The Rise of the Rabble-Rousers

Heard interesting comments from Jonah Goldberg on Bill Kristol show.

Seems a half a century ago a guy named Will Herberg foresaw our present political condition.  Writing in "The New Leader" in 1954, he said the Founding Fathers were as afraid of despotism as they were of direct democracy because they were close students of history and understood that direct democracy leads to despotism.  He said the demagogues of ancient Greece and Roman manipulated the crowd and Caesar and Pericles used the Forum and the Arena to rabble-rouse and exert their will on the elites, and the Founding Fathers were terrified of that -- they wanted deliberative democracy that was largely closed off.

But it was democratic in these were the legitimate representatives of the people, but then behind closed doors they could slowly and methodically think things through.

Herberg said there has always been rabble-rousers in the past but there was no means of doing it well technologically until radio came along and FDR became first modern effective rabble-rouser.  FDR’s fireside chats were used to launch these incredible public pressure campaigns against Congress: write letters, make phone calls, send telegrams in order to force Congress to exert my will.

Then Sen. Joe McCarthy comes along and there’s rabble-rousing on the right on the radio.   McCarthy had no serious ideas to do anything, just has the right enemies and aroused passions.  (Sound familiar?) Herberg said television was making it worse and that the early investigative hearings were basically TV shows.  Mass entertainment technology, he claimed, is siphoning off the deliberative aspects of politics and making it into rabble-rousing and entertainment.

Obligatory Hilton Head Trip Loggish

Sayonara, summer.

Saturday:  Off to Hilton Head! With dogs in tow - Max restless early and often. “Paced” in his seat, and was omni-alert. Luckily not much squeaking from him.

Listened to Brian Lamb interview Gorbachev biographer William Taubman. Man those C-Span interviews are like no other. Interesting, informative and never cloying. Lamb “wears well”.

11 hrs 45 min ride due to longish stops (Steph briefly lost trying to find bathroom in outdoor mall) and later Wendy’s drivethru was dog-slow. Within five minutes of arrival Max left a steaming dump on the wood floor, and Maris returned the favor with a dump in the upstairs bedroom. Oh joy. This despite having walked them several times along the way, including giving Max an opportunity just 30 minutes before getting to the house. Go figure.

Sunday:

No 9:30 Mass due it no longer being summer, so planned on 11:15. Let Max out of crate and within a minute he peed in three places (two downstairs and one upstairs). Needless to say he’s been keyed up and highly charged. Practically feral, with the manners of a black bear. Took him and Maris out for a walk, obviously closing the barn door after the horse was out.

Nice walk on warm, cloudy day around ritzy neighbor and then to beach. “Moody and atmospheric” is my best spin on the weather. Sometimes the weatherman is right. Got the gates up to keep the dogs secure on the back patio and pool area. Noise from pool filter is loud; “harmless white noise” is my best spin on it.

Love the look of that tall white book case that handsomely wraps around the corner. There’s something so gentlemanly about a tall bookcase with a sliding ladder. This room helped inspire our sunroom decor, both in the white shelving and the blue art objects.

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Much entertained by Maris’s obsession with getting into the pool. She wanted to so much but was afraid, and so she circled it a couple dozen times and eventually made the big leap and got in the first step (about three inches in depth). Eventually she graduated to the second step, about a foot and a half in depth. Baby steps for "baby danger".

Later ran three miles with the dogs down through Sea Pines. Saw a couple gators, one a baby we scared away. Biker came by and said, “Looks like you’re working a lot harder than they are” and I verily assented.

Monday:

Woke up middle of the night with bad sore throat, probably due to a/c chill combined with fan. Hard jog likely contributed. Turned fan off and took zicam and it helped; by morning less pain. And I have an excuse for no workout today.

Total noise this morning.  Pool pump, and then noise pollution in form of neighbors spray-washing their fence. Used a lot of ear protection and going outside almost a non-starter.

Later, sweet relief by 3:30pm. The neighbor’s motorized spray-washing is long over and just now I cut the electrical supply to the pool filter via outdoor breaker (not sure what other electricity I cut off) and silence, sweet silence reigns. What a difference! I feel empowered. Like I freed up a lot of previously unusable space and made this place our own. I feel like the owner the week and given the actual owner didn’t offer to do anything in response to my email, it’s a no-brainer. And it’s good for him since now I don’t have to give him a negative review, although wifi so pathetic it’s bathetic. Have to reboot the router nightly.

The brief afternoon sun gave way to clouds and eventually spitting rain. We called up Hilton Head delivery service (“Hilton Head Delivers” I think) and through them ordered off the Black Marlin restaurant menu. Oh. so. good. Came promptly in 45 minutes: the most delectable bread, steak, baked potato, salad and chicken bites. And that was just for me. Steph got a fish dinner. Dang it was good to get some good quality food in me given the incipient cold virus. Read some of history of Nantucket in book on the tragedy of the 19th century whaler Essex.

Tuesday:

Coolish morn, 60 degrees, at least when coupled with the common cold. Remarkably susceptible to colds this year for reasons that escape. Perhaps not enough germ-killing beer on Saturday. I’m guessing I had it then sans symptoms (the latter came late Sunday afternoon). Made it to 8am mass despite leaving at 8:02. Got there in time for first reading - they really are maximalist at Holy Family, starting mass with Angelus and prayers for vocations. 45 minute weekday mass!

Then an earthly divine breakfast: French toast (the only worthwhile thing besides fries and wines they gave us, ha), bacon, cereal, orange juice. Feed a cold.

Lazy time extended infinitely. “King” chair next to front door is ridiculously comfortable, so I read and slept there. Amazed by the richness of the Cardinal Sarah book on silence. It reads like lectia divina. Made it out in the “quiet forest” (back deck) by noon for a cigar. Took dogs on walk past some multi-million dollar homes, then looked them up online to see pictures of interior.

