MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 2014
Service a bit interruptus: We've been whisked away by overnight train to sojourn with family from distant parts here in the southernmost part of Maine.
With apologies, this is a special event. Making their first-ever North American appearances:
A 7-month-old great nephew, live and direct from Dublin (with his parents). Also, and a bit more magically, given relations between the two countries: The 16-year-old daughter of our niece's husband, live and direct from Havana!
Also present, but old hat: Two great nieces, ages 2 and 8!
(They've embedded themselves in a small heated pool. But only with supervision!)
As we've occasionally noted, the world is full of superlative kids! We thought we might do light posts this week, but it looks like services may be non-existent until we return to our sprawling campus this Thursday evening.
By the way, do you know what one wall said to the other? Not to brag but, provoking amazement, we incomparably did!
You're my first and last read every day, Bob. Enjoy the time with your family.
ReplyDeleteWish we had pics. Almost evey real blog these days has pics.
Delete@ 11:26 Now that Bob is back I tried your technique. I did not get anything out of it. Rereading Bob give me nothing new but perhaps that is because I got it the first time I read it at midday.
DeleteMine too. Sounds like you have a perfect audience in Maine for that joke though.
ReplyDeleteWell, we have our differences, but have a wonderful time with your family. And it is ALWAYS good to be around children.
ReplyDeleteGood joke for Obama to use at the next Correspondents' Dinner!
ReplyDeleteI'll bet you dread to spend another loney night with me.
ReplyDeleteAfter WWII, my father got a job in his native Brooklyn with a broker, of war surplus, I guess. At one point they were doing business by telephone with Mainers, and apparently someone complained about my father's manners because his boss told him: "Buddy, they're not finished talking until they say " eh."
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of New Yorkers: "At their entertainments there is no conversation that is agreeable; there is no modesty, no attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast and altogether. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer they will break out upon you again and talk away.”
DeleteJohn Adams, August, 1774
Thank you gravymeister! wonderful. As someone raised in NY/NJ, though, and as someone with some linguistic competence, let me note (without attribution because I can't remember the details) a linguist's study maybe 10 years ago. New Yorkers consider it polite -- a sign of interest in what your interlocutor is saying -- to interrupt/cut off. I heaved sighs of relief when I read this. It explained so much, accounted for my bewilderment about New England conversation. (Interesting I had not met this problem in my years in the upper midwest.) The pauses between statements New Englanders (and also middle middle westerners, in my experience) expect -- so strange to my NY/NJ trained rhythms. Sometimes still I talk too much because I expect to be cut off, and no one does! What, don't you care what I'm saying enough to interrupt me?
DeleteSo, what seems rude to others is a sign of engagement and caring to NY/NJ'ers. Loudness, fastness, lack of modesty -- well, loud and fast are not matters of character. Lack of modesty would be, but I don't think that's really fair. What may seem immodest to one party is just "here I am, and I am listening to you" to the other.
Interesting, Gravymeister. My father wasn't intentionally being impolite; he just didn't understans the speech pattern. Like me. I once spent some time in centrel Illinois and had to learn to wait until the speaker was finished. There was no "eh" to clue me in, but I eventually got it. I wonder if this was the middle middle west.
DeleteBTW, the description given by John Adams reminds me of my kith and kin at big Christmas dinners. Come to think of it, it also reminds me of the Morning Joe show.
While you are in Maine, read up on something other than mundane concerns about bias in horserace sports reporting masquerading as imporant news in both the media and your blog.
ReplyDeletehttp://motherboard.vice.com/read/if-we-release-a-small-fraction-of-arctic-carbon-were-fucked-climatologist
http://news.msn.com/us/dead-zone-in-the-gulf-of-mexico-is-the-size-of-connecticut
Enjoy those children! Meanwhile I will be looking for more silence from guilded liberal leaders in your absence. Hope you come back with renewed vigor to speak truth to money mad careerists.
ReplyDeleteHow do you look for silence?
DeleteI watch the radio you vilest of vile troll.
DeleteNo you, see the book description here.
