Who makes that now?

Listen:


Or this:


Or this:


Or this:


I'm sure you'll like this:


How about this:


Or this:


Or this:


Can't forget this:


So I say lots of people are making that now. Most of those clips have dragged the music out of the movie, but I think that's similar to playing the overture there without the rest of the opera.

But let's consider Wagner again: Listen to Tannhauser, and you're listening to 1845.

Let's go back a bit:


That's 1724. And I'm going to make a wild ass guess and say Wagner never heard that. But you just did. (Maybe Wagner did hear that, but I betting not because I don't think anyone was playing the Viola de Gamba in 1845 in Germany, in a style of music written a century earlier, in France, for a French King.)

And why did you hear that? Its the technology.

Let's go back another 100 years:


I wonder if Wagner ever heard Monteverdi. Anybody know if Monteverdi got performed in mid 19th century Germany?

And go back even earlier:


I'm sure Wagner never heard that. But now we have.

Now watch these guys mash it up:


Looks pretty fearless too. I wonder what they've heard that influenced and inspired them and how they heard it--and who are they going to inspire someday? Sure, it isn't Wagner, but hell, he was a genius. I bet if Wagner was alive today he'd be making films.

Its the technology part everybody misses here. Its part of the problem with 'classical' music in the 20th century. The original article walked right past it:

We all know that the invention of recorded sound around 1900 made possible an extraordinary dissemination of the riches of the classical repertoire – largely composed for the rich and powerful – to the mass of ordinary people. On the gramophone, the radio, television and, subliminally and hence more powerfully, through the movies, the classical sound in all its variants (even the supposedly rebarbative confections of the Second Viennese School) has insinuated itself into the culture at large. Never before have so many people listened to, or liked, so-called classical music. Yet this extraordinary triumph has culminated in a malaise, a feeling, widespread in the musical profession and elsewhere, that classical music is in crisis and that things have never been so bad. Classical music feels abandoned, left behind as history has moved on, sulking in its tent as the real cultural action happens somewhere else.

(emphasis mine)

Through the technology, everything old is new again. There is so much of it, that one could not listen to it all. And because we are all different, we can now follow our different likes. And through the technology, we don't have to go to an opera house to listen to Piercello play Tannhauser. We can record him and listen to him while typing our blog posts.

So what's been lost? Its not so much lost as it is found. We as listeners have access to all styles of music from all history now. And other cultures too. All because of the technology.

UPDATE:
Grim asks "Where are the geniuses like Wagner now?" Which is a fair question (although I'd not call it a "problem" per se).

I don't have a answer, only a hunch. And that hunch is that those geniuses are out there, but they're doing something else. What? well, what ever they want to. The time and place that Wagner grew up in was a more circumscribed culture than was now exists in nearly any Western country Maybe any country. Perhaps he's playing on his xbox right now. I'm not sure.

As to what happened in the 20th century--well, there were close to 100 million people killed off before their time, and who knows what they would have done. Those thread were snipped. One cannot know what would have happened.

Also, musical tastes and forms have changed. Wagner was writing for an orchestra, which is just one kind of musical form. When Piercello gets back, perhaps he can give us some idea of how that has changed over the years.

Or take Jordi Savall, the guy in that video you so liked. He's not composing anything new, he's reviving old stuff. he maybe arranging it, and intrepreting it, but its not really the creation of "new" music, the way it would be if he say, wrote an new opera about the Reconquista or something, even if was in the style of Monteverdi. And that idea there, the revival of the old--especially in terms of music developed in the last century, and to my observation that was new. Before, the old went out style and stayed that way, for the most part.

I googled this phrase: "revival of ancient music" and look what popped up:
WASHINGTON LIKES OLD TUNES.; A Revival of Ancient Strauss Music Due to Mrs. McKinley. (Open the .pdf file) That was in 1899, and Strauss' "Blue Danube" is described as "Ancient". (And notice that the Marine band was chucking Tannhauser aside to play Blue Danube). The New York Times thought it was noteworthy enough to comment on it. Think about that for a minute.

And if this wikipedia article on Early Music Revival is anywhere near accurate, although it started in the 19th century, it seems to have taken off with the advent of recording, and is described as 'fully underway' in the 1950's. When you could record anything you'd ever want to record. To reiterate: this had to have an effect on 'new' music.