Max has been 100% better today and yesterday. Really calmed down, maybe in part due to long run I gave him Sunday afternoon.  First full sun day; normally we’d have a day and a half of sun under our belt by now. But today was forecast as cloudy so we’re fortunate. 73 and sunny here now, 53 and cloudy in C-bus. I’d take that trade all day.

So a goodly beach time, 1:30 till 4:30; from 4:30 till 5:30 I unleashed the hounds - picked up Maris and Max and they frolicked the beach scene for ten minutes - on the walk back they actually pooped in unison, which was a first.

Read more of Essex story, some National Review. Really great day despite the head cold. When you’re just laying around reading, a virus (short of fever) doesn’t impede much. And I did a ton of laying around. I can feel my fitness level diminishing.

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Only two days left already, Wed and Thurs given we’re thinking of rolling on Friday morning. Five day vacation is pretty decent length, and there’s the big benefit of having some decompression time at home before back to work.

(Later): Steph cooked up a delicious late dinner of spaghetti and fake meatballs, only they weren’t fake. They were as real as meatballs can be. Vegetarianism never tasted so good. Also had salad and Brussels sprouts. And they say nothing good ever came from Brussels - fake news!

I think it’s really hard for Steph to go from 100mph to 0mph in terms of busyness.

Wednesday:

Much easier night of sleep due to the cold breaking up already. Seems like it really helped to just take two complete days off workout-wise. Now the trick is not to overdo the next workout and re-ignite it.

Great hunger to read.  Got some wisdom literature, more Cardinal Sarah, more Russell Kirk biography. Reading is best part of this vacation.

This morning was cool and loud: 53 degrees (60 now, at 11am). Leaf-blower man destroyed the peace for an hour. Not exactly a monastic retreat, ha.

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Reading Steph’s book Y in the Workplace. A couple of interesting quotes:

“Work ethic needs to be judged relative to a generation and a culture not relative to the way another generation was raised. Work ethic is developed from the upbringing, lifestyle, and the cultural pulse of a generation...The philosophies between Boomers and Gen Y in the workplace are clearly different and clearly influenced by the differences in child-rearing philosophies and school philosophies established in each generation… Every generation develops their idea of what work is based on the reaction and experiences of those who raised them. Gen Y learned that working hard, long hours and saving your money leads to getting laid off or not being able to retire due to the stock market crash of 2008 or the loss of all of your hard-earned money when your company filed for bankruptcy... So to sum up the formula that Gen Y witnessed: work hard + work hard + be obedient + save money = get screwed… Gen Y has shown us that work still gets done when integrated into life, rather than when it is forced into the confines of a 9 to 5 work day that supposedly creates ‘balance’... Perhaps if more of us adopted this philosophy, the zombie-like culture of the overworked, stressed out, and irritable would benefit."

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Interesting quotes from article in Catholic mag:

“I [visited] Gaudí’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Gaudí, Benedict XVI said at that very spot in 2010, “accomplished one of the most important tasks of our times: overcoming the division between human consciousness and Christian consciousness, between living in this temporal world and being open to eternal life, between the beauty of things and God as beauty.” 

And from Russell Kirk biography concerning Ray Bradbury:

“ [Bradbury said in a letter] each person hides ‘a private keep somewhere in the upper part of the head, where from time to time, of midnights, the beast can be heard raving... To control that, to the end of life, to stay contemplative, sane, good humored is our entire work, in the midst of the cities that tempt us to inhumanity, and passions that threaten to drive through the skin with invisible spikes.’ Clearly, a Stoic speaking to a Stoic.”

“Not just the ‘greatest science fiction writer in the world,’ Kirk claimed, Bradbury is ‘a master of style and of the high ancient art of parable and allegory.’ He made it a point to buy and read every single one of Bradbury’s books, believing the author possessed a singular power to demonstrate that ‘grim truths are lovely.’ 

Wow, surely that’s what we need these days, to make “grim truths lovely.”

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This neighborhood is sweet. I love walking the path to the ocean past the rapturous multi-million dollar homes. One of the houses on rents for $10k a week. And I much enjoy the jungle foliage of the place; some of the palm fronds remind me nostalgically of Gilligan’s Island.

Thursday:

I checked my Yahoo account and got a blast email from Bai M., the abandoned spouse of Bud M., and I thought about how this case feels like mercy versus justice and how hard it feels to square the two.

I checked out Bud’s site and he has two new posts up, one about how he has found time to exercise in smaller increments (12-15 minutes) and recommends that to busy folks. The other is how he quit smoking after 30+ years via reading a book on how to quit smoking painlessly. But the post was far more self-revealing than that, talking about how he hasn’t gone to a big Catholic media event in 13 years (since the divorce perhaps, which he doesn’t mention) and how he finally went to this year’s. How he began going to daily Mass 13-years ago during “a time of trouble” (again the divorce). How he was at Medjugorje in 1987 and asked the visionary to answer his plea to stop smoking and it was answered 30 years later only after he had given his full trust and assent to the veracity of the apparition.

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A lady remarked to me after church how chilly it was but that it was “refreshing” after so much recent “heat and humidity”. Drats.

The problem with the last day of vacation is that it gets really hard to suspend disbelief that you won’t be here forever.

I was taken by the fact there’s a 360-400 year old oak tree, perhaps planted by Native Americans, here in Sea Pines. So I headed out on bike and think I found it in Six Oaks park inside Six Oaks cemetery near the stables. It was shrouded with Spanish moss - is that why Low Country cemeteries look creepy, because the moss looks like shrouds? Or maybe like big living cobwebs?

Anyway, amazing to think of something so old and yet alive. The pines and live oaks of Hilton Head too oft get overshadowed by the beach and sunshine.

