"Like saying Italians..."

You probably shouldn't take pop culture seriously as a source of ideas.

"It's crazy," said Rogan. "Did you see him sitting next to Ilhan Omar, where she's apologizing for talking about it's all about the Benjamins? Which is just about money. She's talking about money. That's not an antisemitic comment, I don't think that is. Benjamins are money." He went on: "The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That's like saying Italians aren't into pizza. It's f****** stupid."

Rogan later said about Oman: "Whether you agree with her or not, she has a bold opinion, and that opinion is not her own. There's many people that have that opinion, and they should be represented.

...

Sharing a snippet of the podcast on Twitter, Baddiel, the author of Jews Don't Count, wrote... "For the hard of understanding, 'Jews are into money' is not like 'Italians are into pizza. Because unless my history lessons really missed something out, no-one has exterminated a large section of the entire Italian community because of their love for pepperoni."

This debate makes me feel dumber for having encountered it. The only reason to even mention it is that while everyone knows that 'pizza' as we have it here in America is American, not actually Italian, not everyone knows that pepperoni isn't either. If an American were to naively ask for a 'pizza with pepperoni' in Italy, they would be very surprised at the flatbread topped with peppers that came out. 

All analogies always break, though we have no choice but to reason with them as they are the only tool that works for most practical situations. This whole set of analogies, however, are too weak to hold any weight whatsoever. 

Rogan does kind of have half a point, though: Omar is clearly antisemitic, but she really does authentically represent her particular district.  The people who vote for her are disproportionately bad people just like her. 

There's a kind of democratic authenticity to that. Our system tries to express all three of the Aristotelian divisions of government: government by the many, few, and one. Congress is thus the democratic branch to the executive's tyrannical branch and the judiciary's oligarchical branch; and the House is the democratic wing of the democratic branch, with the Senate also representing a kind of oligarchy (though less so than before the 17th Amendment). If it is important for a democratic branch to authentically represent its voters and their interests, arguably she does the job better than anyone else could. 

What Does a Stick of Eels Get You?

I recently discovered Historia Cartarum and a fun article there about paying rent with eels in medieval England. So what does a stick of eels get you? Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee, medieval and cartographic historian, attempts to answer that question. Here's his intro:

A question that has come up several times in conversations with people about eel-rents concerns the value of a stick of eels.  The records tell us that X mill owed Y abbey Z sticks of eels per year…but what does that really mean?  How much value is the abbey actually getting in their taxes?  This is, unsurprisingly, a somewhat difficult question to answer.

There are very few handy charts telling us how much a stick of eels is worth, and it is difficult assessing this type of question from monastery records.  Part of the problem comes from the fact that there are often several centuries between records of payment types, meaning that it can be difficult to make assessments of eel equity when rents shifted to currency.  This is further complicated by the fact that eels had a specific value to monks that went beyond their more general market worth:  since they were not considered flesh, they could be eaten during Lent and during other Church celebratory days that banned meat.

However, there are places where the archive lets us make an educated guess, and so here is a back-of-the-napkin attempt at finding the value in a stick of eels.

Click over for the math. And if you decide to pay your Cornell U tuition in eels this year, he'll give you an idea of how many you'll need to bring to the bursar's office.

Now That Would Be Edgy

The one I heard about today sounded like a joke to me: red leather? Fire imagery? Fake horns on their heads? That wouldn't have been edgy in 1979, after that decade of music. By 1985 Iron Maiden would have made it seem tame and mainstream. 

Backup performers in dominatrix outfits? Displays intended as affronts to mainstream Christians? Have you heard of Madonna? She's not dead yet. Heck, neither is Ozzy Ozbourne, though I hear he decided to quit touring this year. 

These kids should work on being able to write riffs like Black Sabbath. The parody was already done by Spinal Tap, long before they were born. 

Or, if they really want to be edgy, learn to sing opera. I guess you won't get invited to the awards show, though.

More Motorcycle Problems for the Boy

As I am sure I've mentioned before, my son -- who is not actually still a boy -- purchased for himself a used motorcycle some time ago. It was a good starter bike, a 2007 Yamaha V-Star 650 Classic. However, he bought it from a guy who'd wrecked it and done only cosmetic repairs, and had left it sitting outside in all weather for many months. It looked great, in other words, but it has a lot of problems. 

In a way that's also a good 'starter' experience, as you learn most about motorcycle maintenance by doing motorcycle maintenance. Today's problem is an electrical problem, which are the worst in terms of diagnosis. I asked my buddy who builds electrical motorcycles to have a look at the wiring diagram while I pulled everything apart with my son and we traced connections and tested them with a multi-meter.

In the end my friend and I came to the same conclusion independently, which is that it was probably the starter solenoid. That's weird, because I just replaced it last summer to address another one of the many problems this bike has had. However, it's a cheap part and an easy swap ("easy" after disassembling the whole bike to test various electrical connections and relays). It's also a part that fails commonly because it takes a lot more current than any other relay on the bike -- the only real drain on the battery is when the starter circuit dumps current through the solenoid to the starter motor in order to turn the engine over until it starts. After that the bike generates enough electricity through normal operation to recharge the battery and operate all the other electrical systems.

Hopefully another new solenoid will fix the issue.

VFD Gets its Money’s Worth

The ‘day’ opened with a midnight chimney fire, then a brush fire in afternoon, at which one of the trucks got stuck on muddy ridgeline precipice.

That took hours to free; then we had a meeting and evening training class.  

I feel like I really earned my pay. As my father used to say, “If we keep this up we’ll get a raise, and next year we’ll make double nothing.”

Earl Hooker

While he was most famous for his slide guitar, which used standard tuning instead of the more usual open tuning and a short slide that allowed him to switch between slide and fretted playing, I can't find any videos of him playing slide. He was born in Mississippi in 1930 and died from tuberculosis in 1970, but in his day he was an influential blues player in Chicago and touring the US and Europe. John Lee Hooker was his cousin and he was influenced by Robert Nighthawk (early electric blues guitarist) and T-Bone Walker. Some of you may recognize this tune

Maybe from here

 

More below the fold.

Grim's Chuck Wagon Chili

Yesterday's recipe posting has me feeling like posting some more about food. There's a lot of good food writing on the internet, and I doubt that I have a great deal to offer in most areas. However, I make many good chili dishes in various forms. Here's another one.

There are many sorts of chili, I have learned in a life of loving chili. One of the chief divisions lies in whether one sears the meat first, or boils the meat first. Another lies in whether there are or are not beans included; another in whether the chilies used are green, dried brown, or red. 

This is a red chili in the old Texas style. Meat is boiled raw rather than seared first.