Rio Bravo

Fierce River:

Dissent Magazine praises John Wayne (hat tip, Arts & Letters Daily):

Let me offer my own overstatement: If I were asked to choose a film that would justify the idea of America, it would be Rio Bravo.

One of the best elements of Rio Bravo is the way that people of good heart find ways to contribute to the defense in spite of their limitations. In the case of the young gunfighter, oddly, it's his sense of caution that is his primary limitation -- he has to get over the idea that he shouldn't get involved in trouble he doesn't have to.

In the case of Dude, it's drink, and in the case of Walter Brennan's character "Stumpy," it's age and a crippled leg. Chance tells him he can't come to the final confrontation because he'd have to 'move, and move fast.' "You give me a reason," Stumpy admits. The next thing you know, there he is anyway with a shotgun and a bunch of extra shells -- and showing up unexpected, cuts off an enemy flanking maneuver that would have been dangerous for the companions.

The movie is really about a particular kind of friendship, the frith we've talked about here from time to time. As Doc Russia put it:

We hold our ground,
We stick to our guns,
and we stand by our friends.

That's one reason I find myself experiencing genuine disgust and anger at Obama's turning his back on the man who gave him his start, and helped him become a success in Chicago and beyond. The Reverend has his problems, and there's much in what he says to be angry about. But, whatever his weakness, he knows how to fight for what he believes in. When Obama was ready to fight for him too -- not to agree with wrong ideas, but simply to affirm that they were friends and that it mattered -- I was impressed. When he turned his back on a man who had long supported him, I find I got genuinely angry about it. That is no way for a man to act to those who have been his friends.

We've all got our weaknesses and flaws -- I know I have mine. That's one reason it's important to forgive each other when we are broken, to help each other stay strong, and to stand by our friends.

A man who won't do that is no man at all.

A man who will and does is part of a fierce river, rio bravo, that can slowly carve its image in the world. Such an image, based on friendship and freedom, ferocity and forgiveness: like a mighty river, it adds beauty to creation.

Wagner

On Power:

What is power?

Recently, The London Times wrote on orchestral music, and the difficulties that touched it in the 20th century. Our Eric would say that it never got over World War I; it certainly never got over World War II.

When it came to the great contest of the 1914–18 war, German propagandists like Thomas Mann characterized it as a conflict between the Kultur of Germans and the Zivilisation of their French-led opponents; between, in musical terms, the deep, metaphysical character of the German tradition, and the superficial joie de vivre of the French.

The price paid for classical music’s proximity to power was heavy, and the central chapters of Ross’s book lay bare the moral somersaults composers turned, the degradation into which they sank. The cultural theory which the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century had inherited from the nineteenth gave artists a dangerous potency, the all too useful capacity to become, in Stalin’s words, “engineers of human souls”. Stalin’s amateur interest in classical music – he reputedly owned ninety-three opera recordings, writing critical remarks on his record sleeves – did nothing to protect composers like Prokofiev and Shostakovich from the cultural policy of a regime which saw no role for anything that smacked of autonomous art. Shostakovich’s output veered between the cryptic privacy of his chamber music, the crassness of his patriotic cantatas and songs, and the still-contested “irony” of the major public works. Ross’s analysis of the possibility of irony in music is at one and the same time sceptical and appreciative. “To talk about musical irony”, he writes, “we first have to agree what the music appears to be saying, and then we have to agree on what the music is really saying. This is invariably difficult to do.” His concluding advice is that one should “stay alert to multiple levels of meaning”, making Shostakovich’s symphonies, the Fifth or even the supposedly propagandistic Seventh, “rich experience[s]”. The consequence of Ross’s superbly nuanced historical accounts of both Prokofiev’s and Shostakovich’s music is to send one back to the music with new ears.

In any aspirant totalitarian regime, cultural producers like musicians have to be overseen, goaded, persecuted and petted. Hitler’s Germany was different only in that a musical vision of politics was uniquely central to the nightmare that was played out in the Reich between 1933 and 1945. It wasn’t that music was too important not to be politicized, more that politics was music in another form; “Politics aspired to the condition of music, not vice versa”, as Ross puts it. The threatening rhetoric of Hitler’s coded language about the Jews from the Kroll Opera speech of 1939 on the eve of war, and the speeches from the period of the exterminations themselves, are drenched in Wagner, and Ross acutely picks out the references to Parsifal in the Führer’s tirades.... For Ross, the Nazi infatuation with music is the crux of his story.