And taken again by surprise by how starry the skies look here. Definitely not used to so many star lights at night.

(I suspect I could read Dick and Jane in these soaring natural surroundings of Hilton Head and find it a delightfully lyrical caper... Context matters: except to dentists perhaps, beautiful teeth on a pretty girl provoke a different reaction than beautiful teeth on a skeleton.)

*

Shocked to hear one of my favorite TV journalists, Mark Halperin, has allegations that he groped women and pressed his member against female co-workers. Shocking inasmuch as he always seems so under control, so un-slaved to appetites. It looks like his problem years for this was ‘95 to ‘05, or when he was 30 to 40 years old.

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Got to thinking about how early memories can be so elusive.

The Ebbs of Memory
The blue light of the bug zapper
Near a lake - or not
There was music - or not
On a black summer night.
The creosote scent of a timbered hall
George Washington slept here (or not)
History smelt of creosote and
Looked of long old planks
With knots and notches and iron fixings.
Memory melts into the imagination and back.


Thirst
They had a drive-in, not for movies,
But you parked your car
Near trays attached to swinging bars
And a waitress appeared and you ordered
Root beers or lemonades in frosted mugs
That looked to hold five or six ounces
With a good pour, in my mind’s eye
And never before or since have I longed for anything more than a second root beer
On a sweaty day when I was nine.

City Envy
The city next door had old world grace
But no prophet is welcome in his own land.
There was an ancient Tower called “Power house”,
Medieval stone bridges ovalled
Over a grand Rhine river.
They had a store just for cigars,
A dam, century-old churches,
A library named Lane (but not on a Lane Avenue).
They had biblical floods while
our road’s sewer overflowed,
They had a gallant soldier atop a courtly courthouse,
We had a Mac’s steakhouse.
They had trains and German towns,
Restaurants and ghostly haunts,
Winding roads and scary slums
But we, alas, lived in Fairfield...

Friday:

So we left our place a day early; we were on pace for a long while for 7:15pm finish but made it back by 8:30 due to a stop at beloved Camp Creek. Steph got emotional there, spurred by memories of taking Buddy right after his cancer operation.

It was just otherworldly beautiful - I’d wanted to get home but glad Steph prodded me to do it. Well worth the half-hour or more to walk down to the waterfall. Dogs had a ball, at one point climbing a sheer wall of dirt like it was nothing - it looked like about a 75 degree angle. Scampered up after some wildlife and then came down the eight feet or so, fortunately not hurting themselves. It’s the coming down that worries.

The dogs were giddy with the return and if there’s ever a chance to see who can run faster it’s as they’re released after a trip. Maximum speed to the fence-line. Maris lit out and Max second since they couldn’t exit door at same time. Max gained on Maris eventually but I’m not sure that’s because Maris wasn’t slowing down as she entered area close to fence.

Saturday:

Back in Hilliard, a snowy morning, big flakes like a long girl’s lashes falling like tufted graces. I feel the earthly lift of being in the familiar.

From novelist Joan Didion:

“I grew up in a dangerous landscape. I think people are more affected than they know by landscapes and weather. Sacramento was a very extreme place. It was very flat, flatter than most people can imagine, and I still favor flat horizons. The weather in Sacramento was as extreme as the landscape. There were two rivers, and these rivers would flood in the winter and run dry in the summer. Winter was cold rain and tulle fog. Summer was 100 degrees, 105 degrees, 110 degrees. Those extremes affect the way you deal with the world. It so happens that if you're a writer the extremes show up. They don't if you sell insurance.”

Ol' Bush & Romney Looking Mighty Good Now

NRO's Jim Geraghty shoots and scores:

Most of us are old enough to remember the Bush years. (Some of us are old enough to remember the first Bush presidency.) We remember “Bushitler,” “Chimpy McHalliburton,” “Bush doesn’t care about black people,” the awards for films depicting Bush’s assassination, Howard Dean speculating that the Saudis warned Bush about 9/11 and the president letting it happen, MoveOn.org running ads comparing Bush to Hitler, Keith Ellison comparing the 9/11 attack to the Reichstag fire . . . 

One of the reasons Trump became president is because a sufficient portion of the electorate tuned out or disregarded the criticism of him from the Left. One of the reasons people ignored that criticism is because at least three good men – Bush, McCain, and Mitt Romney — were demonized as the irredeemable epitome of all evil by liberal voices for almost the entirety of their public lives. One could throw Sarah Palin in there as well — whatever else you think of her, she’s not a monster, and she’s done so much for families with children with Down Syndrome – as well as the ads featuring Paul Ryan pushing a grandmother off a cliff. When every single prominent Republican figure is the WORST MONSTER IN HUMAN HISTORY, people stop believing the criticism.

A few voices on the left recognized this. Right before the election, comedian Bill Maher had what appeared to be a painful moment of clarity:

I know liberals made a big mistake because we attacked your boy Bush like he was the end of the world. And he wasn’t. And Mitt Romney we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars because I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldn’t have changed my life that much or yours. Or John McCain. They were honorable men who we disagreed with, and we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf and that was wrong. But this is real. This is going to be way different. 

But I don’t want our friends on the left to merely regret the past, I want them to learn from it... We don’t fix this by praising retired members of the other party, or wishing that everyone in the other party could be as reasonable as the one who deviates from party orthodoxy the most. We fix this by reasserting the unwritten rule in our political discourse that our opponents are not to be treated like inhuman monsters unless they actually do something monstrous. And mere disagreement on issues does not make one a monster! We think poorly of Harvey Weinstein’s donation of $100,000 to Planned Parenthood because an impassioned disagreement about when human life begins. But it’s his long history of sexual exploitation and cruelty that makes him a monster.