2 pounds ground beef, 20%+ fat

Sufficient water to cover the beef

Additional beef fat ('suet'), up to 1/2 cup if beef is lean

Dried onions, 1/2 cup (add additional onion powder if desired)

Dried garlic to taste

1/2 to 1 TBS tomato powder (or substitute tomato paste)

1/4-1/2 cup dried New Mexico red chilies or guajillo chilies

2 ancho peppers

Chipotles to taste (at least 3, more if you like spicy chili)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp oregano

2 tsp sage

1 tsp black pepper (fresh ground)

Lime or lemon juice to deglaze

Salt to taste

Add meat to cast iron Dutch oven. Cover with water; add suet. Boil, covered with iron lid, until beef is soft. Add dried onions and garlic, some salt but not yet enough to finish.

Roast peppers and cumin in black iron, add water to soften once roasted and hot; puree; add to Dutch oven.

Add aromatics (sage, oregano, black pepper) while boiling.

Cook until flavors are well combined. Deglaze with squeezed lime or lemon 5 minutes before finishing. Alternatively, remove from heat (covered) while still boiling, and allow to rest overnight in a cool place. Return to boiling to sterilize. Cool and salt to finished taste preference.

A Plethora of Potentials

The local college that is putting on the EMT course for us also has training in fire fighting, motorcycle safety, casino gambling, bartending, and law enforcement.

That's quite a range. People used to tell me that studying the humanities was the road to maximizing your potential, but I don't think there's nearly as much spread between creative writing and history these days.

Grim’s Accidental Bacon-Garlic Chocolate Chip Cookies

In the manner of my grandmother, when I cook bacon I reserve the grease for later use. (I also reserve beef tallow and general pork lard.) The other day I sautéed some garlic in the bacon fat first, and just added it to my standard stock because when don’t I add garlic to a dish?

So tonight I found that my wife had purchased chocolate chips, which indicated to me that she wanted chocolate chip cookies. Therefore, I made cookies. Absently I forgot that the bacon grease was garlicked, and used it as I usually do. I realized my mistake when I smelled it baking.

It turns out that bacon-garlic chocolate chip cookies are fantastic. So, here is an opportunity for you to share in the benefits of my fortunate mistake. 

Recipe:

Prior to baking, cook approx. 6 strips of bacon (I use applewood) in a cast-iron skillet. Add some fresh, crushed and diced garlic right at the end to infuse the bacon grease with garlic flavor. Remove bacon and garlic; use this for other dishes such as sandwiches, quesadillas, as a pizza topping, etc. Reserve bacon grease with garlic infusion.

Grim’s Accidental Bacon-Garlic Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. I keep a pizza baking stone in my bread oven, but you probably don't need one.

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup garlicked bacon grease (if you didn't quite get 1/2 cup of grease, make up the rest of the 1 cup total fat with more butter)

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 full cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1 tsp maple syrup

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour*

1 12oz package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Soften butter and bacon grease; whip together with sugars, baking soda, and vanilla until fluffy. Continue beating on a lower speed as you add each egg. Add chocolate chips. Add flour in divisions to allow easy admixture. Spoon onto greased baking sheets; bake until cookies are browned across the top and at the edges, then remove to cool. Switch to cooling racks after approx. one minute. Eat hot and gooey, or save for later consumption. 

* I used 1.25 cups King Arthur whole red wheat flour, and 1.25 cups White Lily Self-Rising flour; you can substitute any 2.5 cups of all purpose or similar baking flour. I like this mixture because the red wheat flour is very nutty, but then benefits from the lightness of the White Lily and its additional rising products. White Lily is the only flour capable of producing Southern biscuits, which are extremely light and tender. The red wheat flour is heavy and dense, so this mix gives you the nuttiness without the weight. A regular all purpose flour is probably just fine. 

The Feast of Brigid

There is an ongoing debate about whether Brigid was an early abbess and saint whose life became intertwined with stories about an earlier pagan goddess of the same name; or, alternatively, if the folk tales later thought to be survivors of an earlier pagan tradition were themselves just spinoffs of the stories ordinary people came to tell about St. Brigid. 

It is emblematic of our age that Ireland has decided to elevate her status to that of a third patron, along with Patrick and Columba, a celebration that entails her being depicted as a "kick-ass warrior poet and goddess" by the celebrity appointed to honor her. As Irish Times dryly noted, "Few people have described St Patrick as kick-ass." Just as per the recent post here and at AVI's place on the way in which Jesus was differently depicted by different ages, though, the 'kick ass warrior goddess' is the only one our age knows how to value; if she is to be important to our culture at all, she perforce must be important in that way. 

What Brigid was really good at -- both the myths and the saint-stories agree -- was multiplication. She was reputed to be able to encourage or bar fertility, including of a pregnant nun (as one can multiply by zero, I suppose): "A certain woman who had taken the vow of chastity fell, through the youthful desire of pleasure, and her womb swelled with child. Brigid, exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain." This has led to a pro-abortion NGO being named after the Catholic saint, which is an irony of ironies; what the Church thinks about that particular saint-story, I have not heard. 

Irish Central has a collection of prayers.

The Postmodern Bill of Rights

The Orthosphere is being satirical today; Satyrical, even, in places.

"1. Congress shall make no law respectful of religion...."

Jaroslav Pelikan’s Life and Works

 "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name." – Jaroslav Pelikan

In a discussion over at AVI’s, james brought up Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006), a scholar I don’t believe I’d ever heard of before but, after a bit of investigation, I truly wish I had.

Wikipedia tells us he was “an American scholar of the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and medieval intellectual history at Yale University.” A bit of a prodigy, he had earned both a seminary degree from Concordia Seminary and PhD from the University of Chicago by the age of 22. He spent most of his career teaching at Yale. Coming from a line of Lutheran pastors, he also was ordained a Lutheran pastor early in life. Later in life he and his wife both became Eastern Orthodox Christians. 

Wikipedia gives a humorous anecdote from his life:

While at Yale, Pelikan won a contest sponsored by Field & Stream magazine for Ed Zern's column "Exit Laughing" to translate the motto of the Madison Avenue Rod, Gun, Bloody Mary & Labrador Retriever Benevolent Association ("Keep your powder, your trout flies and your martinis dry") into Latin. Pelikan's winning entry mentioned the martini first, but Pelikan explained that it seemed no less than fitting to have the apéritif come first. His winning entry:

Semper siccandae sunt: potio
Pulvis, et pelliculatio.

The 30+ books he wrote which are listed on Wikipedia should provide something interesting for anyone in the Hall interested in Christianity, I would think. I’ll put the full list below the fold, but AVI recommends JesusThrough the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (1985). James read one of his 5-volume history, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. (1973–1990). 

Titles that also grabbed my attention included Bach Among the Theologians (1986), Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (1993), Faust the Theologian (1995), and What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem? Timaeus and Genesis in Counterpoint (1998). However, almost all of his work sounds interesting for me.

His life and more on his works are given over at Christian Scholars Online.

I’m happy james and AVI brought him to my attention. If you two read this, thank you!

I’ve included a long-ish selection of his works (copied from Wikipedia) below the fold.

