It's a Beautiful Day.

Don't let it slip away...

It's a good year for broccoli, squash, melons, beans and onions with all the rain we've been tallying lately. The winds, not so good for the corn crops though. My neighbors in the church gardens have several rows down.

American Family has a tent up today, assessing the hail damage in a central location next to the local DOT branch office. Speaking of, I'm still waiting on my new plates, as wouldn't you know -- cars bought at government auction need to be specially processed through Madison, could be up to 6 or 8 weeks, they say...

Which is just as well. You can drive legally with the application taped to the back window, but we have construction up and down main street -- really all the streets -- under the government stimulus funds. The roads needed it, believe me.

In my own gardens, I just keep harvesting the baby broccoli heads, or broccolini, depending on the variety. And there's no trouble weeding anything peeking through the straw, with the ground so wet.

Plus, I jotted a new entry in the "New Things I Learned About Myself" notebook: in clearing out an invasive vine today, a volunteer from last year -- maybe zuccini, maybe pumpkin -- I finally tasted those large orange squash flowers you sometimes see sold at the more sophisticated farmers' markets...

Delicious! I like.

And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out ...

Everything's growing.

.

Let's not forget...

in many places, the only government outreach programs available to poor white kids -- non college material -- is ... the U.S. Military. Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily.

Nor is it unwise for blacks not to support these wars in large numbers with their own blood and treasure. (The latter being life.)

You just wonder: if -- like Rep. Charlie Rangel suggested earlier -- it was more a collective military effort shared across the socioeconomic and racial spectrum, would we have just as much media coverage of the soldiers' losses last week over there as we do for the unfair job loss of a career servant here at home?

We can self divide, and see what that brings us. Or we can try and work together and prioritize these interconnected national issues.

Eyes on the prize, and all.

Blessed are the meek.

Woody Guthrie had it right ... there's so much to share.

That's the best kind of inheritance, imho.

A voice was chanting
as the fog was lifting...
This land was made for you and me.

The Rising of the Moon.

And come tell me ... where the gathering is to be.

If you're not under rain clouds, don't miss that moon out there these nights.

Remember when.

Alan Jackson -- and, Where Where You.

We call it "Due Process" in the Legal World.

Bob Herbert today:

What we have here is power run amok. Ms. Sherrod was not even called into an office to be fired face to face. She got the shocking news in her car. “They called me twice,” she told The Associated Press. “The last time, they asked me to pull over to the side of the road and submit my resignation on my BlackBerry, and that’s what I did.”

This woman was thrown to the wolves without even the courtesy of a conversation. Her side of the story? The truth? The administration wasn’t interested.

And the blame for that falls squarely on the people at the very top in the White House. Why didn’t President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden or Rahm (call me Rahmbo) Emanuel, or somebody somewhere in the upper echelon say, “Hey, what the heck are you doing? You can’t fire a person without hearing her side of the story. This is not the Kremlin. Are you nuts?”

In my personal experience, as much as they might pay lip service to properly enforcing rights and making certain true justice is served, liberals can be amongst the worst at failing to investigate all sides of the story if they are convinced their side is by self definition ... "correct".

Black, white and read-all-over, it's good these things are coming to light before the federal government big bureaucracy usurps even more power over our day-to-day American lives. Nothing worse than facing consequences before you've even had a shot at explaining or defending your own version of the facts...

So pleads the powerless. And as Niemöller reminds us, one just never knows when that group might include you too.

Oh hail !

I watched the hair pour down* on my new car Tuesday; luckily, though plentiful, it was small and there appears to be no damage to the naked eye...

The community garden is another story. Plenty of little green tomatoes on the ground, and the leaves of the peppers, broccoli and tomatoes were pretty much stripped clean, but overall the plants should make it. About 6 cantelopes were exposed as the vines were pelted from above and simply shredded, and every single vegetable looks as though some critter knawed on it, here or there.

Still, it's amazing how the green comes back. If the vines are still connected to the fruits, a week of leaving things alone to see how they heal will tell me much. And then I'm reminded of that Kipling poem, on stooping and building things up again.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

* Video found on YouTube. Not my own.

Why My Kayak is Scratched...

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.

~ Hemingway, Preface to The First Forty-Nine Stories (1944)
-----------------

"If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

~ Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Hmm ...

or, Go Deep or Go Home.

July 21: well into summer, despite the dog days, this is no time to be swimming in the shallows, I suppose. I'll say that.

Have a great midweek.

Love makes the world go 'round...

But conquering all? It's all in how you measure love, I suppose.

"I know the story, I saw a man on Polish TV saying he had led his Jewish girlfriend out of Auschwitz," the cleaning lady told Cybulska, according to Bielecki.

She tracked down his phone number and one early morning in May 1983 the telephone rang in Bielecki's apartment in Nowy Targ.

"I heard someone laughing — or crying — on the phone and then a female voice said "Juracku, this is me, your little Cyla," Bielecki recalls.

A few weeks later they met at Krakow airport. He brought 39 red roses, one for each year they spent apart. She visited him in Poland many times, and they jointly visited the Auschwitz memorial, the farmer family that hid her and many other places, staying together in hotels.

"The love started to come back," Bielecki said.

"Cyla was telling me: leave your wife, come with me to America," he recalls. "She cried a lot when I told her: Look, I have such fine children, I have a son, how could I do that?"

"Only an Expert Can Deal with the Problem"

Remember Laurie Anderson? The funny female comedian from the 80s*? I thought that was her on David Letterman a week or so ago...

But singing.

Now let's say you're invited to be on Oprah
And you don't have a problem
But you want to go on the show, so you need a problem
So you invent a problem
But if you're not an expert in problems
You're probably not going to invent a very plausible problem
And so you're probably going to get nailed
You're going to get exposed
You're going to have to bow down and apologize
And beg for the public's forgiveness.
Cause only an expert can see there's a problem
And only an expert can deal with the problem
Only an expert can deal with the problem...

Turns out she's more a performance artist than a comedian or a singer. And she's married to Lou Reed, to boot. (I think she kept her name though. Both of them.)

So while the song lifted my eyes to the tv, and inspired the later Google search, I was wondering how exactly to work it into the blog...