Marriage According to a Futurist

Rarely do you see how different the Judeo-Christian instinct is from someone like the futurist guru who came to talk to our corporation recently.

His take was simple materialism: that which does not benefit us in this life should be discarded. Marriage, he says, was an institution designed when people lived to age 25, not to live together for 150 years (when our lifetimes expand to that point, assuming they do).  He said marriage is not tenable any longer because people can't be expected to live together that long.

Marriage has always been hard, at least going back to Moses’s time. But marriage, like water, isn’t an end in itself. Most people view water as simply something that enabled life on this planet. But you could view it as having been created by God expressly for the sacrament of Baptism - i.e. eternal life - and in order to symbolize its life-giving properties God made it earthly-life-giving as well.

In other words, water’s function as thirst-quencher is a byproduct of water’s role in Baptism rather than the other way around.  We view the spiritual as negligible, the earthly as all important while God does the opposite.

Similarly, with marriage. It’s meant to signify God’s relationship with us. The prophet Isaiah wrote that “your creator will marry you”. And that’s partially the significance of Sunday's gospel about heaven being a “wedding feast”. The point of marriage is less that it’s an end in itself but a pointer to the true marriage, the eternal one, with God. The permanence of earthly love in marriage is meant to show the permanence of the love God has for us. Without that pattern we are left much the poorer for it.

Ultimately God really wants us to mirror Him so we can show Him to others. Often I don’t like this much, preferring he show Himself to others (and myself) directly. Cut out the middlemen. But that’s obviously not God’s plan given that Jesus said to Paul on the road to Damascus, ‘Why are you persecuting me?”.  But what I miss is that it's not Pelagian; God gives us the grace for marriage or to mirror Him.

But if your supposition is that God doesn’t exist or is an impersonal Spirit, then you may be left with scratching your head thinking marriage is inexplicable, assuming you ignore the toll divorce takes on kids.

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There is something about Eucharistic Adoration on Thursday that sets me up to better appreciate Communion in the following day or two. The one Host, in the gaudy monstrance, drives home the reality of the One Bread. To look at it from a distance, seemingly unattainable or untouchable in its glass protection, makes me realize the generousness of Sundays. Unless something is withheld from us for awhile perhaps we can’t appreciate the gift.

State of the Weather

A man-bites-dog viewpoint:

Why I Love Catholic infighting

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I think it's high time for the annual State of the Weather address.

The state of the weather is... tenuous. We recently broke a ridiculously long string of beautiful days which apparently will end in a week-long bacchanal of rain and clouds. “Make Cloudumbus cloudy again” is Mother Nature’s new catchphrase. But what a run it’s been. We’ll not see her like again. A long, quenching crest of summer days post-summer, a late harvest that only serves to remind me how much I’ve missed a long stretch of summer-like days.

I made a fire and prolong the goodness; the perfume of the flame comes and goes with the sublime breeze. I read of the “roulette of the season”; autumn is bittersweet, borrowed time.

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Interesting on the power of language, from the book Cheap Sex:

....when we name something in the social world—unlike in the natural world—we are not only mentally mapping it, but we are also providing the idea with a reality that allows it to then act back upon us (and the wider social world), altering how we then must subsequently navigate it. Thus the world after something has been named is not as malleable as it was before it. To identify something socially is to give it life and power, not just a name. It’s been occurring for decades already in the study of sexuality.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter asserts similarly when he defines culture as the power of legitimate naming.  That is, to classify something in the social world is to penetrate the imagination, to alter our frameworks of knowledge and discussion, and to shift the perception of everyday reality. In the domain of sexuality—fraught as it is with great moral valence—this can make all the difference. It’s why there is often poignant and bitter struggle over words and terms around sex, and the politics of using them or avoiding them. We tend to move, albeit slowly, from the “urban dictionary” to the everyday lexicon.

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Part of the thrill of having a digital WSJ subscription is simply being able to blast beyond the paywall. Years of butting my head against it, if only very occasionally, makes the forbidden fruit more tasty. I’m surprised at how much satisfaction I take in simply signing in to their website.  Silly. Cue the Doors.  I could only justify it by virtue of the fact that it's not the NY Times or the Washington Post. And journalism outfits are now, sadly, charitable institutions given the lack of ad revenue due to the rise of the 'net and "free" news.

The Gospel According to...

If I were highly motivated, I’d research all the Sunday gospels this year from ordinary form Mass and compare to Latin mass gospels. I think the former are far more likely to be “discouraging” gospels, personified by today’s about God smiting the wicked tenants.  Eastern Catholics and 1962 extraordinary form devotees today received much more positive gospels. 

For all the reputation the New Mass has s far as being milquetoast and the Latin Mass for being “rigid” or strict, the gospel selections don’t seem to back that up. And definitely the Byzantine gospels are, I’d say at least 80-90% positive, which far exceeds the current Roman rite. 

Looking back over just the past 10 weeks, the Latin Mass hasn’t had a negative gospel since August 6th. It has gone 8-1-1 over past ten weeks - eight positive, one negative and one neutral.

During the same period, the new mass has gone 2-4-4.

Perhaps part of what drove the new readings for the new calendar was the perceived need to challenge people more, but I think people need encouragement as well and I’m not sure the negative gospels have been overly effective in evangelizing the Faithful. Attract more flies with honey, they say, and the Latin rite and Byzantines at least have the patina of long tradition.

The World According to "Researchers"

I shouldn't waste my time reading WaPo articles but here's a doozy on tipping:

It makes sense to leave a tip for your regular waiter at your regular diner or to give one to your doorman each holiday season, since the service quality you receive in the future will likely depend on those tips. But economists find it peculiar that people tip the bellman upon departing from a hotel they’ll never visit again, a waitress at an out-of-town restaurant or a cabdriver in a big city. There’s technically no economic reason for such transactions, beyond a social expectation. And so nerdy behavioral scientists have had a field day running studies to figure out what oddities shape our decisions about tipping — decisions economic theory asserts we often shouldn’t be making in the first place.