Fancy "Dinner"

You have probably seen Hollywood movies in which, for a joke, an intensely masculine character played by someone like Sylvester Stallone or Arnold is taken to a restaurant at which tiny pieces of food are served as "dinner." I was taken to one such restaurant in D.C. during this last week, and the experience was much as Hollywood portrays it for laughs. 

The menu was 90%+ a wine list, the less said about which the better. Though I was a guest and all such expenses were to be covered, the prices were so outlandish that I refused to spend even someone else's money on such a thing. In any case there were cocktails and champagnes provided as part of the meal, which already required breaking my January fast out of politeness to my host, so I did not feel that anything beyond water was necessary in addition.

The first course was what turned out to be a fried piece of pigeon, which was quite delicious but perhaps one and a half ounces fully cooked. It was arranged with a symmetrically tiny piece of some sort of hash, the two miniscule pieces of food arranged on a full-sized dinner plate that was decorated with a geometric drizzle of some sort.  

The second course was pasta, and there were approximately four spoonfuls of it. It was good, as was the pigeon -- "squab" -- but it was obviously not intended to serve as a meal for a grown man.

The main course was billed as "surf & turf," and I think I know what that means: it means a steak served alongside a lobster or fish or the like. In this case it was about 4 oz. of slow-cooked beef shank, which again was very tasty; the 'surf' portion turned out to be the sauce provided on the side, which was made with ingredients that included fish. 

Now this whole dinner was served over the course of two hours, with many lectures from wait staff about the particular ingredients used and cultural reference points -- one of the drinks they served was "Death in the Afternoon," which required some discussion of Hemmingway -- so I was good and hungry by the time the meal ended. 

All was forgiven, however, when I returned to my hotel and found that the 'gift box' they had provided diners on the way out the door turned out to be -- I am not making this up -- an elaborately-wrapped cheeseburger. It would have been better hot, but the joke was well-played. 

Next time, all the same, I'd prefer a real steak sizable enough that I won't mind if you keep the fish.

Dragons of Occoquan

While waiting for my evening flight, I visited the little riverside town of Occoquan. 

Some Blues for Friday Night

 

Wild Coincidence

While here in DC, I caught up with a good friend from the Iraq war. We randomly went into an Italian restaurant because the place he wanted to eat was closed. This flag was in a frame there. The certificate has a picture of the Al Faw palace in Iraq, which was on Victory South where we were stationed together. The date of the certificate is a day we were there together, and it’s signed by the general who was our Corps commander.

Still at it

It's a month past Christmas, but my snowflake mania hasn't abated yet.

Years of War

The NYT is reporting that the Pentagon plans to increase production of 155mm artillery shells for Ukraine to 90,000 a month — in two years. 

Without getting deeper into it, that accords with what I’ve been hearing up here in Mordor. They think they’re going to drag this out for at least two years, and bleed Russia white. Can you imagine the effects of 90,000 heavy artillery shells a month on a nation? Those are the big boy shells used by platforms like our Paladins. 

Sorrows of Parting

It’s always hard to leave behind someone you really love. 

I mean the bike, not the Winchester ’94.

I crossed the high pass at Panthertown this morning. It was 34 degrees and pouring. After a long day of airports I’m in rain-soaked DC. I’ll be here through Saturday. 

Traveling Anew

Today I am packing for another trip to the DC region, my second in a month. I will be there for a week in case any of you are passing through. 

Someday I hope I get to go somewhere more fun than DC and various other warzones. Once I did get to go to Jerusalem, for which I remain very grateful; and some of the warzones have had their attractions. The southern Philippines were truly beautiful, and Iraq was at least a field of honor and a place of great interest. Perhaps it is too much to wish to go to Scotland, or to Spain.

UPDATE: That piece is from the "Ladies Love Outlaws" album, which has also this funny song that I don't think I've ever put up here before.

And of course, for those who have gotten to travel widely, there's always the piece initially made famous by Hank Snow, and yet more famously recorded by Johnny Cash.

Two Differences from the Declaration

In the comments to the post on arms below, Tom asks after two differences between the logic I offer and the one from the Declaration of Independence.

GRIM:

The Declaration asserts two things that I’m not arguing here:

1) That there is a right to life (it is named, alongside ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness’);

2) That establishing a government is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for defending these rights.

I’m not arguing (1) because I am not sure about it. I’m not arguing for (2) because I hope it isn’t true.

TOM:

I would be very interested in your thinking on these two things you aren't arguing.

The latter is easily explained. I hope it will prove to be true that an adequate defense can be made through voluntary organizations of free individuals, which would not rise to the level of 'a government.' An adequately distributed capacity for resistance might make a populace sufficiently prickly, as it were, that even a tyrannical state would find it to hard on their throat to swallow. 

One might argue that something like that proved to be true in Afghanistan. The analogy benefits from setting aside the question of what constitutes tyranny, and focusing purely on the dynamic of whether a free association can prove indigestible to the most highly-organized government. The Taliban's loose organization of families and those freely choosing to resist conquest proved impossible for the United States and its coalition to digest, though it kept Afghanistan in its gullet (as it were) for two decades. Previously the Soviet Union had a very similar experience, substituting for American technical proficiency significantly brutal tactics. That did not work either. 

In other words, Joe Biden's favorite claim that resistance to the American government requires F-15s instead of AR-15s is likely exactly backwards. A government that depended on F-15s would have logistical chains that could be easily broken by the American military, quickly collapsing its ability to resist conquest and domination. A nation adequately provided with AR-15s could have a distributed capacity for resistance to those things that would be insuperable even by the US Army and Marine Corps even if they were provided with air superiority, fire support, and decades of time. We might do better to ship rifles to Taiwan than air defense systems. 

That is what I hope is true. It does not admit of a logical proof such as I was offering in the post below, only pragmatic arguments. If it is true, though, then we can organize ourselves in the human future along the lines of anarchy: no leaders, no masters, no domination. Just free individuals defending each other's liberty, as we come together to do other worthy things -- whether churches or volunteer fire departments, accepting that the latter would require another funding model in the absence of grants from tax-funded state agencies. That would be a better way forward, one that lacked even the mechanisms for the grasping to exert power over others. It is the 'Black Flag America' that I hope someday might become the freely-chosen human future.

I will put the other question after the jump.

Jimmie Rodgers

AVI mentioned the famous singer at his place yesterday. As I noted in the comments, he continues to be remembered. Here's Coulter Wall, from the recent music analysis post, citing Jimmie Rodger's famous "Blue Yodel #9" during an imagined encounter with the RCMP.

Here's Jimmie Rodgers' original.

And here's Waylon Jennings memorializing Jimmie in his own time. In addition to the direct reference, he adapts some lines from the song above.

Sidebar and Authors

I added James' blog to the sidebar, the absence of which was merely an oversight on my part. If any regular readers/commenters have blogs they want added, drop them in the comments. I'll be happy to include anyone of good will in the links.