Wonder no more! David Brooks today:

When historians look back on this period, they will see it as another progressive era. It is not a liberal era — when government intervenes to seize wealth and power and distribute it to the have-nots. It’s not a conservative era, when the governing class concedes that the world is too complicated to be managed from the center. It’s a progressive era, based on the faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems.

This progressive era is being promulgated without much popular support. It’s being led by a large class of educated professionals, who have been trained to do technocratic analysis, who believe that more analysis and rule-writing is the solution to social breakdowns, and who have constructed ever-expanding networks of offices, schools and contracts.

Already this effort is generating a fierce, almost culture-war-style backlash. It is generating a backlash among people who do not have faith in Washington, who do not have faith that trained experts have superior abilities to organize society, who do not believe national rules can successfully contend with the intricacies of local contexts and cultures.

It's a catchy tune, really. Only an expert can deal with the problem...

---------------
*

In addition, in lieu of making another music video for her Strange Angels album, Anderson taped a series of 1- to 2-minute Personal Service Announcements in which she spoke about issues such as the U.S. national debt and the arts scene. Some of the music used in these productions came from her soundtrack of Swimming to Cambodia. The PSAs were frequently shown between music videos on VH-1 in early 1990

.

Illinois banks on flying fish to make a buck.

Asian carp from Illinois rivers, on sale now! No kidding.

Gov. Pat Quinn announced a public-private partnership with an Illinois and Chinese company to catch and sell the fish overseas.

“They’re 100 pounds, 5 feet long and they jump out of the [water] when they hear a motorboat. We’d better find a way, an American way, to take this challenge and convert it into an economic opportunity,” Quinn said at a Chicago press conference.

The invasive species, which is prevalent in downstate waterways, has become a point of controversy and the basis of a lawsuit because of concerns that it might find it’s way to into the Great Lakes. The carp can damage the ecosystems they invade by competing with native species for resources.

Under the new plan, Illinois will award a $2 million grant through the Illinois Department of Economic Opportunity to the Big River Fish Corporation, a processing company located in Pearl. The company will use the funds to update that plant and expand with new facilities in Pittsfield. According to Quinn, Big River Fish will create 61 new positions.

I wonder if the eaters will have researched the chemicals in those waters. I wonder if by Asian worker diet standards, it much matters to them.

I wonder if someday, they'll be selling us on eating Asian carp. You know how standards decline and get accepted as the norm and all...

Think of an open garden hose...

spewing freely at one end. Now consider puncturing it. Do two holes relieve more pressure from the spewing end than one? (think of those holes you're cutting into the hose as relief wells...)

Now, force your hand over the open nozzle, but don't cut the pressure. Is it an old hose? How long can you keep that water temporarily bottled up in the hose? (with more pressure coming, remember). Is the liquid trying to find the weakest point to escape? Are you holding your hand over the open nozzle before cutting that hole (or two) up higher in the hose?

What do you think will happen if we experimented like this on a broader scale? Will the physical laws still hold? What if it wasn't water spilling but oil? Does that matter much? Doesn't liquid under pressure always find the weakest point to escape?

In the early stages of the 90 day-old disaster, oil industry expert Matt Simmons told NBC News that a major area of seepage was coming from an area about 7 miles from the well. Simmons called it the “elephant behind the mouse.”

Why the heck would you try to cap the end -- before making the cut to relieve the pressure? Because it looks good?

Should the sea floor leak announced today be confirmed in same location as the one Simmons and Senator Nelson have reported, then BP and the government have been aware of it all along, further substantiating fears of an oil spill media blackout.

Wouldn't it be best at this point to leave cosmetic efforts well enough alone -- freely spilling if need be -- than to potentially mess up your later efforts in trying to cut that hole (or two) into the stream to alleviate the pressure? What if the weakest point the liquid finds -- either on the ocean floor, or in the weakest rubber point in the hose -- messes up your efforts to cut in later to provide relief?

Think... you better think...

Barnett's stock drops...

in my book:

For my money, Glenn Reynolds is one of the most interesting thinkers of my generation and today’s Internet age. In Germany last week, Instapundit was #1 on my relatively short list of websites that European students should check regularly to escape the cocoon of their media–which uniformly echoes the conventional wisdom of the New York Times. (Educated Europeans do not seem to realize that everything they believe about the U.S. and beyond they share in common with the American Left and/or the talking points of the DNC; at least in my years of traveling and lecturing throughout Europe, I have yet to hear a truly novel European view. But I digress.)

Glenn combines insight and wit together with an eclectic range of interests. He demonstrates this in today’s Wall Street Journal (apparently freely available without subscription!)...

Here’s an excerpt to induce you, as someone I know says, to “read the whole thing.”:

Too ... condescending, too much groupthink, too much intellectually snuggling up for links to suit my tastes... If Glenn Reynolds is the most interesting thinker of your generation*, sounds to me like you've been hanging too much with the Hollywood swells and forgotten your roots. Deep thinker, he ain't.

Damn intellectual diversity... sacrificed at the altar of inclusion. I guess it's hard to take the Cook County clout mentality out of the man, afterall.

--------------------
*Or maybe, one of Barnett's offspring has a project going, and a good word from the blogging godfather is needed to help the success part along... (You know how these things work in the intellectual link-me! thinking game these days. That competitive, Boomer, grading-on-the-curve thang.)

Make new friends...

but keep the old.


One is silver,

and the other...

maroon.


I am the proud owner of an '06 Chevy Malibu, maroon with grey interior. Nice body, the engine is so quiet... Only a 4-cylinder, picked it up at a GSA -- Government Services Auction -- in Fond du Lac yesterday. All government cars: this batch of 110+, from Wisconsin and Michigan. I was hoping for a 6-cylinder Impala, but with dealers bidding too, those were bidding out of my price range. I've had luck with the Corsica, which came from a Florida government auction -- it was a NASA car. Best... you pay no tax on government cars, in Wisconsin at least.

So a new (to me) car to take care of, and a summer Saturday unfolding already... What more could anyone ask for?

-------------------------

Lord master grant that I may never seek...
So much to be consoled as to console.
To be understood, as to understand.
To be loved, as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
In giving of ourselves that we receive...
And in dying that we are brought to eternal life.

Heyhi Tuesday.