So in other words, doing something because it's the right thing to do irrespective of what you get out of it is irrational.  Shades of  Thomas Frank's befuddlement that conservative voters might vote on issues (like pro-life) that are not directly in their self-interest.

Too True

I'm guilty as charged of mishandling.

Cell Phone Photography for $100 Alex!

Sun-dog

Campfire in distance under moonglow

Fire glow

Taken before solar eclipse.

Taken at solar eclipse - note the subtly decreased sun.

On the bridge to Ohio 

Bumper sticker advice

A creek runs through it. 

Kayak nation

Dog in dog statue

Trying to Understand Current Politics

Roy Moore won a Senate seat despite, in July, not having heard about DACA or Dreamers.  He also asserted there are places in America under sharia law, but when asked for specifics came up short. Likewise Trump won the presidency despite having a deep and abiding wellspring of blissful ignorance.

You could say this is proof the Republican party is the "stupid party", as Mark Shea gleefully used to say back fifteen years ago.  And that's probably true now but I think there are a couple other underlying trends.

Just as if you want to be a conservative SCOTUS you have to try to not leave a paper trail, there's an advantage for a political candidate to be ignorant of policy.  You can lie freely, without pain of sin.  Thus Obama can run a campaign for '08 on just the slogan "hope and change!" and pass ACA by subletting it all to Congress. And Trump can promise, "the best health care for everybody will be easy!" and mean it, believe it, and sell it.

I recall someone asking on a EWTN Q&A forum asking why tell people about mortal sins because one of the conditions is that they must know it's mortal. Similarly, if a candidate is completely ignorant he or she is more free to dispense their reality-free point of view.

The other underlying factor is the ongoing atomization of society.

The surprise is not that political parties are dying but that they lasted so long, since nowadays joining a group is passé.  If you can’t even get players to stand for the national anthem it’s no wonder politicians won’t stand for the muck of a political party.  “Cooperation” is a swear word.

Just as we have 10,000 Christian denominations, we’ll have a hundred completely independent senators - everybody will a McCain or Sanders or Paul or Moore.

My guess is that state governments will become more important in the future given how useless the federal is.

People of New York

Looked back at my pictures from NYC trip in June; here are some of the peeps on the streets:

Fermor's Germanic Adventure

This Patrick Leigh Fermor dude ("A Time of Gifts) could flat-out write; here about the Hofbrauhaus in the 1930s:

I was back in beer-territory. Halfway up the vaulted stairs a groaning Brownshirt, propped against the wall on a swastika’d arm, was unloosing, in a staunchless gush down the steps, the intake of hours. Love’s labour lost. Each new storey radiated great halls given over to ingestion. In one chamber a table of S.A. men were grinding out Lore, Lore, Lore, scanning the slow beat with the butts of their mugs, then running the syllables in double time, like the carriages of an express: “UND—KOMMT—DER—FRÜHLingindastal! GRÜSS—MIR—DIE—LORenocheinmal.”

But it was certain civilian figures seated at meat that drew the glance and held it. One must travel east for a hundred and eighty miles from the Upper Rhine and seventy north from the Alpine watershed to form an idea of the transformation that beer, in collusion with almost nonstop eating—meals within meals dovetailing so closely during the hours of waking that there is hardly an interprandial moment—can wreak on the human frame. Intestine strife and the truceless clash of intake and digestion wrecks many German tempers, twists brows into scowls and breaks out in harsh words and deeds. The trunks of these feasting burghers were as wide as casks. The spread of their buttocks over the oak benches was not far short of a yard.
             
*

Huge oval dishes, laden with schweinebraten, potatoes, sauerkraut, red cabbage and dumplings were laid in front of each diner. They were followed by colossal joints of meat—unclassifiable helpings which, when they were picked clean, shone on the scoured chargers like calves’ pelvises or the bones of elephants. Waitresses with the build of weight-lifters and all-in wrestlers whirled this provender along and features dripped and glittered like faces at an ogre’s banquet. But all too soon the table was an empty bone-yard once more, sound faltered, a look of bereavement clouded those small eyes and there was a brief hint of sorrow in the air. But succour was always at hand; beldames barged to the rescue at full gallop with new clutches of mugs and fresh plate-loads of consumer goods; and the damp Laestrygonian brows unpuckered again in a happy renewal of clamour and intake.
             
*

I strayed by mistake into a room full of S.S. officers, Gruppen- and Sturmbannführers, black from their lightning-flash-collars to the forest of tall boots underneath the table. The window embrasure was piled high with their skull-and-crossbones caps.
             
*

The vaults of the great chamber faded into infinity through blue strata of smoke. Hobnails grated, mugs clashed and the combined smell of beer and bodies and old clothes and farmyards sprang at the newcomer. I squeezed in at a table full of peasants, and was soon lifting one of those masskrugs to my lips. It was heavier than a brace of iron dumb-bells, but the blond beer inside was cool and marvellous, a brooding, cylindrical litre of Teutonic myth. This was the fuel that had turned the berserk feeders upstairs into Zeppelins and floated them so far from heart’s desire. The gunmetal-coloured cylinders were stamped with a blue HB conjoined under the Bavarian crown, like the foundry-mark on cannon. The tables, in my mind’s eye, were becoming batteries where each gunner served a silent and recoil-less piece of ordnance which, trained on himself, pounded away in steady siege. Mass-gunfire! Here and there on the tables, with their heads in puddles of beer, isolated bombardiers had been mown down in their emplacements.

Er, I'll have what he's having.

