Mississippi John Hurt

Grim got me started listening to Jimmie Rodgers and I've been exploring the early 20th century for other musicians like him. Although the style's different, Mississippi John Hurt (1893-1966) is a very worthwhile listen. Of course, I loved the blues long before I loved country, but Hurt is country blues, so there's something for all of us in his music.

He grew up the son of ex-slaves sharecropping the land they had been slaves on. In the 1920s he got a deal to record some of his music, but it didn't sell very well and then the Great Depression hit. He went back to sharecropping. In the 1950s the folk music revival hit and musicologists discovered his recordings. Eventually, one of these musicologists found him on his farm and he started touring and recording again in the early 1960s. He's known for old-time, folk, blues, spirituals, and country, though it seems he most often gets labeled country blues.

Here's a good spiritual:

Here's some live blues:

Two Arthurian Recommendations

1. The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff

The King Arthur Trilogy is a worthy retelling of the Arthurian stories for a younger audience, Amazon listing it as for ages 9-12. At several multiples of that age, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. She based her version on primary sources but, like any good storyteller, has added to and shaped the stories, weaving them into a coherent whole. In particular, she is skilled in her presentation of the characters in the story, while remaining firmly within the tradition. This is the best introduction to the whole of the Arthurian stories I've found. After reading this, someone new to the stories will have a good grasp of the essential elements and story lines and will be well-prepared to tackle more complex versions of the stories.

Sutcliff retold a number of other classical stories for this age group. I believe that her Black Ships before Troy has become the standard introduction to the Illiad for younger readers in much of the classical education and homeschooling community, which she follows with The Wanderings of Odysseus. She also has Beowulf, Dragon Slayer. I'll be adding these three books to my "read for fun" list.

2. The Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of the Merlin

The Daily Wire has made a 7-episode series from the first two of Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle series of novels. It focuses on the bard Taliesin and on Merlin's life up through being advisor to Uther and setting the stage for Arthur.

Overall, I thought it was very well done. The production was as high quality as I've seen in any TV series, the acting was good, the story is well-told, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Two possibly unique aspects of the story is that it weaves in Plato's story of Atlantis as background and it presents Merlin as a Christian wizard, though still with one foot in the pagan world.

My only complaint is that near the very end Merlin experiences a severe internal conflict which is just difficult to show on screen and so comes across a little flat. A possible solution might have been to add a couple of imaginary scenes running through Merlin's mind to show that conflict. That said, overall, it was an excellent show and I'll watch it again.

Alas, it is currently only available by subscribing to the Daily Wire. I got a discounted one-year subscription and have been enjoying it. They have a number of conservative movies and a number of programs on history, mythology, and of course tons of political talk, their bread and butter. They also have a number of conservative-friendly children's shows. For me, it was worth a one-year subscription, but I doubt I'll re-up.

Here's the trailer:

Metal Mariachi

Why not?

Rainer Maria Rilke Poems

The late 19th & early 20th century Austrian poet Rilke was recommended to me by a literature professor, so I gave him a try. Here are a few I thought were worthwhile. In this collection, translated by Stephen Mitchell, Rilke mostly gives us snapshots or vignettes with a single focus. His work was influential on a number of 20th century poets you might have heard of, such as Robert Bly, M. S. Merwin, and W. H. Auden.

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

Alas, Babylon

Eight airmen dead after a B-52 crash. We’ve been flying the same planes since before any of us were born, on the same mission. They are the wall that keeps the world. 

Some Brief Remarks on "Peace"

As I said at AVI's place, I tend to think that this "peace deal" is just an attempt to push the matter off until after the midterms, and that it doesn't really matter what it says because neither side intends to keep the promises being made. It is probably to our national dishonor that we are led by a man whose word doesn't mean anything, but we all know that it doesn't, so why worry about it? The horse is out of the barn; it'll come back or not in God's good time. For now, it's out of our control -- it's not like the other side has honorable men or women to offer as an alternative. 

The one thing that should die with this peace, however, is the idea that Israel in some way runs the USG. My Israeli contacts are livid. They feel completely betrayed which, in fairness, is what the United States generally does to its allies. That's how you know you're a US Ally in good standing: you get betrayed by this government or the next one, usually sequentially. That also is probably to our national dishonor, but it is at least a demonstration of some kind of self-governance: we can't have permanent promises because we actually do change at least the top dressing of the government once in a while. The unwashed underwear, by which I mean the bureaucracy, tends to go unchanged decade after decade; but some top-level policies get reversed as the pendulum swings. 