Funny the things they come up with, riding through the countryside on the way to the beach...
Instead of a silo, why don't we call them hayhighs? (I'm taking liberties with the spelling)

Mid-Summer Valentine's Quiz.

Who are:

1) Jack and Diane?
2) Sam and Diane?
3) David and Maddie?
4) Frank and Joyce?
5) Pat and Mike?

Answers:

1) "Two 'merican kids growin' up ... in the heart-land."

2) An ex-athlete, ex-drunk, ladies-man, bar-owner who hires a woman, played by the lady in those Homemakers furniture commercials.

3.) "Some fly by night...".

4.) Frank Furillo, Joyce Davenport. Cop/P.D.

5.) Hepburn and Tracy. Haven't seen it myself.

Aunt - ticipation.

I visited the farmers's market yesterday with little ones in mind (my sister's children are coming to visit for a few days, my sister and mother too): Small mild carrots I can cut into sticks to snack on. Small broccoli heads from the gardens' second harvest. Fresh lettuce for salads and sandwiches. She is a nurse, and feeds them right, and pretty much I've been eating fresh myself for the past few weeks.

The weather looks to cooperate, so I'm thinking picnic under the trees. Colby Jack for the youngest who loves her cheese, and raspberries are in season too. I've got the blender out, so they could even have a choice of strawberry, blueberry, or a raspberry shake...

It's a great time of year, whatever season, when family comes to town to visit.

ADDED: The county Pioneer Museum is closed, and there's not much for "educational" places to visit around here, but I'm hoping if we visit the gardens and put in the kayaks, we'll have time to talk about the two learning things about the Upper Midwest I hope they take away from their visit: the richness of the topsoil, scraped up from retreating glaciers in the Ice Age; and the use of waterways for transport, back before the highways and railroads when the products that drew people to this region were furs needed for clothing, and the lumber needed to build things, like all those buildings, pre-Chicago Fire...

"Three Kings" in Miami.

Suddenly I feel sad for them. Wise men?
I guess if you like that kind of thing...

I just couldn't see...

devoting years of one's life to helping the Wheels of Justice grind more ... slowly, but I guess that's me.
No Fear, Cavalier, Renegade, and Steer Clear.

Make it a great Friday, folks...

Here we go!

If Rahm makes the political calls...

imagine his dilemma today!

(Kagan too, if as outgoing Solicitor General, she still has a recommending role in any of this.)

The judge's ruling is limited in scope: it applies only to couples in Massachusetts, and it deals only with federal recognition of gay marriage. It does not limit a state's right to reject another state's gay marriage.

The case is far more narrow than the one pending in California, that argues any ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.

But Ohio State University professor Marc Spindelman says the Massachusetts decision may prove to be broadly influential.

"The court's decision doesn't box any other court in, but it's certainly likely to be persuasive authority and virtually certain to have a significant ripple effect," Spindelman says.

That ripple will grow if the Massachusetts decision survives expected challenges and makes it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Obama administration lawyers are not yet commenting but an appeal is likely.

The president opposes DOMA but administration lawyers say it's their job to defend the law, and they can't pick and choose based on their policy preferences.

"DOMA is Unconstitutional."

I remember defending this one in the classroom, working the Equal Protection argument in a Conflicts of Law class. The professor, who meant well* and iirc, knew a Minnesota lawyer who had testified in Congress as to the amendment's constitutionality, wasn't so sure confident.

Gill was filed last year by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the same group that sued Massachusetts for same-sex marriage and won a huge victory in 2003 in Goodridge. It was brought on behalf of seven same-sex married couples and three survivors of same-sex spouses who applied for, and were denied, various federal benefits to which opposite-sex married couples would have been entitled. The various benefits are described at pp. at 6–14 of the opinion, but are only a few of the 1,138 benefits identified by the U.S. Government Accountability Office that arise from federal law alone.

Analytically, the Gill decision is like the state court decisions rejecting common rationales for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. The court doesn’t hold that sexual-orientation discrimination is subject to strict scrutiny or that there is a fundamental right to marry that includes same-sex couples. Instead, applying the increasingly non-deferential rational basis test, the court concludes that there is no legitimate purpose rationally served by denying federal benefits to same-sex married couples while giving the same benefits to opposite-sex married couples. Previous state court decisions, like the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts in 2003, have also held that traditional marriage limitations are irrational.

* Remember, this was another Clinton-era compromise like DADT, meant to help gays as best as possible since it wasn't so strongly accepted then that they weren't second-class citizens before the law, and when it was more seen as fair game to play politics with gay rights. The alleged fear in some circles was conservatives attempting to amend the U.S. Constitution.

In 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court determined--in a decision that was later overruled through a popular referendum--that the state's constitution enshrined a right to same-sex marriage.

Immediately, fears arose that sister states might have to recognize Hawaii's same-sex marriages under Article IV, Section 1, of the Constitution, which commands that "Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each state to the public Acts, Records, and Judicial Proceedings of every other state." The second sentence of that section authorizes Congress to prescribe by general laws the manner in which sister-state acts "shall be proved, and the Effect thereof."

While the meaning of the Full Faith and Credit Clause is anything but clear, the historical practice concerning marriage has been relatively straightforward. As a general rule, states recognize marriages concluded in other states.[3] In all states, however, courts have consistently recognized an exception for out-of-state marriages that violate the strong public policy of the forum state. For example, states will generally refuse to recognize a sister-state marriage where the partners chose that state for the transparent purpose of evading the laws of the state in which they are domiciled. (The point of this rule is to protect against a "race to the bottom," meaning Nevada.) Similarly, the public policy exception has traditionally covered cases of bigamy, polygamy, consanguinity, and, in an earlier age, miscegenation.

When the Hawaii Supreme Court legalized homosexual marriage, it seemed unclear whether the public policy exception would extend to such unions. To avert the possibility that the courts of a single state might drag the entire country into recognizing same-sex marriage, Congress in 1996 enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which provides that no state shall be required to give effect to same-sex marriages recognized in a sister state. (DOMA also provides that for purposes of federal law, "marriage" shall mean exclusively the union of one man and one woman.) The act was passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses and signed into law by President Clinton. Thirty-five states promptly responded by enacting "little DOMAs"--that is, statutes that affirmatively bar state courts from recognizing other states' same-sex marriages.