So fell angels.

For listen to this, once:





Theodore Roosevelt, who has been quoted here often lately, once said of America's frontiersmen that they were "a grim, stern people, strong and simple, powerful for good and evil, swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom rooted in their very hearts' core."

That phrase, "powerful for good and evil," is the thing that underlies what is at work here. Our ancestors had a power that we have almost lost, a strength that has almost gone out of the world.

Here, in this last century, is where heroes and demons fought. This was the weapon that fell broken from their hands. It lies before us. We have turned from it in fear: but there it rests, for the one strong and brave enough to forge it new.

Do you let a wry mouth turn you aside from that? Wagner did not hide from such things: neither from demons nor broken swords. Cynicism, an affliction with irony, they are shelters for the fearful. Here is the real thing: joy and fury, love and fire, with no looking away. That is the thing we have almost lost.

It is not too late.

If you take it, strike for the good.

UPDATE: To my very great pleasure, I learn that we have a musician among us who has just performed this piece. He offers an insightful comment that I would like to encourage you to read.

Thank you sir, both for the comment, and for your work.

I Don't Know How That Could Have Happened:

So you saw this New York Magazine article by a journalist worrying about the Obama bubble:

If Obama is deemed to be an effete, out-of-touch yuppie, then the effete-yuppie media Establishment that’s embraced him must be equally oblivious and/or indifferent to the sentiments of the common folk.

Is it possible? Well, let's see how the journalist himself describes Obama's appeal:

Born on the very cusp of the baby boom and Generation X, he’s both oldish and youngish. And as a skinny, athletic, gentle-seeming, virtually metrosexual man, he nearly splits the difference on gender as well.

With appeal like that, I don't know how those yokels could possibly think him effete.

Really, though, this goes straight to yesterday's complaint against him. He won't fight, not even for those who will fight for him. Hillary Clinton's snide remark -- "Why can't he close the deal?" -- turns out to be an insightful critique.

He won't fight for it. He won't fight at all. Yet he wants to be President in a time of war.

1968

1968:

From several, including Christopher Hitchens:

I vanished to Cuba and spent a hot summer in a camp in the province of Pinar del Río, where sixty-eighters of every stripe had forgathered, ostensibly to plant coffee but mostly to drink it (and rum) and to discuss new horizons of revolution. Cuba was torn between grim austerity for its people and flamboyant hedonism for its revolutionaries, and one’s elementary socialist principles managed to register the gross injustice[.]

Woof. That's an admission to shake the roof.

Wright II

The Reverend Mr. Wright:

The first time Obama spoke about his preacher of twenty years' standing, I said that I was impressed by one thing: that he did not disavow the man. That took courage, and showed a certain decency of character. The worst and most damning thing about Obama's more recent statements is that they show the Reverend Mr. Wright was right about him: he is doing "what politicians do."

That's too bad, because choosing between the pair of them, I like Wright a lot better.

I don't like his ideas, but I don't have to like the ideas to like the man. There are several things about him to like. He was a Marine, and served also in the Navy. He speaks his mind, straight and honest. Honesty is a virtue, even when you're honestly wrong. By God, tell me what you think! We can sort out whether you're right or not, as long as you're ready for the fight.

For example, his ideas about blacks having different brain functions than whites? That's a genuine scientific theory: we can actually test it, and if it's wrong, we can prove it's wrong. There's no dishonor in being wrong about a question of science. Tell us what you think might be true, based on your experience, and let's put it to the test.

I mention his being a former Marine and Navy sailor. I have a cause for mentioning it, which is based in Chesterton:

And what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? There we strike the rock of real life and immutable human nature.

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back -- his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly.... But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it....

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises -- he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things.

Wright is not that kind of man. He does love the thing he chastises. He has fought to defend it, and can likewise fight to reform it. If he believes 9/11 is America's "chickens coming home to roost," that is a proposition we can debate -- but he offers it as a man who has not flinched from serving America.

If he calls God to damn America for putting black men in prison, we may debate whether it is America or the community that permits and defends rampant criminality among its members that is more likely to draw down the curse of Heaven. Yet there is no doubt he is trying to raise up his community, and believes that the broader America would likewise be improved by his suggestions. He may be wrong, but he is not motivated by a secret desire to hurt the nation.