White House Fight Night

I went to UFC headquarters last time I was out in Vegas. It's quite a thing, really. 

I have heard that the President slept through part of it, but the man is 80. He should sleep. 

There Is No Such Thing as Intelligence

So claim "other psychologists." 

Not serious ones, I imagine, though serious psychology strikes me as a philosopher as a sort of joke. Psychology's history is mostly philosophy of mind without the possibility of falsification; I am told it's gotten better of late, but the replication crisis doesn't inspire a lot of faith in that assertion. All things equal, though, let's assume 'not the more serious psychologists.'

One of the very replicable findings about at least one measure of intelligence -- reading comprehension -- is that girls get it faster than boys. My elementary school broke the law (such differences already being forbidden) by sorting classes by reading comprehension level, so we had what the kids knew as and referred to as the 'high' 'middle,' and 'low' classes of intelligence. Since I learned to read well fairly early, my classmates were 26 girls and 3 boys, plus myself. The effects of that approximately 9-1 ratio, combined with alphabetical arrangement of students, were that I learned to talk to girls early. This has been an accidental but entirely beneficial outcome, as human beings sort by sex and by age cohort more than is rational. My friendships with women and with people much older than myself have been especially enlightening. 

But it's not true, not remotely true, that anyone can learn anything. Try teaching anything. You'd think that one wouldn't get headway among educators, but somehow it has.

The Communist Supercar

No, it's ironic, but it's no joke. 

BYD said the Denza Z featured “shattering high performance” with over 1,000 hp and the ability to sprint from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in less than two seconds, it didn’t reveal specifics.... 

[New details show] the four-seat EV roadster is slightly larger than the Porsche 911 and closer in size to the Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe. The Denza Z is more powerful than both, with the 911 Turbo S delivering up to 701 hp and the Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe offering up to 1,153 hp.

BYD’s electric supercar can reach a top speed of 217 mph and weighs 5,842 lbs (2,650 kg) for the hardtop version.

The Denza Z will be available with a soft top and a souped-up track package that gains a massive rear wing spoiler.

Nearly six thousand pounds moving at over two hundred miles an hour is a lot of F=ma. That Mercedes is closer to three and a half. Wonder how good the spoiler is? How about the brakes? 

It's strange to see luxury goods coming out of a Communist country; being consumed there by connected elites, certainly, but actually produced there? It seems like that should hardly be a priority in the Five Year Plan. 

Well, what do I know? I'm not a Communist. 

Memories of a young Marine

I think I may have mentioned here some time ago that my uncle, late in his life, gave an interview to preserve his memories of taking Okinawa, including seeing Japanese residents throwing their infant children off a cliff and killing themselves, for fear of what they'd been told the Americans would do to them. This is the transcript, quite brief. When they left Okinawa they expected to be sent to Japan to do more of the same, but worse. Then suddenly the war was over. My uncle was born in 1922, so he was 20 when he joined up and 23 or so at the time he recounts here. He died in 2013, aged 91. The first his children heard of these experiences was when he gave the interview in 2005.

Proper Hate

I had been told that hate was always wrong; apparently that's not operative any longer.

SpaceX is set to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Here’s how to properly hate him

There are competing schools of thought about the accumulation of wealth, among them the anarchist claim that “property is theft” and the Gordon Gekko theory of greed as a star-spangled virtue.... The more compelling argument against billionaires has to do not with the ethical implications of the extreme inequality that they arguably promote, but with the adverse real-world consequences, which you don’t have to be a fire-breathing Marxist to acknowledge. There is plenty of evidence that extreme inequality produces inferior and even perverse social outcomes.... But if [Elon Musk is] a stain on capitalism, it’s not because of his wealth. It’s because he exemplifies the idea of government as the plaything of plutocrats who shamelessly bend public policy toward private advantage. It may be difficult to excite class warfare in a culture that worships wealth, but people like Mr. Musk make it a whole lot easier.

Those aren't useful instructions; the headline writer has misled us. It's just griping. 