** Lest you think we celebrate in ignorance...I know this is one federal judge, and predictions from corners like Balkin's*** are it won't stand on appeal, but law is like sports. You go by the call of the last umpire calling the game.

And the logic is sounding more and more sound.

***
Balkin:

I am a strong supporter of same sex marriage. Nevertheless, I predict that both of these opinions will be overturned on appeal. Whether one likes it or not-- and I do not-- Judge Tauro is way ahead of the national consensus on the the equal protection issue. I personally think that discrimination against gays and lesbians is irrational, but a federal district court judge-- who must obey existing precedents, and who is overseen by a federal judiciary and a Supreme Court constituted as they currently are--is in a very different position than I am.

or, Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah. Respectfully...

There is much to admire in Judge Tauro's bravery in writing these opinions, and in his forthright declaration that the federal government's policy is unjust and unreasonable. His two opinions are wild, audacious, and fearless in their logic. But for the same reason, they will and should be quickly overturned. I believe that the civil rights of gays and lesbians will someday be vindicated by legislatures and courts. But not in this way.

This One's for Glenn...

Mr. Reynolds, if you're nasty.

(*ahem*): FASTER please ...

BOSTON — A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday found that a law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, ruling that gay and lesbian couples deserve the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples.

...

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California, Irvine, School of Law, was more supportive of the logic of the two opinions, and said they worked together to establish a broad right of marriage for same-sex couples.

The key issue in this case, and in all litigation about marriage equality for gays and lesbians, is: ‘Does the government have a rational basis for treating same-sex couples differently from heterosexual couples?’ Here, the court says there is no rational basis for treating same-sex couples differently from homosexual couples. Therefore, DOMA is unconstitutional, and conditioning federal funding on compliance with DOMA is unconstitutional,” he said.

A central issue in the fight over the constitutionality of California’s same-sex marriage ban is whether laws restricting gay rights should be held to a tougher standard of review than the “rational basis” test, and so Judge Tauro’s decision takes a different path that would eliminate the need for that line of argument, Professor Chemerinsky said. “There’s no need to get to higher scrutiny if it fails rational basis review,” he said.

It's Time to Come Home Already.

Please:

KABUL, Afghanistan — In a devastating case of friendly fire, NATO pilots who did not realize that Afghan soldiers had laid a trap for Taliban militants on the ground beneath them mistakenly attacked the soldiers as they lay in wait, killing at least five of them, Afghan officials said.

At some point, good intention -- the good we may do -- is just plain outweighed by reality. And reality is, in war, mistakes happen...

My greatest fear? An ambush or attack on allied soldiers, good guys American or not, akin to the Beirut barracks bombing of 1983.

Best to come home now, and put all this manpower effort and money toward America's defenses -- protecting our borders, defensively securing our planes, trains, and infrastructure systems, and whatever else to protect citizens here at home.

It's not isolationism. It's reality: we clean up Afghanistan, but what of Pakistan? Yemen? Etc.? If the defense is strong at home, we're better protected here, nevermind what's being cooked up for us out in the caves, countries away.

Get them out now, and put them to use here at home. The best defense might be a strong offense, but it's all in how you define offense, right?

And everyone knows: Defense wins the game, in the end. America needs to be a winner again, and accidental actions that kill the good guys have to be counted -- and felt sincerely -- as horrible losses.

God Bless America; let's be brave enough to keep the fight here, and involve more of our citizenry in staying alert, and not forgetting about what's really happening ... over there.

Interview with Art Spiegelman.

I read this one years ago, in a book interviewing famous authors (artists and cartoonists too) and excerpting their words about their work:

I had one dream about comics, incidentally. It took place a long time ago. This guy, who was very important in helping me get started as a cartoonist, had one of the world's greatest collections of paper ephemera and old comic strips in his basement. I would stay in his basement and occasionally just fall asleep there, drift off. I had a dream that consisted of drifting off in his basement looking at "Happy Hooligan," a turn-of-the-century comic strip about a kind of tramp character, who wore a tin can on is head. In the dream I have a tin can on my head. I'm trying to get the can off and it won't come off. It's permanently there. The dream has several episodes of me trying to get this can off by having people pull at it, by knocking it against something. Nothing works. Finally I sit under a tree and start sobbing. Then this other character kind of lopes in and says, "Don't worry, Buddy Boy, it's just the style you're drawn in."

The other interesting thing that happened in this dream was that there were these occasional and very rhythmic moments that were rather painful. These were the moments where I disappeared and reappeared again. And they would happen rhythmically. I realized those were the little white spaces between panels.

I can't find it now, but somebody once said in writing, you have to read the white spaces too. What's left unsaid is often the most important part...

-----------------
I had the luck to see Spiegelman's PowerPoint presentation at the Miami Book Fair 2008. He and his wife had developed a series of Toon Books teaching children to read, in simple comic book style. Fascinating.

In my eyes, it rivaled Larry Lessig's entertaining Powerpoint at the 2003 Kastenmeier Lecture at UW Law. And you know what they say about the "Lessig Method."

Funny men, both.

Y'all ready for this?

It seems maybe July is relevant in determining which team will be the next NBA champion ... or not. (Remember when these things were won more on the floor, than in the agents' offices?)

Dave George updates us on the courting of Dwayne Wade/LeBron James/Chris Bosh ... Miami vs. Chicago vs. Cleveland:

For the first time, however, Wade seems a little torn about how this game should end. With all the pampering of being courted by the Heat and by the Bulls - the home team of his Chicago youth - comes some serious squeezing, too.

How much worth does Wade place on joining a Chicago team with enough talent for a sudden run at greatness, or a least a potentially quicker shot than Miami? If the answer isn't $30 million, he'll certainly stay with the Heat, who according to the rules of free agency can pay that much more over the life of a six-year contract than Chicago can offer over five.

Then there's the alpha-dog issue, a dominant NBA theme. Playing on the same team with LeBron would be great, but leaving Miami to do it would make it seem that Dwyane is just like everyone else in this scenario, granting the King's every wish.

Getting Chris Bosh to join forces with him, on the other hand, would prove Wade's power and enhance his championship hopes. Only problem is, LeBron simultaneously is using his considerable muscle to claim Bosh for his own team, whether that turns out to be the Cavaliers or somebody else.