In this, he compares well with Code Pink, and with Michelle Obama -- 'For the first time in my life, I am proud of my country.' These people are the ones that Chesterton would call "without rhetoric, traitors." They do not love the thing they chastise, save in the moment it submits to them. That is not supernatural loyalty: it is not the loyalty of the patriot.

Wright seems to love and to fight for what he loves, and good for him. I'll meet a man like him in the midst of the field any time he likes, and break lances with him honestly.

The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day
They ride and race with fifty spears to break and bar my way
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers
As merry as the ancient sun, and fighting like the flowers!
How white their steel! How bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave
Yea, I will bless them as they bend, and love them where they lie
When upon their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky
That hour when death is like a light, and blood is as a rose -
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I will love my foes!

Give me a man who will speak his mind honestly, and fight for what he loves! God save his soul, whatever becomes of his body -- or his ideas.

The Reverend Mr. Wright is such a man, and the more I hear from him, the more I like him. Barack Obama is a coward for abandoning him, after sitting in his pews for twenty years while the crowd answered "Amen!" at the call from the pulpit. If he sat there and yelled "Amen" with them, he is the more a coward for running now: and if he did not, he is the more a coward for not calling out his opposition all along.

No coward is fit to be President. But that is almost a minor matter compared to the betrayal of Wright by Obama. What a thin, weak, worthless coward, to run from a man in whose shadow he so long hid, and who so long nutured him! Wright is a vibrant man, a fighter, a man I might respect. Obama has proven himself in this matter the worst sort of creature, without loyalty, without courage, without heart. Give me a man like the Reverend Mr. Wright; and never one like Obama.

Confer

Cf.:

Cassandra writes about suing your students:

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Quelle horreur! Can one imagine anything more unprecedented or alarming to a progressive eco-feminist than a classroom full of American college students arguing about ideas? Unless, perhaps, it is the prospect of a classroom full of young people Questioning Authority?

Clearly the dominant patriarchal hegemony is rife with rigid, authoritarians threatened by anyone who challenges their ideas.

The New Criterion published a piece by Roger Kimball called, "What was a Liberal Education?" It makes a useful companion piece.

I believe that the point of education is to build careful, rational, insightful minds; and to give those minds the background knowledge to understand the world and address its problems. The building blocks of education are logic, mathematics and critical thinking: to which capacities are added history, philosophy, literature and a clear understanding of the scientific method. You should have a brain that works rationally, and a clear understanding of the history of the world and the West, the debt you owe to those who came before, and the duty you have to preserve those gains for the generations to come. If you have that, you have an education.

If you got something else out of college, I'm sorry for you. It is not, however, too late to learn on your own.

Dining in the Wilderness

Dining on the Road:

The New York Times apparently believes that it constitutes a great adventure to eat in a chain restaurant. Places like Chilis, Outback Steakhouse, and the Olive Garden are written about as if the reporters were amateur anthropologists writing from a 19th-century expedition to Polynesia:

You go out the back of the sprawling Westchester mall and across a narrow street lighted by the dull glow of a Crowne Plaza Hotel and there it is, a ground-floor box sandwiched between entrance ramps to the parking garage for the smaller Westchester Pavilion mall....

On a recent Saturday night, a companion and I threaded our way through the crowded holding pen beside the host’s station. Table for two? The teenagers staffing the post slid their eyes down the long list of names as though working a particularly difficult problem on an AP statistics test. “Ummm, 70 to 75 minutes,” one finally said. I’m not sure what was more unnerving, the length of the wait or the precision of the estimate.

We were handed one of those coasterlike disks that light up when your table has been called. There were no seats in the bar or waiting area, of course. They had long been snared by people who appeared to have taken up semipermanent residence and were perhaps even having their mail forwarded.

We tried the hotel bar across the street. Would the beeper signal reach? One nursed beer later, only 45 minutes had passed, but as we wandered back to within reach of the restaurant door, the beeper erupted in a mini-Vegas light show.

Exciting stuff, no doubt, when you are the sort of person who nurses a beer for 45 minutes, and is willing to admit it in public.