Also, regular commenters who might like to write/post here occasionally should reach out to me, either in the comments or at grimbeornr (note final 'r') at yahoo. I'm 

Arms and Human Dignity

I. The Necessity of Arms to Human Dignity

The necessity of arms to a dignified human being arises from self-defense. That already assumes dignity, though, which ought to be explained. Unlike a rock or a fallen twig, a human being cannot just be broken or otherwise used for your amusement or instrumental purpose. A child might enjoy throwing rocks in a stream, or floating twigs down it; it might be useful to repurpose a rock as part of the foundation of your house, or a set of twigs to start a fire to warm that house. Another human being cannot be seized by force and used without their permission: this is to say that they have a dignity that rocks and twigs and the other merely material stuff of the world does not.

That dignity entails a right of self-defense. Should someone attempt to seize you, use you, or destroy you in order to advance their own ends, as a dignified being you have a right to resist. You have a right to insist on having your dignity respected, and to using such means -- including force and violence -- as are necessary to that defense of your dignity. Because you have this right, you have also a right to the necessary means to the end of defending your dignity. Because those means are a necessary condition of the right, to deny the means is also to deny the realization of the right. 

To deny you the realization of the right of defense therefore entails denying you your dignity. Note that such a denial itself is the kind of attack on your dignity against which you are entitled to defend yourself. The potential for such a denial therefore itself entitles you to the means to defend yourself against such a denial.

II. Why Government Does Not Satisfy this Necessary Condition

Readers will note that the discussion so far follows the logic of the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence: 

(Assumption) All men are created equal.

(Assumption) All men have certain inalienable rights (such as this dignity).

(Unstated Assumption) There are dangers in the world that imperil these rights.

∴ Governments are instituted among men to protect these rights.

One might argue that the establishment of a government -- with an army, a police force, etc. -- itself satisfies the provision of a means to defend one's dignity. Arms could then be restricted to the police, army, etc., without such a restriction being an attack on human dignity.

The pragmatic lesson of the 20th century (and likely most or all other centuries also) is that one's government is in fact the chief danger to dignity, as well as to life, liberty, and other rights. Imperial Japan in its domination of the Chinese nation used terrible modes of oppression, and tested plague bombs and other weapons on the Chinese people. Even so, it did not come close to killing as many Chinese people as did their own government under Mao Zedong: the Great Leap Forward alone killed at least thirty million Chinese people, and perhaps twice that many. German losses in World War II were over three million people, which is approximately half as many of their people as the government killed through its genocidal policies. The Soviet losses were far worse, but nowhere near as significant as the number starved to death on purpose by their own government. 

Given the clear evidence that one's government is itself a chief danger to one's human dignity, the provision of the means to defend human dignity must also include the means -- at least collectively, in such large scale cases -- to reject one's government. 

This, not coincidentally, lines up exactly in agreement with the logic and conclusions of the next section of the Declaration of Independence. Far from being a radical opinion, it is the founding logic of the United States and of the American model.

Therefore: the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a right that no government, this nor any other, can infringe upon without a basic denial of human dignity. Such a denial itself entails a right of self-defense against such a government; and the everlasting potential for such a denial therefore entails an everlasting, permanent, and basic right to arms. Human dignity does not merely entail but absolutely requires the right to keep and bear arms.

America is a Safe Country

A fact about the United States that is apparently difficult to grasp is that almost all homicide happens in a very small number of neighborhoods. Most American counties have a murder rate of zero -- not zero percent, zero murders. The vast majority of the remnant have very few murders. The murder rate of the United States as a whole is driven as high as it is not even by a few bad cities. It is driven there by a few neighborhoods within a few cities. For the most part, America has no violence problem, no 'gun violence' problem, no crime problem.

This should have major public policy implications, but it doesn't because the Democratic party and the Republican establishment that enables it prefer global solutions. Officially the argument is that focusing on the problem smacks of discrimination. Imposing new rules on everybody everywhere is fair because it treats everyone according to the same rules. That this approach also enables the government to assert power over the lives of everyone -- and not the tiny minority in a tiny subset of places who are causing the problem -- is of course merely a coincidence. 

A similar issue occurs in the gun control debate. Almost all gun crime occurs in those same places, not across the broad country that owns hundreds of millions of guns peacefully. Also, gun crime is the product of handguns, not so-called 'assault weapons,' nor long guns in general. 

In 2020, handguns were involved in 59% of the 13,620 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available, according to the FBI. Rifles – the category that includes guns sometimes referred to as “assault weapons” – were involved in 3% of firearm murders. Shotguns were involved in 1%. 

Likewise, 80% of gun crime is carried out with illegally possessed firearms. Gun control laws won't affect these guns at all: to have any effect, they'd have to drop the level of legally-owned firearms so low that stealing guns was very difficult. That's a non-starter in a nation that has more guns than people, as well as a constitutional right to keep and bear them that is vigorously and rightly defended by the citizenry. 

Any sensible gun control proposal would thus focus on (a) handguns carried in (b) the particular neighborhoods that produce the crime and violence problem. The police there would react to handguns they lawfully encounter, whether via arrests or legal searches, by checking to see if they are stolen; if so, arrest would be followed by intense prosecution. At most this policy might extend to nearby neighborhoods; it need not trouble the most of the United States, where mostly lawful people engage in the exercise of their constitutional rights responsibly and to the common good. 

While this would impose a higher incidence of police interaction on those poor people living in these troubled neighborhoods, I'd wager they'd mostly be grateful for it. They probably want to know why the police are so hard to find in their neighborhoods. Concentrating the resources where the problems are would almost certainly improve the lives of the suffering majority in those areas. Those who found the police unbearable could, of course, move: they are free to do so now. 

Yet the desire of the powerful is not, of course, to fix the problem. It is to cement control, and to destroy a constitutional right that they find troublesome to their overweening ambitions -- to their hubris, to put it in a single meaningful word. 

An Interlude of Musical Analysis

In an attempt to find a different way to appreciate music during this time, I recalled The Charismatic Voice, which we looked at last year in a reaction video to a version of "You're a Mean one, Mr. Grinch." What I recalled about her videos was the clear joy she is capable of expressing through her facial expressions as she listens to music. I thought perhaps it would be helpful to see how she reacts to music that is sounding dull and uninteresting to me just now.

Sadly, for the most part her tastes in music and mine differ strongly enough that even her enviable example will not save many of these songs for me. 

There are exceptions. She has a couple of contemporary country artists who are worthy. There aren't many; most of contemporary country music is garbage. Nashville seems to have decided that it should breed its product together with hip-hop, which is a perfectly fine musical form on its own, but definitely an urban form that does not mesh well with the roots music that makes up country. That use of 'urban' is meant literally, not as an euphemism for 'black' as it is often used: blues music is a roots music that has strongly black roots, but which melds very well with country music. (Indeed, many great country and rockabilly songs are called '... Blues,' e.g. Hank William Sr.'s "Honky-Tonk Blues.") Likewise Nashville has embraced a lot of cultural influences that are foreign and hostile to the tradition; and even when it cleaves more closely to its heritage, it tends to produce the same kind of over-produced mess that pop music is all about these days. The great Dale Watson satirized this in a piece of his own a few years ago.