Wade and Bosh have the same agent, who must be fairly dizzy by now, and all three of them have Pat Riley leaning in hard for answers. He's schooled in every post-up personnel move ever used in this league, and this week is probably inventing a few more.

ADDED: If you can't move to this...

Hey ... pundits: Leave those kids alone!

For the sake of their young family, I hope those still chasing a sordid story will leave this young couple alone. (Even partisan people in the house say, "Yeah!")

Levi Johnston mans up, and I don't mean posing Playgirl:

“Last year, after Bristol and I broke up, I was unhappy and a little angry. Unfortunately, against my better judgment, I publicly said things about the Palins that were not completely true,” Levi told People. “I have already privately apologized to Todd and Sarah. Since my statements were public, I owe it to the Palins to publicly apologize.”

Single mother and national abstinence spokesperson Bristol Palin, mother of Levi’s child, said the pair hoped to turn, “a new page here as co-parents … and [put] aside the past because doing so is in [our son] Tripp’s best interest.”

For his part Levi has said to the family, “I hope one day to restore your trust.”

What a boob! (singular)

For heaven's sake, it's a hot day everywhere... Can't somebody cook up a faux controversy involving a younger woman with breasts, heck anything for that political flip-flopping blogger Ann Althouse?

She must be hurting bad as more and more commenters avoid her site; I hear she's even threatening to off a baby bunny to supplement her food budget now that the conservative blogads have dropped off.

(Note to Ann: there's a reason fishermen practice "catch and release" with the smaller spawn... Wait until the bunny fattens up to more than a oversized mouse before sending the new hubby out to demonstrate his huntin' skills for the purpose of generating blog photos?)

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ADDED: Sorry to have to spell this out, but my main beef with the Althouse is not so much her inconsistent thinking skills and that embarrassing sucking up to whomever she believes can help her career along (blogging "career" too)... it's that she once accused me of posting under the name Ploopusgrll on her blog, and when she was told in no uncertain terms she was incorrect, she didn't have the class to apologize, but instead deleted all my attempts to correct her, and then called me ... a stalker (of her blog presumably).

It's that tenured "can't touch this" lack of accountability all the way down...

So come on now, people! Toss her a gratuitous "show yer tits" photo or two, before she resorts to inventing some new faux controversy to up her blog hits.

Remember, in some subsections of the blogosphere, it doesn't matter how they come -- or why -- it just matters that they come.

What a boob.

"So Hot It Hurts..."

A little Nelly for your mid-morning break...

Krugman's Complaints.

"But I’m older, wiser, and a lot more cynical now..."

Yeah, I suppose hanging online with 400 of your fellow cynical liberal journalists, spinning the economic/political news and convincing no one of the independentness of your efforts can do that to a writer.

With his experience and wisdom, too bad Krugman joined that list in the first place. People might find his work less suspect if he had just chosen to go it alone. Stayed clear of the politicizing, kept independent, and not had to filter all that ratf**k nonsense.

Heck, had he stayed independent and actually exercised any influence, you'd think men like Krugman might been wise enough to question Alan Greenspan's ideas that marketed the housing bubble. It must really be a downer to be sitting there with all this wisdom, expertise and knowledge to offer your country, yet for all your prize-winning genius, it comes to naught for the country.

Ah, have a bowl of good ice cream, and don't even question the ineffectiveness of your work. Seems to be going around in the professional circles these days.

"My mother is a fish."

Didn't one of Faulkner's characters figure this out years ago?

It took him years of searching in the Canadian Arctic, but in 2004, Neil Shubin found the fossilized remains of what he thinks is one of our most important ancestors.

Turns out, it's a fish.

Shubin says his find, which he named Tiktaalik, represents an important evolutionary step, because it has the structures that will ultimately become parts of our human bodies. Shoulders, elbows, legs, a neck, a wrist — they're all there in Tiktaalik.

"Everything that we have are versions of things that are seen in fish," says Shubin.

Of course, there are things that we have that Tiktaalik doesn't.

"We have a big brain, and portions of that big brain are not seen in Tiktaalik," says Shubin. "But the template, all the way down to the DNA that builds it, is already present in creatures like this."

Inside this fish, Shubin sees us.

Hth.

In case you missed the Kagan hearings re-run on C-Span this weekend, or weren't following newscoverage last week, maybe out picking berries and canoodling in the summer fields -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- a quick Google search reveals this is what she said about judicial modesty:

In the first day of her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan said she would be a "modest" justice and show proper deference to Congress and the presidency, the New York Times reports. Kagan pledged to consider each case with "even-handedness and impartiality" and to offer a "fair shake" to everyone who comes before the court.

According to the Times, Kagan's statements aimed to mollify Republican criticism that she would advance a liberal agenda if confirmed to the court. Both parties expect Kagan to win confirmation, barring "unforeseen circumstances," the Times reports.

Important because it sounds like the senators, especially Lindsay Graham, intend to follow up and watch her closely, holding her to her professed words during the job interview. Read the whole thing?

I know what I know.

I've seen what I've said.
We come and we go...
It's the thing that I keep in the back of my head.

~Paul Simon.

Who am I to blow against the wind?

*though his lyrics are: I'll sing what I've said.
Not the way I heard 'em, though.

The 99-Week Myth.

Not a big fan of Paul Krugman -- not a non-fan either, but most of his work, what he writes about, doesn't concern me.

I'm more a common-sense thinker, and as anyone who's taken more than the introductory university economics knows, it's best to throw your real-life instincts and common sense out the window if you want to win in the economics game. There is one thing Krugman's been pushing lately -- popping the austerity myth, where frugality is automatically rewarded -- that I must say makes good sense to me.

Now to backtrack: I've always been a saver. And a worker. First jobs: delivering The Shopper route (a free Wednesday paper) door to door (they wanted it doorknob hung, not tossed on the porches) with my siblings, pulling the wagons weekly.

Then, concurrently, my sister and I took on the Hammond Times afternoon daily and Sunday morning routes. (We split the bigger town route into two that were bike-able for us. Two trips each on Sundays for the heavier paper; walking in winter when the pavement proved unkind to thin 10-speed tires.) I think I mentioned this before: though we lived in Thornton -- a Chicago south suburb, many of our customers were steelworkers and factory workers, eager to understand whatever was being reported on upcoming closings and the industry's decline, circa the late 70s, early to mid 80s.