The good argument in favor of billionaires -- trillionaires, now -- is that one person can make a decision about how to deploy substantial capital in efficient ways that a government, a corporation, or a committee can never. Musk is building space rockets and tunneling equipment that could build a Mars colony because he wants to, not because of fiduciary duty or because spreadsheets suggest it is wise. We are lucky that the world's richest man loves Buck Rogers rather than Karl Marx.

Concentrations of political power are always pernicious, and wealth is one way that power can be concentrated. To say that we got lucky is to acknowledge that it could have gone the other way; indeed, it has done, as with several rich men who might be named. 

If you were wanting the promised instruction on how to hate properly, however, here is Chesterton:

         "Up on the old white road, brothers,

          Up on the Roman walls!

          For this is the night of the drawing of swords,

          And the tainted tower of the heathen hordes

          Leans to our hammers, fires and cords,

          Leans a little and falls.

          "Follow the star that lives and leaps,

          Follow the sword that sings,

          For we go gathering heathen men,

          A terrible harvest, ten by ten,

          As the wrath of the last red autumn—then

          When Christ reaps down the kings.

          "Follow a light that leaps and spins,

          Follow the fire unfurled!

          For riseth up against realm and rod,

          A thing forgotten, a thing downtrod,

          The last lost giant, even God,

          Is risen against the world."

          Roaring they went o'er the Roman wall,

          And roaring up the lane,

          Their torches tossed a ladder of fire,

          Higher their hymn was heard and higher,

          More sweet for hate and for heart's desire,

          And up in the northern scrub and brier,

          They fell upon the Dane.

Wandering into a Minefield

The Swedish athlete mentioned yesterday:

Many people helpfully explained that “some items are stolen more than others.” That’s true! And it’s a very reasonable question to ask. 

Forbidden Speech

A man in Scotland writes, but has to channel it through an American because he is now forbidden to say it aloud.

Once upon a time, North America was effectively Britain overseas. The colonists were Britons. They had British rights, British liberties, British privileges. Magna Carta. The Bill of Rights 1689. Around seventeen other Constitutional Statutes still technically in force.

Then King George decided Americans had lost their right to keep arms for their own defence, and that taxation without representation was perfectly acceptable. The rest, as they say, is history. The United States of America was born, and its citizens kept all of their old British rights and added God-given ones on top of them....

In 1920, Britain introduced its first serious Firearms Act. Before that, Britain had fewer gun restrictions than Texas.

Understand why it happened. It was not about crime. It was about preserving the Executive from its own people, specifically from any possibility of the kind of popular uprising that had just remade Russia. Protecting the ruling class. Nothing more, nothing less.

The constitutional safeguard of the citizen militia has also effectively been erased. It is almost impossible to find in Britain today.

If you keep reading, you find the criticism against the Administrative State that Weber mentions (see commentary on the sidebar). It overwhelms self-governance and replaces it with raw power. 

For our German Visitor

Here was the song he was running down the road.

The song sets it up as a reference to an older piece, though, and it is.

Here's a version with Merle Haggard, to link it up with our more usual era.

A German Travels the South

Apparently there's a soccer series going on right now that has brought a bunch of foreign soccer players to America. Soccer is not an American game -- it is the least interesting and exciting of the many variations of games with uninterrupted play ranging from one side of a field to another attempting to score goals. Americans have several better variations that we play, including indoor ones like basketball and hockey. Cherokee Stickball is another game of this sort. All of these are faster-paced and more interesting, so we don't much pay attention to the soccer version; I'm not quite sure why they've having the games here this time. 

However, what I have been enjoying is the joyous reactions of one of the traveling Germans to things he's been finding across the South. These things are well-known to me, and it's nice to see how much fun he is having. 

For example, here he is attending one of these games at a Southern-style university stadium (Auburn, as it happens). He is astonished by this experience. 

Before that, the hotel receptionist gave them a ride to the stadium because it was raining.

Before that Chattanooga; dinner at Chili's; visiting the beautiful mountain lakes. 

Before that Georgia; Brasstown Bald (it is in fact an alpine rainforest around here, by the way); American fast food; tubing on the Chattahoochee; Helen; Waffle House; Stone Mountain.

Interspersed among them, scenes driving down the long American highways listening to country radio.

Last night they visited Buc-ee's and ate dinner on stacks of deer feed corn.

It's nice to see someone taking such evident pleasure in visiting the South. 