What struck me most about the reviews was how often they mention the children. A couple of the reviewers had children of their own, and brought them along; but all the reviews mention that, man, there are a lot of children here. I guess I've been to about half the restaurants on the list at one time or another, and a couple of them multiple times, but I don't remember being struck by the presence of children. One wonders what these poor folk would do if they were required to eat in a McDonald's or Chick-Fil-A, complete with plastic playground.

We don't do a lot of eating in restaurants, both for health reasons and because -- with a little practice -- you can make better food than you can buy in a restaurant. But especially on cross-country road trips, we do eat in chain restaurants by the highway. Here's my recommendations for any hipsters who may find themselves forced out on the road:

1) The Texas Roadhouse: good chili, good burgers, good steaks. Not so good beer, but if you're driving, you're not drinking.

2) Longhorn: The Texas Cheese Fries are good. Their take on taquitos are good. The steaks are fine. The beer selection is better, so if you've reached the end of your trip and have a hotel to hand, stop here for the last meal of the day.

3) Cracker Barrel: Beans and greens, sweet tea anywhere in the USA. Their biscuits and cornbread vary by region, which is interesting -- you'll get sweet cornbread and drop biscuits in some places, and proper biscuits and salty cornbread in more civilized regions. Warm fires in the winter, and checkers.

4) Ruby Tuesday's: Used to be better. However, the buffalo burgers are still OK. I like buffalo meat better than beef, and around the Hall, that's what we keep on hand.

5) Applebee's: The only one of these restaurants reviewed by the Times. I can't think of any of their food I really care about one way or the other; but somehow, whenever we go there, we seem to have a good time.

Two kinds of food that no nationwide highway chain knows how to make well: barbecue, and pizza. If you want a good meal of either one of those, you'll have to ask the locals what's all right where you are.

Roosevelt on Boyhood

Theodore Roosevelt on Boyhood:

There is more to that piece from Theodore Roosevelt quoted below, in the post on sportsmanship. It makes for good reading, especially as he considers the usefulness, and limitations, of college and sports on making the whole man.

Another piece he wrote considers boyhood. At a time when we hare having debates about what kind of boys, and men, we want in our society, it is worth taking in what the Old Lion had to say.

Here's the start:

OF COURSE what we have a right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man. Now, the chances are strong that he won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weakling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded and clean-lived, and able to hold his own under all circumstances and against all comers. It is only on these conditions that he will grow into the kind of American man of whom America can be really proud.

There's so much that is right with that, beginning with the fist phrase: "Of course what we have a right to expect of the American boy...."

Discuss.

"Is it possible for the Democrats to nominate a bigger assclown?"

-Tom Maguire, of Just One Minute, having a Lo-Pan moment.

Now to Tom's question, the answer is probably yes--C'mon, its the Democrats, but Maguire notes something I've seen myself elsewhere--referring to McCain as a son of privilege. Look for more of that as the campaign continues.

A Sandwich

A Sandwich:

Janne88 writes to refer us to a recipe that ought to make you hungry, just looking at it.

I don't think I have any Tabasco around the house, but I suspect you can substitute your favorite. This is mine, if you're curious.

UPDATE: Behold.



I didn't wait to go to the store, so there were some revisions to the recipe. I didn't have the ground steak she advised, so I used buffalo meat. I didn't have any Worcestershire sauce, so I used my wife's A-1 steak sauce cut with Coors beer (a very good cooking beer). I substituted El Yucateco habanero sauce for Tabasco sauce. I also didn't have the right kind of rolls; but these whole wheat rolls worked just fine.

It's majestic.

The Community of Saints

The Community of Saints:

The Belmont Club joins our old friend Baldilocks in exploring the concept of the communio sanctorum:

The Communion of Saints (in Latin, communio sanctorum) is the spiritual union of all Christians living and the dead, those on earth, in heaven and, in Catholic belief, in purgatory. ...

The earliest known use of this term to refer to the belief in a mystical bond uniting both the living and the dead in a confirmed hope and love is by Saint Nicetas of Remesiana (ca. 335–414); the term has since then played a central role in formulations of the Christian creed.

The term is included in the Apostles' Creed, a major profession of the Christian faith whose current form was settled in the eighth century, but which originated from not long after the year 100, the basic statement of the Church's faith.