There are a few really good younger artists working around the edges, though. That probably deserves a post of its own: Sturgill Simpson is probably the best actual artist among them, though he's good enough as an artist that a lot of his work ventures beyond the boundaries of what you might call 'country'; Whitey Morgan and the 78s had the good sense to go back to Waylon Jennings' surviving band members and learn how they used to create a sound that bestrode the later 70s but was already lost by the 2000s. Whiskey Myers (which is a group, sadly not a man's name) is good, and Jamie Johnson.  Jesse Dayton is a little older but he's therefore old enough to have gotten to play with Johnny Cash and Waylon in his youth. Something similar can be said for Wayne "the Train" Hancock, who has produced good music and also helped to shepherd younger artists. 

And then there are these two that she chose to sample.

These aren't my favorite songs by either of these artists, and both of them are -- speaking of blues -- very bluesy numbers. She clearly enjoys them, though, and that is inspiring to see. In addition, her analysis of them is highly informative. There is a lot going on in these seemingly-simple numbers that is opaque to a non-musician who simply enjoys music.

UPDATE: In the second video, I'm deeply amused by the moment when she declares, "I don't really know this song. I've only heard it once before by, uh... the first guy who did it." What was that guy's name again?

Scalloway Fire Festival 2023

The first since the outdoor festival was canceled during the early days of COVID, the festival was presided over by Jarl Magnus Gray. 

Colder Than Advertised

Can’t trust those weathermen. They lie. 

Or as they prefer to put it, “Our models are based on statistical analysis, and are only probabilities.” If the predictions happen to be close, we want the credit; if they’re nowhere nearby, well, some days the long shot animal comes in first.  

The Blight of January

We are today about halfway through the long, dark month of January. This year as usual I am engaged in the Dry January fast -- I used to do it during Lent, but that entails being dry on St. Patrick's Day; this version entails being dry on Robert Burns' Night. 

One must make one sacrifice or another for the sake of virtue and health. Kant's argument about proving one's freedom is brought to bear here.  One does not prove one's freedom by doing what you want, Kant argues, but by choosing not to do what your body wants to do out of rational decision. In that way, similar I suppose to the test of the Gom Jabbar, one proves that one is a free human being and not what Dune calls 'an animal,' which accords with Kant's view of animals. In fact many or all animals are probably also free, and not merely enacting biological programming; it would be closer to the point to say that one is proving that one is an actual intelligence and not an artificial one. Perhaps even artificial ones may someday be free in the same sense; if so, may they absorb the lesson that one proves one's freedom by choosing virtue over preference.

For me the experience of a prolonged 'dry' period is always the same. It is no difficulty, and especially for the first few days it is novel and even pleasant. I notice improvements in my sleep and digestion, and surprising improvements in things like my sinuses. By perhaps day seven I begin to wonder why I don't do this all the time, since it saves money and improves ordinary life in many aspects. Yet by the end I am always very glad for it to be ending, and eager to renew my friendship with beer and wine, cider and mead.

I've been trying to figure out what could be driving that reliable experience. It shouldn't be simple biochemical reactions: those should occur early in the experience. It might be because of the time of year: the darkness comes early and lasts long, and the cold already entraps one more often than one prefers in one's home. Today is sunny and will rise into the upper forties by midafternoon; I shall certainly go ride my motorcycle in such weather. Yet only a few hours after it stops freezing it will become dark, and shortly thereafter resume freezing. I can ride in the freezing weather and the dark, but I prefer to ride in the sun. The morning will thus find me having slept in my own bed for many hours, only to rekindle the fire in the furnace and brew another pot of coffee. On sunny days like this, I often split wood outside. On snowy, icy, or rainy days I may not go out at all. The relief and transportation offered by a cheering brew or a cup of wine might be more heavily missed in wintertime.

Yet what I notice the most is that the music sounds less good. Normally I increase my collection of music to listen to in small but consistent additions, adding to playlists or building new ones. Lately I have not heard a single song I cared about much, and even listening to old favorites brings little pleasure. I am instead reading old favorite books again, in silence. 

This loss of both the phenomenological pleasure of wine and ale and the auditory pleasure of music drains the world of much of its sense of meaning, I think. Perhaps it is worsened by being accompanied by a loss of some opportunities for physical exercise, an enclosure in a colder, darker world, and a lack of the usual mobility. For these reasons and perhaps additional ones that have not occurred to me, the coming of even so poor a month as February will bring a welcome release. 

A Red Warning on Taiwan

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conducted a study of multiple outcomes should the Chinese invade Taiwan. The results are not encouraging.

Although "most" of the scenarios they studied resulted in a US victory, all of them were very costly. The happy case is already bad:

This defense comes at a high cost. The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of servicemembers. Such losses would damage the U.S. global position for many years. While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services. China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war. 

There are two additional warnings contained in the report on the study. The first is that the worst, "Ragnarok" scenario -- one in which Japan chooses to stay neutral and the PRC finds a way to keep US bombers from playing a significant role, an admittedly difficult task -- results in even more terrible losses.

In total, the United States lost four carriers, 43 cruisers and destroyers, and 15 [nuclear attack submarines].

That outcome ends in the PRC conquering Taiwan, and the US withdrawing in abject defeat. 

The second is contained in a later section of the report, which analyzes why the CSIS report has much cheerier outcomes than internal, classified US military war games. As bad as this is, it is a much rosier picture than the one the military has been coming up with during its own studies.

A Norse Curse and Poem

A metal interpretation of the sort of cursing described in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. 

[Egil] took in his hand a hazel-pole, and went to a rocky eminence that looked inward to the mainland. Then he took a horse's head and fixed it on the pole. After that, in solemn form of curse, he thus spake: 'Here set I up a curse-pole, and this curse I turn on king Eric and queen Gunnhilda. (Here he turned the horse's head landwards.) This curse I turn also on the guardian-spirits who dwell in this land, that they may all wander astray, nor reach or find their home till they have driven out of the land king Eric and Gunnhilda.'

This spoken, he planted the pole down in a rift of the rock, and let it stand there. The horse's head he turned inwards to the mainland; but on the pole he cut runes, expressing the whole form of curse.

Immediately after this is a nice poem, which is not part of the curse. 

After this Egil went aboard the ship. They made sail, and sailed out to sea. Soon the breeze freshened, and blew strong from a good quarter; so the ship ran on apace. Then sang Egil:

'Forest-foe, fiercely blowing,
Flogs hard and unceasing
With sharp storm the sea-way
That ship's stern doth plow.
The wind, willow-render,
With icy gust ruthless
Our sea-swan doth buffet
O'er bowsprit and beak.'

"Forest-foe" is a hard wind, as is "willow-render"; the "sea-swan" is of course the ship itself. 

