationship.

"On average children navigate developmental stages more easily, perform better academically, have fewer emotional disorders and become better functioning adults when reared in that environment," it says.

Let's not get sidetracked by whether that's even true or not. (Is it "a mother and father", an opposite-sex couple who are married, or just two parents?) Let's allow it to be true for this discussion. Now. Does Utah then plan to take kids away from single parents or squabbling couples? They plan to prohibit divorce when there are kids, mandating counseling to maintain (or create) that "good relationship"? They plan to mandate remarriage as soon as possible for widows and widowers?

I think we all know what the answer to that is.

Mae Mari Lwyd yma

In Wales, the Mari Lwyd (the Gray Mari) is brought from door to door on New Year's. Those bringing her sing a song at each house, which is usually followed by a "pwnco" or versifying contest with an opponent within the house, describing each other's singing, drunkenness, stinginess, etc - this back-and-forth challenge culminates in those outside coming in for drinks. Then the Mari's troop bid their hosts farewell and move on.

The Mari Lwyd is sometimes thought to be a tribute to Mary, but it's one of those customs which long predates Christianity... The horse's skull is likely a death-of-the-old-year avatar instead, and "mari" is most likely the English word "mare" borrowed as a later name.

Here's one version of the Mari's song as she arrives (with a literal translation; and traditional English below).

Wel dyma ni'n dwad (Well, here we are coming)
Gyfeillion diniwed (a harmless company)
I ofyn cawn gennad
I ofyn cawn gennad
I ofyn cawn gennad i ganu. (to ask your permission / to sing)

Mae Mari Lwyd yma (The Mari Lwyd is here)
A sêr a ribanau (and a star and ribbons)
Yn werth i rhoi goleu
Yn werth i rhoi goleu
Yn werth i rhoi goleu nos heno. (worthy to give light / on this night)

Mae Mari Lwyd lawen (The Mari Lwyd is happy)
Yn dod yn y dafarn (going to the tavern)
I ofyn am arian
I ofyn am arian
I ofyn am arian a chwrw. (to ask for money / and beer)

Wel, tapwch y faril (Well, tap the barrel)
Gyllongwch yn rhugl (pour it fluently)
A rhenwch e'n gynil
A rhenwch e'n gynil
A rhenwch e'n gynil Y Gwyliau. (and serve it / in the Holiday season)


This is the Mari's farewell to her current hosts.

Wel dyma'r enw feinwen (Well, this is the name of the maid)
Sy'n codi gyda'r seren (who rises with the stars)
Wel dyma'r enw feinwen
Sy'n codi gyda'r seren
A hon yw'r washael fawr ei chlod (and here is the wassail of great praise)
Sy'n caru bod yn llawen. (which loves to be merry)
A hon yw'r washael fawr ei chlod
Sy'n caru bod yn llawen.

Dymunwn i'ch lawenydd (I wish you all joy)
I gynal blwyddyn newydd (in having a new year)
Tra paro'r gwr i dincian cloch (while the man is ready to ring the bell)
Well, well yn boch chwi beunydd. (better and better may you be daily)

Ffarweliwch, foneddigion, (farewell, gentlemen)
Ni gawsom croeso digon. (we have had welcome enough)
Bendith Duw f'o ar eich tai (god's blessing be on your house)
A phob rhyw rhai o'ch dynion. (and on everyone of your men)

(Greeting:)

Well here we come,
Innocent friends
To ask for permission (x 3)
To sing

If we don’t get permission,
Let us hear out the song.
What kind of leaving (x 3)
Tonight.

We bruised our shins
Crossing over the style.
To come here (x 3)
Tonight.

If there are men
Who can write poetry,
Let us hear them now (x 3)
Tonight.

If you went too early
To bed in an angry mood,
Oh, get up nicely (x 3)
Tonight.

The fat, sweet dish
And all sorts of spices
O cut it in portions
(For) the holidays.

Oh, tap the barrel
[Which the lads deserve] (?)
Don’t divide it so miserly (x 3)
(On) the holidays.

and

Oh, here’s the name of the maiden
Who gets up with the star
And this is the Wassail, greatly to be praised,
Who loves to be merry.

I wish you joy
In having a New Year.
As long as the man rings the bell
May it keep getting better for you.

Farewell to you, gentlemen,
We had welcome enough.
God’s blessing on your houses
And to every one of your men.

Iona's Nutmeg & Ginger is a wonderful album of Celtic holiday music.