*

I haven't watched the movie "Lost in America" in 25 years so it was an unanticipated science experiment to watch it again recently and find it much less compelling. Where once I saw humor in the main character's not-so-quiet desperation, now I find it heavier lifting.

For one thing, I'm not obsessed with retiring early and seeing the country in an RV. That dream-ship has sailed. I'm more into sunlight nowadays than city light. So some of the film would naturally lessen in impact now.

Seems I also have had more of a tendency to want upbeat things, primarily upbeat music (primarily jazz) and tv.

*

From WSJ:

Rural and working-class, white Americans are also pessimistic about their retirement prospects. Their views are one reason that only 13% of Americans expect to retire before age 60, down 10 points since 1999. The share of Americans who say they will retire at 70 or older has climbed 10 points.

23% in 199 down to 13% now. Seems amazing my father retired at 55.

Live from Hilton Head It's Saturday Not

 A tawny Sunday at the island, the air not the bright yellow hue we expect. Rain showers predicted and the sky currently overcast, alas.

Rainy but no problem when you got an insti-tent. Ingenious. Keeps the rain off when need be.

Checked out the waves and just really incredible not in terms of size by in water force east-to-west. Really hard to simply walk against wind and water in even three feet. Managed a token 15 min jog, with last half against sledgehammering wind.

We squeezed out five hours on a deck laden with the misgivings of weather.

*

Listening to the Bob Dylan song with refrain "Everybody must get stoned" a few times triggered by thoughts on how "everybody must get pruned."

Background: Heard that ol' warhorse Fr. Hayes on the gospel about "I am the vine, you are the branches."

Fr. said grapes un-pruned, bear no fruit. Grape vines bear fruit when their reproduction was threatened, and because this vine was allowed to grow freely where it will, it felt no compulsion to spend its energy towards the bearing of fruit.

"If you are not a part of the vine, you will be pruned completely at the judgement. If you are a part, you still will be pruned."

Everybody must get pruned.

But what I've realized is God even prunes himself.  From Erasmo Levia-Merikakis:

In keeping with God’s own internal law of love, Jesus never invites anyone to do anything that he himself is not already doing. “It is called the law of the Lord”, writes St. Bernard, “either because he lives by it or because nobody possesses it except as a gift from him. It does not seem absurd for me to say that God lives by a law, because it is nothing else than charity.”

*

Hurricane Harvey

The tropical hellbent

Nature owns nature

Hundreds of miles away.

*


Where have you gone Aurelio Rodriquez?

A island turns its lonely eyes to you

Rue, rue, rue...

What's that you say Mrs. Clementine,

Aurelio has left and gone astray.

no, no way...

no way.


*

From the catbird seat ahigh the stern,

I peer a grey sea with toothy caps,

towards the long grey line of horizon.

*

A pastiche of florid greens and tall sea oats

bend before wind and sea

while giraffe palms hold sway

just beyond the balcony.

*

Down the shore the lifeguard stores

her tanned and dimpled leas

I query her and she responds

in perfect Austrailian-eze.


*

Young gal comes down to deck with some sort of green mask/cream on her face. Apparently for purposes of skin revitalization or facial self-improvement, but seems like it takes a good level of self-confidence to appear in public like that.

Monday:

Weather not fit for man nor beast. 25-35mph winds with gusts to 40mph. Rip tide warning in effect by national weather service such that supposedly: "These rip currents will be life-threatening to anyone who enters the surf."

Which means I have to get in the surf if briefly just to see what this is like. Or not. Call it chicken blood, or maybe it's just because rip tides are supposedly impervious to swimming skill and strength. If pervious to the latter, I'd be in in a heartbeat.

Anyway I can't recall Hilton Head having a rip tide warning while I was down here before. No rental umbrellas either are out due to wind speed.

Hopefully we'll lose just one day of vacation here, though "lose" is a huge exaggeration since I'll still be able to read, relax, have a cigar, watch some baseball on the 'tube.  And of course South Carolina could be experiencing a hurricane directly, like poor Texas.

At 3:30pm torrential downpour and there's nobody on the beach for as far as the eye can see in either direction. But wait! Two people in black-hooded plastic rain gear and heading out of Seaside Villas toward the beach right now. Diehards. Gluttons for punishment. Truth be told, I'm glad to be dry after the soaking from this morn. It was fun to get wet, like being a kid in the rain again, but also nice to be dry.

*

My outdoor office suffices

seeking mysteries from the quotidian

tranquil hours reading Fermor

concerning the Landsknecht.


*

I run-laufen the way the Deutsche do,

lope by the Konditories

pastime with pastries

beergarten many brews.

Tuesday

And now I know where the phrase "Holy cow!" comes from. St. Brigid, contemporary of St. Patrick, was discouraged by her pagan parents from becoming Catholic, but she did so and afterward blessed the family cow that had never given milk before. The cow did then give milk, making her family much happier about her decision to convert. And thus the literal holy cow is pictured with her in paintings and images.

*

All clouds, all day. Nicht gut. But the lack of cold-pelt rain facilitated more exercise than normal; ran 2.2 miles and walked a couple more.

*

It occurs to me the decision on whether to have children/another child could be argued to rest mainly on the husband, or, alternatively, on the wife.

It could be said the wife must drive the decision because she's the one who has 9 months of discomfort and massive disruption. She also has more natural incentive due to the "maternal instinct".

On the other hand you could say the male is determinative since he's biblically the head of the household, and since he doesn't bear the physical price of bearing a child he needs to be an enthusiastic (not neutral) lobbyist for children.

*

Garrison Keillor writing in WaPo gets to the heart of why Donald Trump (and Bernie Sanders, I would say) are popular: self-pity and the diminishment of stoicism:

"I was an ordinary 1950s misfit, scrawny, squinty behind wire-rim glasses, bookish but not so smart, timid, a daydreamer, a frequent moper, and once, when my mother was tired of my moodiness, she gave me a book to read, “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs,” in which good Bible-believing Christians like ourselves were tied to the stake...prayed that God would forgive their persecutors and, as the flames enveloped their bodies, sang hymns in praise of the Savior with their dying breath.