Go Mighty Bulldogs

I missed the first quarter due to Fire/Rescue training, which I suppose demonstrates my dedication to the latter. Tonight’s National Championship College Football Game is the most important game in any sport all year; indeed, as any true Southerner knows, college football is the only actual sport played anywhere in the world. 

Go Dawgs. 

UPDATE: Final score 65-7. Congratulations to the back to back champions. 

CounterPunch: COINTELPRO is Back

I noted this article last week, but I wanted to avoid politics for the holidays. It is highly unusual for the radical, normally-left site CounterPunch to publish something that is sympathetic to the right wing, but criticism of the FBI is in their lane. 

The Senate report on COINTELPRO concluded: “Only a combination of legislative prohibition and Departmental control can guarantee that COINTELPRO will not happen again.” But the Ford administration derailed legislative reforms by promising an administrative fix. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft threw out many of those reforms as part of “a concerted effort to free the [FBI] field agents… from the bureaucratic, organizational, and operational restrictions” imposed after their prior abuses. Ashcroft declared: “In its 94-year history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been… the tireless protector of civil rights and civil liberties for all Americans.”  ...

The FBI’s latest war on wrong-thinking Americans took off after the FBI helped fabricate the 2016 RussiaGate fraud.... In our time, FBI officials pressured Twitter to suppress Americans based on false claims of fighting foreign influence.  The same pretext was used by the Department of Homeland Security to massively suppress Americans’ criticism of election procedures (especially mail-in ballots) for the 2020 presidential election. As the covert war against “misinformation” expands, the list of federally prohibited online thoughts is snowballing. DHS is targeting “inaccurate information on the… U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine,”...

One of the biggest “misses” in the media coverage of the Twitter Files is the stunning failure of Congress to expose the abuses that Elon Musk is revealing.... Is Congress terrified of the FBI nowadays like congressmen were in the COINTELPRO era? In 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs revealed the shameless kowtowing on  Capitol Hill: “Our very fear of speaking out [against the FBI] … has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny…. Our society cannot survive a planned and programmed fear of its own government bureaus and agencies.” 

That last point is one I've been hearing more often lately. Society cannot survive a collapse of trust in public institutions; therefore, it is suggested, we have a moral obligation to extend trust to those institutions. High-trust societies definitely do better than low-trust ones. 

Trust has to be earned, however. When our institutions regularly betray their society and defy their constitutional limits, trust is not merited. 

More on Viking Age "Migration"

A few years ago there was a famous study that showed that the early population of Iceland was made up almost 50-50 of Norsemen and Gaels -- that is, of Viking men and Scottish or Irish women. Now a study shows that there was a substantial amount of Celtic migration to Scandinavia proper, too. 

The circumstances and fate of people of British-Irish ancestry who arrived in Scandinavia at this time are likely to have been variable, ranging from the forced migration of slaves to the voluntary immigration of more high-ranking individuals such as Christian missionaries and monks. 

OK, although the monks should have been celibate, so their influence on the population's genetics ought not to have been great.

I have long reflected on the fact that the Norse sagas don't really mention Irish female slaves in great numbers -- in fact I can't think of even one example -- but they must have been pretty thick on the ground if they made up half the genetic heritage for a while. The sagas weren't written down until much later, and tend to be about high-status families or individuals, but still you'd think they'd come up. 

Now there's a parallel discussion as to whether the Jews were ever slaves in Egypt, with some reform Jews arguing that the traditions are falsified because the only evidence for them is Biblical. However, the historic evidence for Jewish slaves in Egypt is much stronger than the evidence for female Irish slaves in Iceland; and there were very clearly a lot of Irish slave-women in Iceland. Maybe the Egyptians were no more interested in documenting their slaves' activities than were the Vikings, and the Irish women less literate and capable of documenting it themselves.

A Familiar Story

Writing from the southern Philippines, Georgi Engelbrecht describes a failed jihadist movement's attempts to establish a stronghold there.

I was in the southern Philippines myself in 2007, and this story about the Islamic State's attempt to do so is almost precisely a mirror of the earlier attempt by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf - both of whom get mentioned.

A landmark peace agreement in 2014 reconciled the Philippine government with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest — and formerly secessionist — Moro Muslim rebel group. Bringing about peace, however, has been more complicated. Islamist outfits have formed outside the MILF and gained increasing popularity as the pact was delayed and formal Moro autonomy slowed despite the peace deal....

Things escalated after the third battle in Butig in November 2016. Isnilon Hapilon, one of the few surviving leaders of the infamous Abu Sayyaf Group, a loose network of criminal and militant cells in the Sulu Archipelago, arrived in Lanao and was appointed emir (commander) of the local Islamic State franchise. Hapilon had left his home island, Basilan, when his group came under military pressure. Details remain murky, but the plan to take over Marawi likely emerged around this time, with militants linking up with criminal syndicates. Local politicians supported the militants with cash and protection. Foreign money was arriving through remittance centers and bank accounts.

To appreciate how similar these stories are, you need to know that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was itself an offshoot of the Moro National Liberation Front, which had signed a "landmark peace agreement" in the 1990s. The MNLF deal brought in most of the militants in the southern Philippines, who were moved as much by Moro nationalism as by Islam; but a radical offshoot, MILF, splintered off and continued the fight. 

Abu Sayyaf, meanwhile, was an ally of Al Qaeda instead of the manner in which this new ultra-radical group was an ally of the Islamic State (itself containing members of the old Al Qaeda in Iraq, an offshoot of AQ that came to exist only to fight us in Iraq, and who married to Saddamist insurgents in American prisons in Iraq where they were kept from killing each other long enough to find common cause). Al Qaeda friends Jemmah Islamiyah helped set up and fund 'the sons of the Sword' (a literal translation of Abu Sayyaf) to push for a Qaeda-led caliphate in the very same Islam-friendly territory. They used the MILF as militia capable of holding territory; the MILF used them as shock troops. 

I guess you could say that the waves are getting smaller and smaller, which might be reason for hope. The same process happened in Ireland, where the Irish Republican Army was brought in but the Provisional Irish Republican Army stayed out, until the Provos came in but the Real IRA stayed out, until at last there is relative peace. That too makes this a familiar story; I hope it works out well. The Southern Philippines are one of the most beautiful places on earth, unbelievably beautiful, and it is a shame that such paradise has so long been marred by poverty and war.

The Feast of the Epiphany

As the discussion in the comments has illuminated, today marks the end of Christmas and the start of Epiphanytide, though in another sense the “Christmastide” continues for some time until Candlemas. 

Growing up I was misled by Christmas pageants and Nativity scenes to believe that all the events happened at once: the Magi standing around the manger with the shepherds and the donkeys, everyone gathered together in celebration as we were ourselves come together as a family on Christmas morning. Epiphany was never mentioned. Of course it makes sense, though, that a journey in those days took quite some time. The mind prefers the easy, complete picture. 

Epiphany Eve

The relevant festival for today seems to be informal: it is the eve of Epiphany, which brings about some duties and preparations. The formal feasts for today are several, including St. Syncletica who died after she gave away her wealth to the poor; and St. John Neumann, an important Eastern European figure of the 19th century. 