Delete
ReplyDeleteHow to restore a broken relationship and marriage
My name is Wendy Streeter from the United States of America and am here to share a testimony i would please want you to read careful. I was married for seventeen years until misfortune came in. My husband and i were living happily with our children and enjoyed the company of each other. Our eldest daughter eloped with her boyfriend and this cost my husband his job because he could no longer concentrate on his job and this almost tore our home apart. My husband lost his job and we were living on the little income i was making from my cabbage. This really tormented our home cos my husband loves her more than our other kids. I tried all i could do to make my husband happy even when i wasn't happy. This happened for sometime and he had cardiac arrest. We spent virtually all the money we had and still the condition did not improve. I was left with no choice than to sell the stuffs in our house, I was able to realise some money which was spent on his medical bills. I did this for a while until we had no money on us again. We came home and was hoping he could get better. He continued like that for some months and we decided to seek for solution else where. I went online where i met many self acclaimed doctors and spell casters but none could help. I then came across this particular caster whose testimonies i have read. His name is Dr.Brave he promised to help and he did in a way i find very surprising to explain. He told me that he would cast some spells to make my daughter come back and to get my husband his job back. It was like an impossible task. But with the help and intervention of this prophet of GOD, my daughter came back home and saw her dad was sick and she cried and asked for forgiveness. My husband after a week became whole again and another spell was cast to get him his job back. Like a dream it happened. My daughter is back home and my loving husband is well again and now has his job back. So good people of the world i want you to help me in saying a big thank you to Dr.Brave for his intervention. This is one Dr i will seriously recommend for anyone with issues of such nature or any other problem. Simply contact him on his email via bravespellcaster@gmail.com,or kindly visit he website http://bravespellcaster.yolasite.com .
In a good month, what was your take home from cabbage sales?
DeleteI miss my Bob. Bet you do too.
ReplyDeleteHere's something I hope Bob will comment on when he returns (and Bob, do enjoy that stay in Maine)...one his favorite topics, Chris Matthews.
ReplyDeleteIn the episode linked below, Matthews "discusses" teacher tenure. At the outset he says that it’s nearly impossible to fire bad teachers, and he uses Waiting for Superman – which has been profoundly discredited – as his chief frame of reference.
And as Bob has noted, Matthews gets paid handsomely for his shill work.
You can watch the piece here:
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball-with-chris-matthews/watch/should-teacher-tenure-laws-be-overhauled–315043907744
We are sure BOB will want to cover this atrocity by the broadcaster known affectionately as "Tweety" by the millions of liberals who see him as a leader.
DeleteBOB has covered this issue as recently as June.
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2014/06/supplemental-new-york-times-bungles.html
We hope he will continue to tell us to reject being embroiled in partisanship on this issue because the plaintiffs who sued to have tenure laws overturned in California were beautiful kids, like those found in Baltimore.
We note Tweety had as his guest Al Gore's attorney, who represented him in a tangential matter related to the War Against Gore.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/us/politics/hillary-clinton-hits-the-lucrative-speechmaking-trail.html?hp&_r=3&
ReplyDeleteHas anyone noticed, looking at the recent archives listing, how Somerby has become less and less productive each month. I believe firmly it is the added burden of trolls.
ReplyDeleteNo, I think he is getting older. You will, too.
DeleteAgist.
DeleteI am a firm believer in spending time with great nieces and nephews as a treatment to slow the aging process. Unlike being somebody's real Gramps. There is a lot less emotional stress than you get with the need to chastise your own offspring for their poor child rearing skills.
Deletewhile we're waiting... i saw this today and immediately thought it sounded a lot like what somerby's been saying for years now...
ReplyDelete"The world isn't being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist -- the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world. The world is being hurt and damaged by one group of people believing they're truly better people than the others who think differently. The world officially ends when we let our beliefs conquer love. We must not let this happen.
When we lump people into groups, quickly label them, and assume we know everything about them and their life based on a perceived world view, how they look, where they come from, etc., we are not behaving as full human beings. When we truly believe that some people are monsters, that they fundamentally are less human than we are, and that they deserve to have less than we do, we ourselves become the monsters. When we allow our emotions to be hypnotized by the excitement of petty bickering about seemingly important topics, we drift further and further away from the fragile and crucial human bond holding everything together. When we anticipate with ferocious glee the next chance we have to prove someone "wrong" and ourselves "right," all the while disregarding the vast complexity of almost every subject -- not to mention the universe as a whole -- we are reducing the beauty and magic of life to a "side" or a "type," or worst of all, an "answer." This is the power of politics at it's most sinister.