UPDATE: Apparently there's a Swedish player having a similar experience in the Mid-West.

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

A named fallacy, but:

A fallacy doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means that logic can't guarantee truth preservation. Fallacious reasoning could produce a true conclusion; it's just that the truth is empirical or accidental rather than guaranteed by the form of reason.

Cats & Dogs Living Together

In retrospect, Belfast was probably the wrong place to pull this. 

UPDATE: New terrorist group 'just dropped,' as the kids say.

You were saying........ https://t.co/7VVuU1scbb pic.twitter.com/Hr2OzF7D9h

— Not A Number (@myhiddenvalue) June 9, 2026

A Britina Looks on Texas Manhood

Now, for the record, I haven't said anything about James Talarico: the only mentions of him here have come from Texan99, who is as advertised a Texan and whose business this candidacy therefore is. If I were to say something about him, it would be to question not his manhood but his theology; not his testosterone but his sense. However, it is true that some folks like Colonel Kurt* have mixed those critiques.

In Texas, they picked a white male Democrat who makes Tim Walz look like Sylvester Stallone—he’d be particularly excited about the getting oiled-up part. James Talarico could be kindly called gender ambiguous, but there’s no real ambiguity. He’s a male in the way that Boone’s Farm is a wine.

Talarico, of course, also allowed them to try the Christian grift. They know about as much about Jesus followers as they do about dudes. It was kind of hilarious how they were completely blind to the fact that all his stuff about Jesus is heretical blasphemy. It was beyond their comprehension that there might be different kinds of Christians—in this case, Christians who are Christian as opposed to pseudo-Christians who subscribe to whatever kind of Unitarian pinko baloney this little demon spews. The fact that he thinks meat is murder doesn’t help, and until Graham Platner’s latest revelations, Talarico’s laughable attempts to convince us that he was down with a hot Latina chick—she was not hot and there was no way they were down to anything—were the funniest meme in American politics.

I think the good colonel is on stronger ground in his criticism of the choice of Platner, to whit, that their view of men is so toxic that his own extreme toxicity made him seem authentic to them. That's a genuine blindness arising from their bubble and their worldview. Something like that is going on with Talarico's version of Christianity, if it is indeed a version of Christianity; but it's a very big tent, as no less than Chesterton pointed out. 

Still, this female Briton has some harsh words for American judges of manhood. (Also a great line: "I recommend watching the clip of Watters and Miller in full, because Miller has the kind of natural comic gifts that usually persuade people to forsake a career in stand-up and become a funeral director instead.") 

She comes around to the idea that the two criticisms are linked: that the debate over the theology is also a debate over the kind of Jesus people are imagining. How muscular a Christianity? In Texas, I would have imagined a fairly muscular one. Less so in other places; it's a big tent. 

UPDATE: Perhaps they're on to something, actually. Collins leads among voters until they are informed of Platner's scandals -- then he takes a commanding lead.

Shockingly, when voters are informed of sexual assault rumors, Platner improves, leading by 8.1%

This confirms suspicions that Democrats may be looking for their own Trump. Even more surprisingly, 75% of voter age 18-29 support Platner after being informed of the rumors.

'This confirms... that... may be' is a bad formulation. That remains a theory; this might be evidence for that theory, but not confirmation. 

However, it does suggest that Platner's viciousness is being taken as a strong positive by previously undecided voters. What is surprising is that many who were going to vote for Collins switch; maybe an accused sexual abuser with Nazi and male-rape fantasies is exactly what they've been looking for? That seems like the thing they've been railing against for a decade. If you can't beat 'em, I guess the Democrats are thinking.

* That Kurt article uses the word "normal" seven times. I've met Colonel (R) Kurt Schlichter through our mutual friend Jim Hanson, and Kurt is a wild and crazy guy. How strong his claim on the idea of "normality" is I would consider an open question; certainly not normal in the sense of ordinary. Why would you want to be that? 

I'm not myself, not nearly; what is wanted is to be exceptional in some good or virtuous way. That isn't normal: the ordinary course which gives rise to the norms is to make exceptions to the exceptional standards to allow for an easy, humane middle way that ordinary people can achieve. Getting there is easy, but it isn't especially good. It shouldn't be something to take as the proper end of an action or a life, a fact these two gentlemen know well since both have numerous exceptional accomplishments each.