We delivered, collected (the part I hated most), and banked our money. I think we were getting at least 5% or 7% at the time, a healthy interest rate where, when you saw what your money was making, it wasn't hard to inculcate savings as a lifelong habit.

Skip ahead to 2010. Still a saver, still live on the lower-end economy where the prices of items matter to me in calculating their true worth. (ie/ We never played with cheap plastic toys, that were built to break days after opening their packaging.)

Oh, I'll pay a good price if something has value to me. I still disagree with you get what you pay for, necessarily -- too easy for others to jack up the prices, and yes, there are still bargains if you find the right shopping situations. (One reason I've always said it's good not to loose track of your roots: your dollar often goes further if you were brought up thriftily and can still go back to those peoples and places).

Which brings me around to Krugman's column today: I wish he might have addressed this 99-week myth. Now it's my understanding that while Congress, the feds, decide whether there is money available to bail out the workers affected by the poor corporate decisions and ethical failures made by the management responsible for keeping the business end afloat... the states determine according to their policies what the weekly rates will be.

Here in Wisconsin, it's $363 a week, maximum, for 26 weeks. Plus a $25/week federal stimulus. Then, as Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) kicks in, a Tier system is set up -- at least 3 or 4 tiers extension, which can extend out to 99 weeks.

Now those 99 weeks: folks have only exhausted those if they were laid off at the very beginning of this cricitical economic period, drawing full benefits weekly. But if Congress indeed cuts off funding now, there's this myth that the only people affected are those who've been on the dole for that full period. Not true.

If you've exhausted your state's allotment, and you were counting on those tiers to keep your household budgets afloat until the economy starts hiring again, in many states, those are gone too. Congress not renewing, means a person can exhaust the current state minimum, yet not be eligible for the EUC, because it's gone. Dryed up, the Democrats and Republicans unable to come to an agreement about whether this should continue to be funded via the million (billion?) stimulus package Congress passed last year (as the Republicans prefer) or from fresh funds (as Krugman and the Democrats wish.)

Personally, I didn't take the fed-funded COBRA extension, preferring to use what I've saved in premiums toward out-of-pocket medical expenses, like dental. And I've always worked -- even through my merit-scholarship-paid, law-school-retraining adventure. (I scored in the 92nd percentile on the LSAT, apparently attractive to schools looking to up their overall test numbers. But mine was a tuition-only scholarship -- not living expenses like food, utilities and rent, which were considerably higher in Madison -- so I took library jobs to pay the bills without having to eat too much into savings. Luckily, I've never been one to live beyond my means, so no debt collectors to worry about...)

I've paid into the state unemployment system, and have no qualms about using those benefits to pay my monthly bills as a single woman living alone. Renting -- $450 for a 2-bedroom to sleep in, and a room of my own to do personal non-remunerative work out of. (Some day, dreams will pay off. I continue to believe in the American Dream, despite setbacks.)

So if you're reading about this 99-week thing, especially if you've got a job yourself and are hurting financially too, having seen the price of gas rise enormously this past decade, affecting commute prices and heating costs (I'm not even going to touch the depressing 401k and other alleged stock-savings-plans depreciations) ... don't think that this stimulus money is only going to help the long-term out-of-work.

How do you retrain to find work, if you've pretty well educated already? How do you up and go to where the jobs are, even if you're fairly mobile comparatively, if nobody is hiring? Sure you can piece together part-time jobs if you are lucky: Census work, swim coaching, hiring out for lessons or working piecemeal if you have skills someone else could benefit from ... all stringing out the initial state allotment, by reporting what you've made, and deducting that calculation from the weekly benefit amount.

In short, the people who would be helped by passage of this bill in Congress aren't all 99-weekers. They're anybody who's close to exhausting what their previous employers have paid in on the workers' behalf, who will also lose the subsequent emergency tiers. I don't think the media makes that clear.

Commonsense on the austerity issue: Krugman is right. Now is the time, when the economy is depressed and it's a buyer's market, to be looking for that good, second-hand car. People will drop their prices, and you might just pick up an economic bargain. Now truly is the time ... if you're a lifelong saver -- to be spending. To be investing in your future, and taking advantage of the deflated prices to invest in yourself and move forward.

If you were in the market for a first-time home, maybe you took advantage of that $8,000 stimulus, if you had a stable job and could commit to keeping roots in an area. Maybe your gas-guzzler qualified for the new car stimulus, and you turned in the keys of the old for a new one. (If I had a dime for everyone who asked me why my "clunker" -- a '95 Corsica with 208,000 miles now, but a pretty good body still if you can see past that minor hail damage -- wasn't traded up for a better vehicle, I'd be cruising in style... Answer: She didn't qualify, as she's a pretty fuel-efficient runner.) Maybe you used that COBRA extension to continue paying your family's share of the premiums, subsidized by the stimulus, to ensure you had the security of continual healthcare coverage.

Or maybe you worked for one of the corporations that failed us, and the taxpayers helped stimulate your industry so that you were back in the bonus round before you even felt the pain.

It's a shame workers need jobs to support themselves. It's a shame savings, even thriftily spent with food and household budgets supplemented in any way possible, can't continue to carry one forever.

It's a shame that in America today, we're more concerned with infrastructure-building, and bringing up the quality of lives not for our own peoples, but for those countries who -- truth be told -- don't want us any longer as guests. I wish I had a stockpile of lithium buried under my bed. I wish I had a professional parent (not really) one who could game the system for citizenship, for IRS tax purposes, for guaranteed future employment of offspring ... but I'm an American, and ethically, that would keep me up at night.

I'm not eating $11/pint ice cream, or taking advantage of the exchange rate to spend weeks abroad luxuriating in the finest European seasides on my falsified American passport... I'm just an American worker, who is stagnating with something to offer, wondering when the tide will come to lift all boats. I was raised Catholic, remain catholic, and as an (legal) immigrant's child, I honestly do still want to believe we are all in this together, in this the best of all possible worlds.

Do you?

Still believe, that is?