Baldilocks had said, referring to the Reverend Mr. Wright controversy:

Yes, our ancestors in this country and our kinsmen across the water fought to be just as Christian as other Christians—as Christian as our brothers who are white. And many of the latter stood for us and side-by-side with us—not because of us primarily but because of the One Who is Primary. Has that particular battle been won? I say yes, though the war continues. But Wright not only continues to fight the battle, he willfully misunderstands the nature of the War and identity of the Enemy. And by doing that, he becomes the tool of the Enemy. That’s his choice, but not mine and not that of those who focus on the Redemption offered by Christ instead of getting upon the Cross themselves.

To quote myself, there is no “black church.” There is only the Church.

The Belmont Club's response, finally, is to simply to repeat the Creed's on words: "I believe in the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting, forever and ever. Amen."

Now we add in our friend Dad29, commenting on a different topic: how the Pope's embrace of the American separation of church and state means.

At the very deepest level, his apparently pro-U.N. speech turned out to be a stunning endorsement of the United States’ understanding of religion in the public sphere, and the need to apply that understanding to international dialogue.

In the past, Rome has looked askance at the American formulation, and had never come close to endorsing it. But B-16 noticed something: it works, and works very well. The formulation has served to keep 'religion' in the square, not to suppress it.

It's interesting to see the effect of that fact. A political campaign allegedly premised on reconciliation has proved bitterly divisive, even within its own party. Yet outside of politics, even reacting against those politics, people of good heart are reaffirming that they believe in that community.

That has not always been the case, and it is not only religion that makes it work now. It is also America. These two separate systems, political and spiritual, come together to make real what neither has been able to do alone.

Sportsmanship

Sportsmanship:

From Sly, this beautiful tale of the joyous spirit of the game:

And then the senior did something she had never done before -- even in batting practice. The career .153 hitter smashed the next pitch over the center field fence for an apparent three-run home run.

The exuberant former high school point guard sprinted to first. As she reached the bag, she looked up to watch the ball clear the fence and missed first base. Six feet past the bag, she stopped abruptly to return and touch it. But something gave in her right knee; she collapsed on the base path.

"I was in a lot of pain," she told The Oregonian on Tuesday. "Our first-base coach was telling me I had to crawl back to first base. 'I can't touch you,' she said, 'or you'll be out. I can't help you.' "

Tucholsky, to the horror of teammates and spectators, crawled through the dirt and the pain back to first.

Western coach Pam Knox rushed onto the field and talked to the umpires near the pitcher's mound. The umpires said Knox could place a substitute runner at first. Tucholsky would be credited with a single and two RBIs, but her home run would be erased.

This, however, was not to be.

Mallory Holtman is the greatest softball player in Central Washington history. Normally when the conference's all-time home run leader steps up to the plate, Pam Knox and other conference coaches grimace.

But on senior day, the first baseman volunteered a simple, selfless solution to her opponents' dilemma: What if the Central Washington players carried Tucholsky around the bases?

The umpires said nothing in the rule book precluded help from the opposition. Holtman asked her teammate junior shortstop and honors program student Liz Wallace of Florence, Mont., to lend a hand. The teammates walked over and picked up Tucholsky and resumed the home-run walk, pausing at each base to allow Tucholsky to touch the bag with her uninjured leg.

"We started laughing when we touched second base," Holtman said. "I said, 'I wonder what this must look like to other people.' "

Holtman got her answer when they arrived at home plate. She looked up and saw the entire Western Oregon team in tears.

"My whole team was crying," Tucholsky said. "Everybody in the stands was crying. My coach was crying. It touched a lot of people."

Thereby they granted their opponents an advantage in the contest, and won a greater victory.

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character. It is true, of course, that a genius may, on certain lines, do more than a brave and manly fellow who is not a genius; and so, in sports, vast physical strength may overcome weakness, even though the puny body may have in it the heart of a lion.

But, in the long run, in the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against that assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities, which we group together under the name of character.... If rowing or foot-ball or base-ball is treated as the end of life by any considerable section of a community, then that community shows itself to be in an unhealthy condition. If treated as it should be — that is, as good, healthy play — it is of great benefit, not only to the body, but in its effect upon character.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Here are some young ladies who understood that, and got it right.

Two historical pieces

Two Men of History:

First, via Kim du Toit, a genuine British adventurer.

A tall man, handsome and weather-beaten, wipes the blood of a giant scorpion from his hands and squints into the middle distance as he ponders his latest quest for sacred artefacts.