For the purpose of the Christmas holiday, the Epiphany marks the end of the 12 days of Christmas (but not the Christmastide, which lasts until Candlemas at the end of what is also known as Epiphanytide -- see discussion below).

In many Western Churches, the eve of the feast is celebrated as Twelfth Night (Epiphany Eve). The Monday after Epiphany is known as Plough Monday.

Popular Epiphany customs include Epiphany singing, chalking the door, having one's house blessed, consuming Three Kings Cake, winter swimming, as well as attending church services. It is customary for Christians in many localities to remove their Christmas decorations on Epiphany Eve (Twelfth Night),  although those in other Christian countries historically remove them on Candlemas, the conclusion of Epiphanytide. According to the first tradition, those who fail to remember to remove their Christmas decorations on Epiphany Eve must leave them untouched until Candlemas, the second opportunity to remove them; failure to observe this custom is considered inauspicious.

So if you are going to remove Christmas decorations according to this tradition, today is the day for it (as we are doing here). If you want to eat Three Kings Cakes tomorrow, today may be the day for preparing them. At least if you are Roman Catholic; the Eastern church has a whole different set of dates for all of this, and a more intense set of traditions about it.

If you are wondering about the name, it is Greek, which might explain why the Greek Orthodox church is more wedded to it.

The word Epiphany is from Koine Greek ἐπιφάνεια, epipháneia, meaning manifestation or appearance. It is derived from the verb φαίνειν, phainein, meaning "to appear". In classical Greek it was used for the appearance of dawn, of an enemy in war, but especially of a manifestation of a deity to a worshiper (a theophany). In the Septuagint the word is used of a manifestation of the God of Israel (2 Maccabees 15:27). In the New Testament the word is used in 2 Timothy 1:10 to refer either to the birth of Christ or to his appearance after his resurrection, and five times to refer to his Second Coming.

The Evils of Coca-Cola

I'm not doing political posts by intention during the Christmas season, so look for those to resume not sooner than Monday. This one is more about corporate corruption, though it bleeds over into government corruption -- especially the manner in which the government refused to discuss obesity as a risk during the COVID massacre period, which doubtless cost lives and in poor, disadvantaged communities. 

We can hold fire on the rest of it until Monday. Hopefully the House Speakership won't be determined by then, or ever, so we can talk at length about it.

Feast of Elizabeth Ann Seton

Today is the feast day for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, an eighteenth century(!) saint who is by far the furthest removed from the events of Christmas. She is the first US citizen to be canonized. She converted to Catholicism fairly late in life, and was influential in the establishment of the faith in a new nation dominated by Protestant churches.

This raises a general point I have been wondering about regarding the Twelve Days of Christmas. Some of these feasts, solemnities, and memorials are clearly "of" the 12 Days, such as Childermas, the Feast of the Holy Family, and the Solemnity of Mary. Others are perhaps only 'during' the 12 days, including perhaps this one, St. Thomas Beckett, and some others. I've never seen a clear answer on which is which. Is St. Stephen's Day 'of' or 'during'? John the Evangelist? 

Perhaps one of you has better information on that than I do. D29?

Tomorrow is Epiphany Eve, which closes the 12 Days: The Feast of the Epiphany, which has a clear connection to Christmas, is outside the range. So too the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, which is Monday the 8th. 

Happy Birthday Tolkien

Today is also the 131st birthday of JRR Tolkien. The age has an analogue:

Since Bilbo had been a ring-bearer, he was allowed to accompany Frodo to the Undying Lands. On September 22, 3021, Bilbo turned 131 and became the oldest hobbit ever to have lived. On September 29, he, Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Frodo had boarded a ship docked at the Grey Havens and sailed away from Middle-earth. His fate afterward is not known but as he too was a mortal being, he most likely died in the light of the Blessed Realm of Valinor.

Memorial of the Holy Name

January 3rd marks the day on which the baby was formally named by Joseph. One might object that the Son’s name predates the formality, having been given by the Father (perhaps in eternity) and certainly transmitted to Joseph by an Angel in a dream well before. However, the incarnation was an incarnation into a particular time and place, family and tradition; and Joseph was assigned thereby the formal duty of naming the child. 

Today marks the day on which that naming occurred, and is an occasion to reflect on the name and its meaning. 

Feast of St. Basil and St. Gregory

Today is the feast day of both St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who were brothers. They are as 4th century saints quite late compared to most of those whose feast days fall in the 12 days of Christmas (although Thomas Beckett is even quite a bit later); their role was in resisting the Arian heresy and developing the theology by which the exact nature of the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is understood. 

Solemnity of Mary

The first of the year is the Solemnity of Mary. 

Go Mighty Bulldogs

Oh, and ah, happy new year. 

Haud Hogmanay

You’ve all been around here long enough to know about Hogmanay. 

Venison steak pie.

Have a merry one. 

The Feast Day of Sebastian I

The 31st of December was the death day of Pope Sebastian I, later canonized as St. Sebastian I. He was Pope at the time of the conversion of the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great, and as such was an important influence on the Roman Catholic Church as it assumed a new role at the center of Western life. 

Also today marks the death day of Pope Benedict XVI. May his soul rest in peace. 

There's looting, and then there's this guy

Merry Christmas, Jay.

Duet

It's hard to beat either Bonnie Raitt or Allison Krauss, but I wouldn't have guessed they'd sing so well together. "You and I were created to be true."

Feast of the Holy Family

This one of the 12 Days of Christmas travels around the calendar. It’s normally the Sunday after Christmas, but when Christmas itself falls on a Sunday it’s 30 December. 

The intent of this feast is to celebrate the Holy Family, and to draw inspiration from them for your own family. 

Year-Round Riding

 It’s always nice to get a warm day in the wintertime. 

The Feast of Thomas a Becket

A martyr, St. Thomas of Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury. I assume that the story is well known here. 

The Feast of Holy Innocents

A somber feast amid the celebrations.

Crum’s Grim Hot Sauce

Continuing the theme of women buying me military-themed hot sauces, I received this Christmas the following entries from Crum’s Sauces of Alexandria, VA. This company is Veteran owned and donates 5% of profits to the Green Beret Foundation. 

Crum’s Grim is I gather its flagship sauce, made of Carolina Reaper peppers. It’s nicely flavored, and is supported by an array of recipes at their website. 

The Peach Habanero sauce is quite pleasant, though not killer-hot. 

Recommended. 

Home cam his guid horse, but never cam he

The Feast of John the Evangelist

The third day of Christmas is the feast day of the author of the Gospel according to John, the one most influenced by Greek philosophy. 

"Bach Was A Hired Gun"

 A strange line in a piece on sacred music.

Where Beethoven composed for eternity, Bach was a hired gun, concerned day-to-day with writing a banger for church on Sunday and providing for his huge family – 20 children from two marriages (his first wife died in 1720). We can guess, because Bach was hopeless at preserving the music of predecessors at his many postings, that he probably did not expect anyone to keep a record of his. 