If so, then don't look away. Don't buy the 99-week myth, that we're all being taken care of for almost 2 years now, and it's sheer laziness, or lack of skills, or lack of want, that has fellow Americans fending for ourselves. I'll wrap here, but maybe in other writings I can let you know what a lack of jobs, a lack of money, a lack of hope ... does to families and communities, like what I saw in south Chicagoland in the steelmill-shuttering, factory-closing days. (My first "real" jobs were at The Daily Calumet and Southtown Economist newspapers.) It's not pretty, but if you keep on going, keep your eyes open, and absorb just a bit of human nature, you can't help but be affected.

The study of economics translated into human stories. American stories. One and all.

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ADDED: Ross's The Day After column is relevant on this topic today too...

Lol -- oh dear.

While busy castigating "Miss Dowd", this pundit totally misreads yesterday's column:

The rest of the column, fittingly, was about Prince Charles and vampires.

No, no. There was nothing about Prince Charles there. It was about ... Count Dracula. Of Transylvania. Another light-skinned royal. You missed the whole point, buddy. (Didn't that Twilight/Eclipse Edward/Jacob talk culturally clue you in?)

Honestly, I don't understand why there's not a basic reading comprehension, or overall knowledge base requirement, to test out those who would spend their writing efforts battling strawmen. Maybe a way to curb your arrogance, so the stories are written truly, not superimposed by a writer with limited eyesight seeing only what his limitations allow.

Really, aren't there enough real men-, real people-issues out there, to be written about that you don't waste Internet space preaching against your own miscomprehensions? This stuff dumbs the dialogue down, and doesn't add anything but muck to the clouded national conversation we've been laboring under.

And yes, this particular post was linked by the self-proclaimed Instapundit, a bespectacled (poor eyesight?), technologically-savvy, conservative law professor operating out of Tennessee.

(Please, call him a professional linker. A new media creation. A kingmaker of blogs, if you will. Just not a serious journalist, or anybody who has anything honest to offer the country today, when he sifts/winnows/culls... and promotes work like that. Prince Charles-- lol!)

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*Sadly, it appears the author of this particular post, Don Surber, still draws his dollars from the Old Media. Traditional salary and news platform, with the new media accountabilty and ethics (I wonder if he'll correct his misread?). The worst of both worlds. Weren't we working to buy these types of guys and gals out of the profession, to open up the field to more accountable, more hungry journalists who want to fight more than strawmen?

Patience, Mary, patience...

A Modern-Day American Tale.

If you've got time today, read this story in relation to the national health care discussion, and consider the implications of mandatorily sharing subsidizing unnecessary risks once we're all forced into the insurance pool together.

And don't miss this one: A much, much stronger story, about a family pulling together and sacrificing parts of their own lives, to care for their son too.
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Also, does your car insurance pay for your maintenance payments -- oil changes, tire rotations, mandatory upkeep? Do you stay on top of that yourself, and pay out of pocket?

Wouldn't it make sense -- so that consumers can feel the costs of their own routine medical expenses -- if health insurance plans also asked people to pay out of pocket for the basics, so that they actually could bear some of the costs of their own maintenance needs?

Resources are finite, and some manage risks better than others. Why penalize them, instead of encouraging their example?

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Off to water the gardens... No more pictures, until late in the season. I fear I'm encouraging an unhealthy competition of posting garden shots and produce pictures online. (ie/ My tomatoes are riper than yours.) Gardening really isn't like that -- as you come to understand observing the variety of plots and plants in your community.

Make it a wonderful Independence Day -- one and all.

Good collection of characters. Balanced.

Break it down for me now:

Fifty-six men from each of the original 13 colonies signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Nine of the signers were immigrants, two were brothers and two were cousins. One was an orphan. The average age of a signer was 45. Benjamin Franklin was the oldest delegate at 70. The youngest was Thomas Lynch Jr. of South Carolina at 27.

Eighteen of the signers were merchants or businessmen, 14 were farmers, and four were doctors. Twenty-two were lawyers - although William Hooper of North Carolina was "disbarred" when he spoke out against the king - and nine were judges. Stephen Hopkins had been governor of Rhode Island. Forty-two signers had served in their colonial legislatures.

John Witherspoon of New Jersey was the only active clergyman to attend. (Indeed, he wore his pontificals to the sessions.) Almost all were Protestants. Charles Carroll of Maryland was the lone Roman Catholic.

Seven of the signers were educated at Harvard, four at Yale, four at William & Mary, and three at Princeton. Witherspoon was the president of Princeton, and George Wythe was a professor at William & Mary. His students included Declaration scribe Thomas Jefferson.

Seventeen signers fought in the American Revolution. Thomas Nelson was a colonel in the Second Virginia Regiment and then commanded Virginia military forces at the Battle of Yorktown. William Whipple served with the New Hampshire militia and was a commanding officer in the decisive Saratoga campaign. Oliver Wolcott led the Connecticut regiments sent for the defense of New York and commanded a brigade of militia that took part in the defeat of General Burgoyne. Caesar Rodney was a major general in the Delaware militia; John Hancock held the same rank in the Massachusetts militia.

The British captured five signers during the war. Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, and Arthur Middleton were captured at the Battle of Charleston in 1780. George Walton was wounded and captured at the Battle of Savannah. Richard Stockton of New Jersey never recovered from his incarceration at the hands of British Loyalists. He died in 1781.

Thomas McKean of Delaware wrote John Adams that he was "hunted like a fox by the enemy - compelled to remove my family five times in a few months." Abraham Clark of New Jersey had two of his sons captured by the British during the war.

Eleven signers had their homes and property destroyed. Francis Lewis's New York home was razed and his wife taken prisoner. John Hart's farm and mills were destroyed when the British invaded New Jersey, and he died while fleeing capture. Carter Braxton and Nelson, both of Virginia, lent large sums of their personal fortunes to support the war effort but were never repaid.

Fifteen of the signers participated in their states' constitutional conventions, and six - Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Franklin, George Clymer, James Wilson, and George Reed - signed the U.S. Constitution.

After the Revolution, 13 signers went on to become governors. Eighteen served in their state legislatures. Sixteen became state and federal judges. Seven became members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Six became U.S. senators. James Wilson and Samuel Chase became Supreme Court justices. Jefferson, Adams, and Elbridge Gerry each became vice president. Adams and Jefferson later became president.

