And I am upon the whole hopeful that the faith will recover its intimate and guiding place in the heart of Europe, so I believe that this sinking back into our original paganism … will in due time be halted and reversed.
— Hillaire Belloc, concluding The Servile State, written in 1912
Oops.
I was fully prepared for nastiness, not graciousness, in the election endgame.
So, I am happily suprised, and will therefore give Senator Kerry credit where credit is due.
Let’s see … a familiar situation: Candidate X has won the popular vote, but it looks like Candidate Y, due to a close election in a contested state, may have a chance to win the Electoral College vote and still become President.
What should Candidate Y do?
[Note: I am actually a fan of the Electoral College.]
The real fun: people with more free time than I (probably rabble-rousing, pajama-wearing bloggers) should be checking the various punditry for whether their answers to the above question mutate from 2000 to 2004 depending on the values of X and Y.
Inspired by Victor Lams, this started going through my head today …
Imagine there's no Haugen
It's easy if you try,
No lyrics of pablum
Kiss syncopation 'bye',
Imagine all the people
Singing harmony ... oooh, ooh
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the Church will sing as one.
Victor, do feel free to add the remaining verses.
I learned today that the cider mill in Pettisville, Ohio is no more.
One of my most vivid and favorite memories from childhood is apple cider time on my father’s farm in Archbold. This is what happened every fall: Dad would drive the pickup truck into the back yard, and we’d fill the bed with apples. Lots of apples. Red ones from the red apple tree (still not sure what variety, Jonathan maybe?), yellow ones from the yellow apple tree (Yellow Delicious), and green ones from the green apple tree (Granny Smith). These were no stunted dwarf apple trees, but full-sized trees as God intended for kid-climbing.
And then we’d go down the road a few miles and get our apples pressed into cider to take home. I have no idea how old the cider mill was — older than me, possibly older than my Dad. For all I knew, it had been there forever.
It was only about four years ago that we were able to repeat the ritual, taking the few bushels of apples from our small tree, adding them to the reds from my father (the yellow and green trees having succumbed some years ago) and to the apples my cousin got from a friend who was not going to harvest their tress that year. It was some of the best cider we ever had.
Or will again, perhaps. Apparantly, the Man From The Government Who’s Here to Help™ came around, and said that they couldn’t press cider anymore without pasteurization, which put them out of business.
Funny, I hadn’t noticed any epidemics. But I guess Sharkey Knows Best™.
One more small, local business enabling local farmers (and just regular citizens with backyards big enough for trees) to provide for themselves rather than rely on MegaGlobalAgriCorp™ to bring in apples from Chile or Hungary or whereever for sale in the local SuperDuperStuffMart™ — gone.
Score one for Mordor.
Obligatory links:
Many apple producers may go out of business rather than invest in pasteurization equipment or risk problems of potential microbial hazards.
… many producers would face significant costs ($25,000) required by pasteurization …
There have been no E. coli contamination problems in apples or apple cider in Iowa.
… producers will go out of business in a manner similar to small meat processors.
Do we as a society have a responsibility to keep small farmers such as apple growers in Iowa in business? How is the ethical principle of justice involved in this situation?
How indeed?
My article Coverage Measurement and Profiling was published by Linux Journal.
It’s in the online edition only, no dead trees involved. Still, I’m pretty happy about getting published.
Now, if I can manage to do this on a regular basis rather than once every blue moon …
There was a plaque on the trail honoring “Detroit’s Own Polar Bears.”
No, not Ursus maritimus. The other “Polar Bears” — members of the 339th Infantry, 1st Battalion of the 310th Engineers, the 337th Ambulance Co., and the 337th Field Hospital of the Army’s 85th division, many of whom hailed from Michigan.
I had hear rumor before of American troops in Russia after the Russian revolution. But this was part of one of those college political arguments, presented with the perspective of “of course the Soviets were belligerant; the Evil Americans™ tried to take over at the Revolution and they never forgot.” Filed, stored, taken with a large grain of salt.
And now here I am looking at a memorial marker for the men who fought and died doing just that. It’s amazing where one picks up these tidbits of history, because it sure isn’t in the schoolroom. (Have I mentioned lately that we homeschool?)
Besides the plaque in the Detroit Zoo, there is a a “Detroit’s Own” Polar Bear Memorial in Troy. There is an online summary of the Polar Bear Expedition hosted by the University of Michigan.
Long sad story short: In the waning days of The Great War (to end all wars), President Wilson was persuaded to lend American support to a multinational attempt to defeat the Bolshevik faction in Russia which was in the process of taking over in the chaos following the fall of the Tsar. They were under British command, along with French and Canadian troops, and were originally (or ostensibly) sent to re-open an eastern front against the Germans. Fighting the Bolsheviks was what actually happened. Of course, morale was terrible when their fighting continued after the German defeat, and (as we know from the rest of 20th-century history) the Bolsheviks plagued Russia and beyond for quite some time.
Some of the men were able to return to Russia (now the U.S.S.R.) in the twenties to recover the bodies of fallen troops; these are now interred at the Troy memorial.
It is a pity they did not succeed. And a double pity that the men who tried are not more honored and remembered.
“[Marxism will] in a generation or so [go] into the limbo of most heresies, but meanwhile it will have poisoned the Russian Revolution”
— G. K. Chesterton, ILN, 7/19/19.
(or, “Isn’t it great when technology shows us things we didn’t care to see?”)
The Frey family made a pilgrimage to the Detroit Zoo last week. (“Field trip!”) It was our first visit to the new Arctic Ring of Life exhibit.
One of the stations showed some useful equipment used in the far north, including a thermal camera. We had great fun looking at the heat images, doing the trick of making “handprints” that show up for a while on the camera before fading, etc.
And then, we tried to get educational. Big mistake. I noticed that David’s head fairly glowed for the camera. This makes sense; the kid has a buzz cut and is no doubt loosing lots of body heat up top. So, I pointed this out, and got Josh, who’s got a thick head of hair on him, to get into the camera’s field as well. Josh’s head showed hardly any heat loss. So, we used this about how the body sheds heat and practical impacts of haircuts on comfort.
So far, so good. The problem comes when I get under the camera. Oh, sure, I know my forehead’s a bit taller than it was back in high school, but overall I think my hair looks mostly the same. I even still comb it the same way.
But, the thermal image shows a huge heat loss out of the top of my head, completly and utterly obvious to anyone looking at the camera.
Drat.
Of course, the effect is not helped by the burst of laughter this triggers from my lovely, wonderful, and almost always tactful and diplomatic wife.
Thank you, thermal imaging. Have I mentioned lately my neo-Luddite and quasi-Amish tendencies?
When words fail, poetry sometimes suffices:
...
And I am sickened by complicity in my race.
To kill in hot savagery like a beast
is understandable. It is forgivable and curable.
But to kill by design, deliberately, without wrath,
that is the sullen labor that perfects Hell.
...
The morning's news drives sleep out of the head
at night. Uselessness and horror hold the eyes
open to the dark. Weary, we lie awake
in the agony of the old giving birth to the new
without assurance that the new will be better.
I look at my son, whose eyes are like a young god's,
they are so open to the world.
I look at my sloping fields now turning
green with the young grass of April. What must I do
to go free? I think I must put on
a deathlier knowledge, and prepare to die
rather than enter into the design of man's hate...
Wendell Berry, The Morning’s News, from Farming: A Handbook
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