He could be the ultimate Hollywood hero — living a life packed full of excitement and peril, usually with a beautiful young woman on his arm.

He uncovers lost civilisations, is hailed as a god by grateful villagers, snatches priceless Christian treasures from under Nazi noses and begins revolutions. And his name will now be linked for ever with a mysterious crystal skull...

Second, via Greyhawk, the world's oldest milblogger.

Born in August 1887 in Awsworth Notts, to Henry and Sarah Lamin. Elder Sisters Catherine (Kate) and Agnes (Annie) and Elder brother John (Jack). Educated at Awsworth Board School, just outside Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England.

This blog is made up of transcripts of Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War. The letters will be posted exactly 90 years after they were written.

Another whiner

Another Whiner On the South:

Sweet Mercy. Is this what it has come to?

This thought, which has been recurring to me regularly over the years as I've watched the Southernization of our national politics at the hands of the GOP and its evangelical base, surfaced again when I read a New York Times story today. The article was about an "American Idol" contestant--apparently quite talented--who was eliminated after she sang the title song from "Jesus Christ Superstar." When it debuted 38 years ago, the rock opera was considered controversial for its rather arch portrayal of a doubt-wracked, very human Jesus, but the music was so good and the lyrics so clever that it quickly became a huge hit. In the delicate balance of forces that have always defined American tastes--nativism and yahooism versus eagerness for the new and openness to innovation--art, or at least high craft, it seemed, had triumphed. But our national common denominator of taste is so altered today that the blasphemous dimension of "Jesus Christ Superstar" now trumps the artistic part. And somehow, no one is surprised.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. "Jesus Christ, Superstar?"

My father, a good lad from Tennessee, asked me for a copy for his birthday. It's always been a favorite of his. I sent it to him. So there.

If this is the ne plus ultra of your complaints against the South, is it too much to ask that you shut the @#$#@ up?

I mean, I'll be glad when we never hear another song written in the 1960s or 1970s that wasn't sung by Johnny Cash. "Classic" is a term not properly given to rock music, which was never meant to last longer than milk, and which retains about the same odor past its expiration date.

But that's not a regional complaint. And I'm as Southern as it gets.

UPDATE: And ya'll just tell me what's wrong with this bit of wisdom:



And if you don't like that one, how about this one, from the former Lieutenant Governor of the Great State of Georgia, Zell Miller?

New Iceland

New Guinea Iceland:

An interesting piece from The New Yorker about the rules of honor in New Guinea's "payback culture." The term is an unfortunate choice, because it gives a modern flavor to what is really an ancient feud. It is ruled by ideas of honor, though. (By a quirk of fate, the tribesman's name is Daniel, much like our own companion whose ethical ideals are not without harmony here.)

On one occasion, I asked Daniel whether there are any rules that limit how one may kill enemies. He said, “In a night raid in which we sneak into an enemy village and surround the hut of a targeted enemy individual, we can tear down the hut to force the enemy to come out so that we can kill him. But it’s not acceptable to set fire to the hut and burn him to death.” I then asked, “Is it acceptable for six of you surrounding a hut to attack and kill a single outnumbered enemy?” Daniel answered, “Yes, that’s considered fair, because it’s already extremely dangerous for us to penetrate enemy territory, where we are greatly outnumbered.”

These are sometimes honored in the breach.

[T]he quest of a Tudawhe friend of mine, Kariniga, to avenge the killing of his father and many other relatives by the Daribi tribe culminated when Kariniga and his surviving relatives marched through the jungle at night to surround the Daribi village just before dawn, set fire to the huts, and speared the sleepy occupants as they stumbled out.

This was true elsewhere: "We shall have to boast of something else than that Njal has been burnt in his house," says Flosi, "for there is no glory in that."

Another thing that is true is the rule that our Daniel was referencing below:

“If you die in a fight, you will be considered a hero, and people will remember you for a long time,” he said. “But if you die of a disease you will be remembered for only a day or a few weeks, and then you will be forgotten.” Daniel was proud both of the aggressiveness displayed by all the warring clans of his Nipa tribe and of their faultless recall of debts and grievances. He likened Nipa people to “light elephants”: “They remember what happened thirty years ago, and their words continue to float in the air. The way that we come to understand things in life is by telling stories, like the stories I am telling you now, and like all the stories that grandfathers tell their grandchildren about their relatives who must be avenged.