Somehow, this cheerful stoicism seemed to lose traction in the culture and we got bombarded by neurotic anger — the Beat poets, bad boys in movies, outlaw mythology, troubled rock stars, spectacular burnouts, the wounded, bitter, addicted, nice middle-class kids trying to be tortured artists.."

Wednesday

"Life hack" is one of those phrases I thought I would never use, along with "impactful". But I do find "life hack" impactful in the following way: "I want to life-hack my mornings." Because they are infinitely better in Hilton Head than in Columbus.

There's a lot of motivation to get up in the morning here given the instant pleasure of the balcony: reliably warm temperatures and a million dollar view. Today I spy a hawk calmly surveying from a branch of the one tall pine on our Seasides side. Highly picturesque.

I think the hack would be to do as much stuff the night before as possible. Of course that could ruin the night ha.

*

We're semi-plagued by a plague of love bugs down here. They only live three days it's said. They swarm the deck and balcony, two flying insects hitched together (hence the love in love bug). They don't annoy us too much. They don't sting or bite, which is a good thing.

Got down to the deck by 8am, a record. The love bugs drove me away right quick, but felix culpa since it allowed a nice walk on the beach. Felt like I was walking on the water, the illusion of walking on a thin 3-inch sand bar covering. Just beautiful to be out there next to the water in the morn.

Finally the resumption of true Hilton Head weather. Tropical at last. Today was half-sun and half-clouds and the people rejoiced.

So I was at the beach from 10:30 till 5pm. A highlight was the run - it felt so good to run like the horses for 30 minutes without worrying about the injured calf (now healed). I think half the magic of Hilton Head is simply the invigorating exercise.

My phone battery died during the run but at least I got to hear to the end of Message in a Bottle by the Police on the '80s station.

Thursday

Its a true-blue Hilton Head dog-day of summer day. Rode bike a little extra time since the sun through the pines and fronds is so rich.

Funny sign next to the 1-foot deck: "Use at your own risk". I should write on it: "Brought to you by lawyers, the same folks who put warning labels on plastic bags saying not to cover your head with them."

*

My gut reaction is to see life as finding inspiration in perspiration, but that neglects the indispensable place of Christ. Perhaps to see Inspiration in perspiration.

*

I take a beach walk, and see pellucid water magnifying hurrying fish. I see the shimmer of sparkling sand below, dotted with glitter. I see the gladsome splash of repetitive wave. I see the jewel of wild nature's edge.

*

A bit of bible commentary reading, specifically the monk from Spencer on the image of Jesus as "the thief in the night". The thief imagery rankles mainly if we see ourselves as our own property, St. Therese of Liseux referred to Jesus as the thief many times in her last days. How could I not know that, especially after having read Heather King's book? For Therese, it's practically a term of endearment, proving saints are different from us.

Friday

I wonder if the true enemy of old age is not infirmity but loss of a childlike innocence. Cynicism and resulting in being unimpressed by small things. A lack of curiosity.

Oliver Sacks said: "I thought being old would be either awful or trivial, and it's neither." He said what makes it not so besides loving another, is thinking and writing.

His partner mentions how he had joy and surprise on his face when he opened his first bottle of champagne at age 80-ish and saw the cork explode. To have a sense of wonder around a champagne opening suggests a childlike aspect that belies his attribution to his success in old age to writing and thinking. Methinks it is the former.

*

Last day spent amid the sweet ecstasy of those shining waters. Gave my soles their soul workout on the Low Country sands. Twenty minutes. Playing "Rocky Top" in my mind. Because the best country lyric of all time is "ground's too rocky by far / that's why all the folks in Rocky Top get their corn from a jar."

Shades of "for medicinal purposes only."

*

Noon Friday we did our annual bike ride to Lawton Stables. Rode into heavy beach wind until marker 47, then cut through and headed to see the great and hallowed Clydesdale-like Harley. His hooves are a force of nature. Eternal blue skies.

*

Jonah Goldberg writes about how ideas are much less impactful than technologies:

As I’ve written many times before, the car and the birth-control pill have — for good and ill — done more to overturn settled institutions and customs than Nietzsche or Marx ever could. But pills and automobiles are hard to argue with, so like drunks searching for their car keys under the street lamp because that’s where the light is good, intellectuals focus on the stuff they can argue with.

He quotes Irving Kristol as having said, “When we lack the will to see things as they really are, there is nothing so mystifying as the obvious.”

Saturday: 

Twenty miles south of Charleston, WV. Stopped for a restroom break in a nice travel plaza. Yes they do have Starbucks in West Virginia, and a black gal was running the souvenir shop. Two stereotypes quashed. The people look real here, and interesting looking. A urinal that featured a couple of nicely typed Bible verses taped to the top (John 3:16 and the verse about you must be born again).

*

Heard this on a podcast on why WW2 was won by the Allies: "British stubbornness, American industry, and Russian blood." Amazing how much it took in the way of all three to defeat (primarily) the Germans. German exceptionalism I guess.

                                     

Seven Quick Takes, as Inspired by Jennifer Fulwiler

Visited the Columbus Museum of Art and showed off my newly purchased CMA membership which allowed free entree into said establishment and free Russian exhibition. It was larger than I expected, rooms full of art and photos from the old Soviet Union, mainly 1970 through 1993. Another world it 'twas. I especially wished I'd have snapped a pic of a homely group next to the Cyrllic letters of a billboard outside a bar. So, so foreign. Instead took a pic of a painting of Lenin as Jesus Christ with the legend: "The Anti-Christ".