Five signers played major roles in the establishment of colleges and universities: Franklin and the University of Pennsylvania; Jefferson and the University of Virginia; Benjamin Rush and Dickinson College; Lewis Morris and New York University; and George Walton and the University of Georgia.

Adams, Jefferson, and Carroll were the longest surviving signers. Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll was the last signer to die in 1832 at the age of 95.

Sources: Robert Lincoln, Lives of the Presidents of the United States, with Biographical Notices of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (Brattleboro Typographical Company, 1839); John and Katherine Bakeless, Signers of the Declaration (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969); Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-1989 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989).

I'm Free.

"You see, boys forget what their country means by just reading The Land of the Free in history books. Then they get to be men they forget even more. Liberty's too precious a thing to be buried in books, Miss Saunders. Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I'm free to think and to speak. My ancestors couldn't, I can, and my children will. Boys ought to grow up remembering that."

~Jefferson Smith

In a Congolese State of Mind.

Technology reveals what David Livingstone was thinking and doing during those lost years:

In the last years of his life when he was in remote parts of Africa, Livingstone had run out of writing paper and had to scrawl his letters on used newspapers and pages from books using ink from berries. Most of the letters are now virtually unreadable and historians have had to rely on versions that were heavily censored by Livingstone's friend and biographer Horace Waller. But Livingstone's true thoughts are being revealed by scientists using techniques that enhance the ink while suppressing the background print.

The first deciphered letter, written on 5 February 1871 from a village called Bambarre in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has just been made public in the first stage of a project to reveal the contents of Livingstone's previously unpublished final diary from 1870-71.

Waller, to whom the letters were addressed, omitted (at his friend's request) some references to Livingstone's ill health and weaknesses. Livingstone wrote to him: "I am terribly knocked up but this is for your own eye only: in my second childhood [referring to his lack of teeth – several of which he extracted himself] a dreadful old fogie. Doubtful if I live to see you again."

Despite his ill health in the midst of a cholera epidemic that devastated the local population, he wrote of his determination to complete his search for the source of the Nile: "Well I am off in a few days to finish with the help of the Almighty new explorations."

The letter also includes Livingstone's thoughts on the "awful traffic" of the slave trade which he said could be "congenial only to the devil and his angels". Fiercely competitive, he was critical of the achievements of fellow explorers Samuel White Baker, Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. The Scottish missionary also talked about the prospects for commerce and Christianity in Africa, gave details of lakes and rivers in central Africa and expressed his disgust with the British government's policies in Africa and the Middle East.

It is thought the Bambarre letter was only delivered to England in 1872 by the New York Herald reporter Henry Morton Stanley who met Livingstone in late 1871 with the words: "Dr Livingstone, I presume?"

Morton had been despatched by his paper to find Livingstone, who had been lost to the outside world for six years. Livingstone died at the age of 60 in 1873 in Zambia from malaria and internal bleeding caused by dysentery. He suffered extreme ill health in the final years of his life, including horrific tropical ulcers on his feet and legs.

Eventually, the full text of the letters will be posted at the Livingstone Online website. Photo: Callum Bennetts/AP

Extraordinary moves for extraordinary times.

Was at a St. Paul Saints ballgame once, where the baseball left the field of play and landed in a beer cup sitting on the ledge in front of a fan. Or rather, knocked over the cup of beer. Cool.

This one -- not so cool. But you have to wonder two things: if the guy had his eye on the ball and saw it coming at him, funny his reaction wasn't to let the phone go and instinctually protect his face.

And the woman to his right, with the glove on her left hand? She had a play on that ball! Perhaps she too was unable to break with convention at a critical time though, unconsciously thinking she'd be a ball hog for reaching in front of him and snagging the bouncer into the stands.

(Or maybe it's just easier to judge critical reactions in retrospect, when the fans really had but a few seconds, if that, to put up their hands.)

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Speaking of instincts, convention and sports oddities:

Is this for real ?? How bizarre, how bizarre...

Thoughts for the Day.

Isn't Christopher Hitchens just a poor man's Gore Vidal? Similar enough, though Vidal had the family and social link to American intelligentsia, back when we had an educated class. And as Vidal noted in his memoirs, what separated him from his peers long gone: he took chose not to smoke back when so many of his generation were lighting up.

Not a fan of Hitchens -- or even a follower -- myself. But it's interesting to note the differences between those more cautious, willing to live genteely for a cause (and eventually, doesn't every wise old man transcend causes and live his life for the mere value of life itself?) and those who throw themselves headfirst into the fray, the devil be damned?

The Jimmie Trimble story in Palimpsest, plus a military vet's accounting of Jimmie's final minutes on Iwo Jima -- shared elsewhere -- might help explain the path Vidal took; you have to wonder what a writer learns from the deaths, and lives, of others.

On February 24, 1945, the Third Marine Division went ashore. They were soon suffering heavy casualties from Japanese rocket attacks launched from a hill known as Number 362. On February 27, Trimble's platoon commander asked for eight volunteers to locate the position of the rocket sites. Private Trimble was among the first to volunteer.

The following night, four two-man reconnaissance teams were in foxholes ahead of the rest of the platoon. At midnight a flare signalled an attack, and immediately Japanese soldiers were among the American Marines in their foxholes.

There was shouting and screaming, rifle shots and grenade explosions. In the chaos, Trimble suffered a bayonet wound to his right shoulder while still in his foxhole. Then two grenades exploded, severely wounding him. Seconds later a Japanese soldier with a mine strapped to his body jumped in the foxhole, wrapped himself around Jimmie Trimble and detonated the mine, killing himself and the young ball player.

Y'all Come Back Saloon.

Oak Ridge Boys.

She played tamborine
with a silver jingle...
And she must have known the words to at least a million tunes...

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The Band:

I can't take the way he sings...
but I love to hear him talk!

"....and they were each assigned...

very hazardous duties."


RIP Allyn Ferguson.

Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Elliot (who died in 2001) also wrote hundreds of underscores — setting the mood or propelling action — for episodes of series like “The Rookies,” “S.W.A.T.,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Police Story,” “Banacek” and “Fish.”

“But if you look at Ferguson’s filmography, the majority of his career was really devoted to made-for-television movies,” Mr. Burlingame said. “He would write exciting, fully orchestral scores, often with classically swashbuckling sounds.”