But read all the way through, for a remarkable tale of an unavenged murder in the anthropologist's own family. "I came to appreciate the terrible personal price that law-abiding citizens pay for leaving vengeance to the state," he writes, contrasting the Western system of government with the old way.

Memento Mori

Memento Mori:

My sister recommended this gallery of the dead. The photos came from a hospice, and were taken in pairs: one before, and one after death.

The photos are respectful, but the accompanying text hides nothing of the horror -- and, sometimes, the peace -- of dying. What sorts of things give peace? What sort of man and woman can die well, and what sort dies hard? Confer the experience of those who have religious faith with those who are famed for their personal strength at that hour when personal strength fails.

A memory of death is keenly important to also remembering to live a good life, now, while you have the chance. This concept has a long and high history not only in the West, but also among the Samurai of Japan.

Lord Tennyson wrote, of the knight Geraint and his lady Enid:

And there he kept the justice of the King
So vigorously yet mildly, that all hearts
Applauded, and the spiteful whisper died:
And being ever foremost in the chase,
And victor at the tilt and tournament,
They called him the great Prince and man of men.
But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call
Enid the Fair, a grateful people named
Enid the Good; and in their halls arose
The cry of children, Enids and Geraints
Of times to be; nor did he doubt her more,
But rested in her fealty, till he crowned
A happy life with a fair death, and fell
Against the heathen of the Northern Sea
In battle, fighting for the blameless King.

That is a phrase we do not often hear: "He crowned a happy life with a fair death." It is a good concept, and a meaningful one. It is wise to think, now, not only of the fact that you have to die, but of how you want to die.

The King Who Comes Again

The King Who Sleeps:

In our talk about England and Saint George, Joel wrote:

A nation that will so publicly sacrifice their heroes and legends to mollify an implacable minority will go submissively to the gallows when that same minority becomes the majority.

It is for that reason I mention a new theory of King Arthur, locating him and his court in Lincoln:

Broughton-based Dr Leahy (61) said: "Following the withdrawal of the Romans in the early fourth century, Lindsey was a nation in its own right with its own kings and bishops.

"Excavations and metal detecting have shown how rich and exciting the kingdom was.

"We have decorated metalwork, some of which is of outstanding artistry, as shown in the book."

Dr Leahy, who retired last March as the keeper of local archaeology at North Lincolnshire Museum, believes King Arthur, who led the Celtic resistance against Saxon invaders, fought many of his battles in the Kingdom of Lindsey at Brigg.

"An eighth century account of King Arthur's battles states four of them were in Linnuis - which is likely to have been Lindsey," he said.

"If I had to bet on where these battles were, I would put my money on Brigg which, controlling the crossing of the Ancholme, was of great strategic importance."

A former foundry engineer, Dr Leahy - who now works as a part-time consultant for the British Museum - accepts many Arthurian experts will find his claim 'remarkable'.

But, he added: "The legends of King Arthur in their original form describe not a man but a military situation where the Britons and the Anglo-Saxons faced each other.

"This is true more of Lindsey than anywhere else.

"There is good evidence that in Lindsey the local Romano-British authorities managed to stay in control when the Anglo-Saxons arrived.

"Lincoln kept its original name, and there are no early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries near the city.

"For an Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Lindsey has produced an amazing amount of Welsh-type metalwork."

The point here is not that Lincolnshire is, or is not, likely to have been the site of Camelot. It is that the English still care: that their scholars and archaeologists still wonder and search for Avalon, and the books they write still sell.

So long as that is true, there remains hope for Britain.

2 + 2 = Blue

2 + 2 = Blue

Pizza hut fires a deliveryman for defending himself from armed robbery. Turns out, they don't like that he was carrying a gun. From the comments:

[We] discussed this last night in an adult ed college class, in Des Moines. The mostly female, liberal group thought Pizza Hut was right, for all the stupid reasons unarmed people usually do. Too dangerous, why did he have to shoot multiple times, etc, etc. But here’s the strange part. They all agreed that if the crook has shot and killed an unarmed Pizza Hut delivery driver, the driver’s family should sue Pizza Hut because the driver was not protected.

Let's all pause to ponder the majesty of that thinking.

The Danes are Right

The Danes Weigh In:

...and once again, we see that beer points the way to wisdom.