*

I'm noticing a subprime sun length, like Trump's fingers, these days.  By the time I get home walk the dogs, water the grass, and eat, the sun is on the downward spiral. Like Trump ten minutes after the election.

I still find it slightly incredible that his war with the media began literally the day after the election, over crowd size.

Still, they can't take election night away from him or Republicans. For one brief shining moment Hillary was defeated and there was a glimmer of hope that Trump might sober up and fly right. I would pay good money for a DVD of the election night coverage, to see again the crestfallen faces of the liberal anchors and pundits, to experience again the "Do You Believe in Miracles?" Al Michaels moment. The biggest underdog in the history of underdogs won the election. Unfortunately, it looks like that was the high water mark of his presidency. Or un-presidency.

Possibly voters will learn from the Trump experience that politics and policies ain't so easy, and that there's no such thing as a free lunch. It seems like it could be damaging to a potential Bernie Sanders run given people might - *might* - be more in contact with reality. Not holding my breath since the Savior Obama should've already sent that message. You'd think after Obama people would want experience and competence, like a John Kasich.....

*

One of the things I most crave about retirement is sucking in the savor of summer. Nowadays it's hit or miss - mostly miss. Not even a Shakespeare play at the park. Wicked fast went the past two months. A blur. The antithesis of lazy days drinking lemonade on a hammock.

So for healing purposes took a German Village bike ride on the visually dulcet day. Had a hot dog and donut at the wonderfully Teutonic Jeurgens .

I rode down south to "Hungarian Village" (a village I knew not existed in Columbus), then off to the Parsons Avenue borderlands. Danger Will Robinson.

*

I've been pondering the words from Genesis 3, regarding the fall, on the nature of the apple and how Christ became that apple. It's almost like a perverse/reverse Communion in Gen 3:6:

"So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate."

Jesus became the apple in that he is a delight to our spiritual eyes and makes us spiritually wise. Then Eve shared the food, shades of "take this, Adam, and eat of it...".

*

Decided to hit home for lunch because of the big celestial show, the eclipse.  With eclipses, I think there's the scarcity principle at work. If peanut butter was scarce, everyone would crave it. I think a partial eclipse is like a limited edition modern artwork - few would want it except that it's rare and assigned value by many. But skepticism aside, I wanted to give it a good try.

By 1:30 it was already starting to occlude but no visible difference in sun. By 2pm, it's darkened, like before you get a rainstorm. When you look through the protective glasses you see partial sun, making it appear similar to a partial moon.

Sunlover that I am, I'm not necessarily a fan of any celestial object getting between me and the sun. Mostly I'm coming away shocked that the moon can cover 85% of the sun and the power of the latter is still enough to see things outdoors easily.

God-willing I'll see the total eclipse in 7 years. 

*

Spent an hour last night watching Raymond Arroyo's fine interview with Jerry Lewis on YouTube. Lewis called Raymond the best interviewer he's ever had, which is saying something. He said Arroyo actually listens, and that's what sets him apart.

Very touching interview that made me feel small given the largeness of the comic's spirit. When asked why his endless toiling for MDA telethon, he said simply that that was the only way to raise that kind of money. Shades of be careful what you're good at, because then you'll be irreplaceable more or less.

His work ethic was tremendous. My slothful thought is that a comedian can "phone it in" since no one lives or dies during a show, but Lewis was cannier than me. God recognizes the last shall be first; perhaps the comedians before the surgeons. Arroyo mentioned how healing laughter can be, and Lewis mentioned how after a show a lady was crying, and Lewis admitted her to his dressing room, and she said that his show was the first time she'd laughed in 7 years, since her son was killed in Vietnam. And he was bowled over and remembered that every time he wanted to do less than his all. He said out of a crowd of hundreds there are always 4 or 5 individuals who need his gift. Very moving.

I suspect part of Arroyo's gift as an interviewer and his ability to connect with Lewis was the fact they are simpatico spiritually, both more evolved than the average joe or jane.

*

On a day offering a perfect blend of summer and fall, the sort of day presaging new beginnings, of college day move-ins during those eventful early '80s years, we gathered at the funeral home for a death in the family.

The song "Magic" by Olivia Newton-John came to my mind unbidden. "Have to believe we are magic" she sings, and indeed we have to believe we are magical beings in the sense of having everlasting life with future fairytale bodies. A good reminder during a time of sorrow. 

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Metanoia

The older I get the more I realize is that the whole nature of Christianity is to constantly start over (and, ideally, to be cheerful about it). The Resurrection and Pentecost were new starts, just as Abraham, Noah, and Moses before Jesus represented new starts. The first word of the first homilies of John the Baptist and Jesus was "metanoia", which means "turn around", as in "start over, you're going the wrong way."

This gets driven home not only in the necessity of starting afresh after Confession but also with the transmission of basic truths about Jesus. The blood, sweat, prayers and study of so many before us are accounted little; the very nature of religious education is to relearn what previous generations knew. History shows the need to reinvent the wheel never diminishes. No wonder in 2 Peter the sacred author writes, "I will always remind you of these things, even though you already know them and are established in the truth you have.". There's no resting on the laurels of truth given the assaults of the evil one and human lack of faith.

It can seem discouraging that whole continents (like Europe) will need to metanoia and start over - but much, much less so when one realizes it happens on a micro scale in us and that's the way it's always been. Fortunately God is patient, and if he can put up with our constant need to re-learn and turn around than we can't be impatient with the same. I admire the cheerfulness of St. Ignatius of Loyola whose feast day was not long ago. From a meditation on his life:

"Soon after their foundation the Jesuits began to meet the challenge of the Reformation: a tough task, given the debilitated state into which the Church had fallen, but one which, as Ignatius said, had to be undertaken 'without hard words or contempt for people’s errors'."