Bach wrote music of eternal beauty for all of that -- as well as some 'bangers,' as they say.

The Feast of Stephen

The High Feast of Christmas

The giant laughter of Christian men
That roars through a thousand tales,
Where greed is an ape and pride is an ass,
And Jack's away with his master's lass,
And the miser is banged with all his brass,
The farmer with all his flails;

Tales that tumble and tales that trick,
Yet end not all in scorning—
Of kings and clowns in a merry plight,
And the clock gone wrong and the world gone right,
That the mummers sing upon Christmas night
And Christmas Day in the morning.

-Chesterton, "Ballad of the White Horse"

Merry Christmas

In the spirit of the Midnight Mass, I send you greetings on the earliest hour. Enjoy these songs from last year's Christmas.

Absurdities on Christmas Eve

The local county emergency services administrator has issued a ridiculous and overweening Declaration of Emergency, one forbidding travel on public highways and giving himself the power to issue mandatory evacuations. 

The declaration is a classic government response, being too late and too much. It came out at 3:30 this afternoon, but the cold nights were last night and the night before. This afternoon was sunny and pleasant enough for twenty-something weather. Tonight it will be chilly -- teens -- but nothing like the below-zero weather with -20 wind chills we've been having. Tomorrow will be a pretty normal December day, weather-wise. 

My favorite part is the order that all emergency services personnel should assist in carrying out this decree. In Canada? There's no way I am going to attempt to 'assist' in making one of the Old Men of the Mountains leave his nice, fire-warmed home on Christmas Eve. He's lived there for seventy years, and has seen cold weather and no power before. Some of the old ones lived up here before there was power. They're safe and warm in their homes, safer and likely warmer than they'd be in any shelter the county cared to throw up anyway. Their kin watch over them, but my experience is that they ask for nothing because they need nothing. There probably aren't enough deputies in the county to move three of them, let alone all the ones in the district.

Here's an equally ridiculous Christmas song in the spirit of the thing.

A Blast from Christmas Past

 

As usual, Right Click|Open in Separate Tab to get a larger image.

Merry Christmas, all.

Eric Hines

Flapping-ear hats

This is the first year I've seen caps with ears that flap. I found them irresistible. This is one on my nextdoor neighbor's visiting granddaughter:

Christmas Eve Bee Stings

 

A Less-Cowboy Version

How about this one? I was sure we’d have chimney fires, and we may yet, but none happened today. Since we didn’t have any fires to fight, and also no power, I drug Dad’s old generator outside into the -20 windchill and got it working. It hadn’t been started in a year so it had multiple problems, but it’s running fine now. Fortunately we don’t need it because the power company got our lights back on before dark. 

This is a less elaborate version of a major element of Christmas dinner that I ended up making today instead. That was because of the need to adapt to no power earlier today. I’ll have to figure out something else for Christmas. 

God sent the storm. I don’t imagine he’ll mind my altering my plans so they better fit with his own. 

Cowboy Cooking

Since the power is out, I made cowboy coffee this morning. I had meant to put the ham in the refrigerator this morning, but that should stay closed, so we decided to reshuffle the menu a bit and eat it now. The propane range will light with no power, but I wanted to bake some sort of bread. The oven is electric. 

My wife proposed that I just use my big campfire Dutch oven and the fire in the furnace. 

Evaporated milk biscuits, rather than the famous powder milk ones. 

Cast iron in the fire. 

Biscuits and fried ham. 

A Gap in the Electrification Theory

Last night the rain came in heavy for the last hours before the Arctic blast dropped temperatures thirty degrees and far below freezing. Naturally that meant ice in the trees, which meant lots of treefalls onto power lines. This morning power is out across five counties for thousands of households. 

By coincidence, an increasing number of households use heat pumps to keep their homes warm. This is an excellent technology under the right circumstances. It is perfectly useless right now, exactly when needed the most. 

My home is mostly heated by firewood. It works just as well without the power, although the lack of fans to move the warm air about limits the efficiency somewhat. Still, a fire in the furnace means warm floors and unfrozen water pipes even in deep cold. 

Christmas Bee Stings

Easy ornament

I sliced some lemons and left them in the dehydrator overnight. They came out great! Here’s one hanging from my neighbor’s tree. They’d probably do fine in an oven on low heat overnight, too.

Stocking Stuffers

In a true Dad move -- I mean my Dad especially -- I just stuffed my wife’s and son’s stockings with tire puncture repair kits, tire pressure gauges, and battery terminal cleaning tools.

Fun

John Cleese has published a short book about creativity. In a recent interview he cracked me up, as usual, with a throwaway line:

I've never been addictive, except the very small things like food. And the awful thing about getting older is food tastes better. It's just wonderful. I eat nothing else now.

Defining "humor" has been a durable cottage industry, but the best stabs at it center on the upending of expectations. Cleese, who understandably conflates creativity with his own genius for humor, argues that creativity is about jumping out of ruts, exploring something new that might work better. The novelty can't appear for its own sake; it has to add something unexpectedly valuable.

I tend to be somewhat fearful and controlled. My creative impulses take flight in solitude, with puzzles or crafts, fields where my impulse to limit risk doesn't intrude much. In both puzzles and crafts, the pleasure springs from solutions that bubble up from the unconscious. Naturally the process always depends on organized analysis--I say "naturally" because I clearly most enjoy challenges in which orderly, concentrated thought confer an advantage--but the pleasure depends on a healthy dose of right-brain wandering, the aha! moment of delight springing up from some deep well. The special delight of word puzzles (I'm addicted to the daily crossword, Wordle, and Spelling Bee) is not only the conscious strategies that can be learned and perfected, but the involuntary mental gymnastics that operate out of sight and pop solutions into the conscious mind as if by sorcery. Much of solving a crossword puzzle involves taking the mind out of gear and letting the unconscious process hum along. Successful "Jeopardy!" contestants have reported something similar in the past, though recently they all seem to concentrate on buzzer technique and gambling strategy.

Cleese reports that creative people put off decisions until the last possible moment, a trait that drives me mad in other people. For my own part, if I'm willing to make a decision at all, I prefer to make it rapidly so I can move onto the next one. Much domestic strife stems from my impatience with my fence-sitting husband, who has a fantastic aversion to making choices in areas where I can't see why anything important is riding on the outcome. As long as the choice does get made at some point, however, there seems to be no particular problem in deferring it until it really is required. Does that signal creativity? I don't know, but it's worth a try.

Certainly the mental processes that always have given me the most joy derive their power from the ability to jump out of a rut. Early in childhood I absorbed my father's childlike delight in both jokes and puzzles that operated on this principle. Satisfying dramas, for instance, put a character under stress and watch him squirt in an expected direction. Whether the field is drama, visual art, science, technology, or humor, the reaction we want is "Oh! yes!" The reaction we don't want is "But where's the fun in that?"