At its best, politics is able to organize extremely complex world views into manageable and communicable systems so they can be grappled with and studied abstractly. But even the most noble efforts to organize the world are essentially futile. The best we can usually achieve is a crude and messy map of life from one particular vantage point, featuring a few grids, bullet points, and sketches of its various aspects and landmarks. Anything as infinitely complex as life, reality, and the human experience can never be summed up or organized in a definitive system, especially one based on "left or right," "A or B," "us or them." This is the fatal flaw of binary thinking in general. However, this flaw isn't just ignored, it's also embraced, amplified, and deliberately used as a weapon on the very people who think it's benefiting their way of thinking.
...
Human beings crave order and simplicity. We cling to the hope that some day, if we really refine our world view and beliefs, we can actually find the fully correct way to think -- the absolute truth and final side to stand on. People and systems craving power take advantage of this desire and pit us against each other using a "this or that" mentality. The point is to create unrest, disagreement, resentment, and anger -- a population constantly at war with itself, each side deeply believing that the other is not just wrong, but also a sincere threat to their very way of life and survival. This creates constant anxiety and distraction -- the perfect conditions for oppression. The goal of this sort of politics is to keep people held down and mesmerized by a persistent parade of seemingly life-or-death debates, each one worth all of our emotional energy and primal passion.
ReplyDeleteBut the truth is, the world has always been and always will be on the brink of destruction. And what keeps it from actually imploding is our love for life and our deep-seeded desire not to die. Our love for our own life is inextricably connected to our love of all life and the miracle of this phenomenon we call "the world." We must give all of ourselves credit every day for keeping things going. It's an incredible achievement to exist at all.
So we must protect and respect each other, no matter how hard it feels. No matter how wrong someone else may seem to us, they are still human. No matter how bad someone may appear, they are truly no worse than us. Our beliefs and behavior don't make us fundamentally better than others, no matter how satisfying it is to believe otherwise. We must be tireless in our efforts to see things from the point of view we most disagree with. We must make endless efforts to try and understand the people we least relate to. And we must at all times force ourselves to love the people we dislike the most. Not because it's nice or because they deserve it, but because our own sanity and survival depends on it. And if we do find ourselves pushed into a corner where we must kill others in order to survive, we must fully accept that we are killing people just as fully human as ourselves, and not some evil abstract creatures." Andrew W.K.
Or not:
ReplyDelete>>>>>[QUOTE] Rick Perlstein: Well, the problem with Obama’s post-partisan agenda is that he came into it. He came into his presidency at a time when millions of Americans, perhaps even tens of millions of Americans don’t consider a Democrat president legitimate. Don’t consider liberalism legitimate. Don’t consider the idea of the state forming new programs to help people legitimate.
So, he’s in a situation a lot like, you know, Abraham Lincoln faced in 1860 when you had millions of Americans who didn’t even consider what was going in Washington to have anything to do with them.
...I believe in the agenda he’s putting forward. For example, universal healthcare. You know, for example, you know, cap and trade and green jobs as a way to, you know, solve our energy problems while growing the economy. I think these are reasonable while liberal goals and if he presents them as reasonable and the reaction to them as one could knew they were going to - because there are these millions of people that don’t consider a liberal president legitimate - was irrational, extreme.
That presented him an opportunity to say, “My program is rational, but my opposition has chosen extremism, has chosen unreason,” and be willing to take the hit, that there's always going to be a minority of the country. Thirty percent, 35 percent, even 40 percent who disagrees with him radically. Disagrees with him strongly, but if he’s still willing to pass his program with that 60 percent margin, the rest of the country will eventually catch up.
The reactionaries will understand as they did with Social Security, as they did with, you know, women getting the vote, freeing the slaves, you know, Social Security - that actually these things were in their interests. They’ll accept them as part of the established order of American society, and in fact, 20, 30, 40 year down the road the Republicans and the Conservatives will be campaigning to save universal healthcare just like they campaign to save Social Security.[END QUOTE]<<<<<
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