Y´know

Above is Caroline Kennedy. More of her later.

Well, my wife is off to Madrid on the 10.07 a.m. express from Sahagun. She will meet and hobnob with her best chum Jean, The American in Paris (usually).
I will loaf with dogs, cat, canary and hens. OK by me, for a couple of days at least.

The news that the aforesaid Kennedy has withdrawn from contention for Hillary Clinton´s old seat, got me pondering. The surprise is not that she withdrew, but that she had the audacity to put her name down in the first place. Clearly, she was utterly unsuited for public office, being unable to communicate verbally in anything more than the contemporary equivalent of grunts - in her case interminable repetition of "y´now" interspersed with every other word, 138 times during one press conference.
This does not make her a bad person, of course. But it does indicate that she may be unfitted for this kind of task.
I suspect she may have been encouraged originally, not only by the fact that George W. Bush - a "semi-literate polecat" (to steal a fine phrase from Denis Healey, a British politician from my youth) managed to land quite an important job, and that Sara Palin managed to at least make some sort of impression nationally while clearly possessing not even the veriest smattering of ignorance.
They seem to have misunderstood the notion of success in American politics. The idea, at least until Bush and Palin showed up, has been that ANYONE might be president, providing they have certain basic credentials. Among these, intelligence, experience, articulacy and ability rate (or ought to) pretty highly.
Kennedy seemed to have glommed on to the current buffoonery that ANY DOLT can make it big, regardless.
Luckily, she woke up.

Obama

I must at least acknowledge the fact that we have a new President. I say "we" deliberately, because,
1: I regard myself as partly American after living there 16 years,
2:, because the decisions U.S. presidents make affect everyone on the planet, as Obama´s predecessor regularly demonstrated.
So, best of luck, Barak, Chum.
If you can simply make things less ghastly, you will have done plenty.
The Onion got it nearly right: BLACK MAN GIVEN NATION´S WORST JOB, except that it should have said, WORLD´S worst job.

TODAY´S THOUGHT
Revolutions are the locomotives of history.
Karl Marx


Farewell poem for Dick Cheney (and Donald Rumsfeld, remember him?)

Epitaph on a Tyrant
by W. H. Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Shock! Horror! God at the Wheel!

Here´s a story from the BBC today. It needs no comment, I think.

Man refuses to drive 'No God' bus
A Christian bus driver has refused to drive a bus with an atheist slogan proclaiming "There's probably no God".
Ron Heather, from Southampton, Hampshire, responded with "shock" and "horror" at the message and walked out of his shift on Saturday in protest.
First Bus said it would do everything in its power to ensure Mr Heather does not have to drive the buses.
Buses across Britain started displaying atheist messages in an advertising campaign launched earlier this month.
Mr Heather told BBC Radio Solent: "I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face, my first reaction was shock horror.
"I felt that I could not drive that bus, I told my managers and they said they haven't got another one and I thought I better go home, so I did.
Mr Heather said he was shocked at the "starkness" of the advert
"I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God.


TODAY´S THOUGHT
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
George Carlin

Diego

In yesterday´s blog, I ran a poem written in 1933. On reflection, I think it needs a little context. Above is a photograph of it. The story below was lifted from a kind website, without permission.

ROCKEFELLER CONTROVERSY
The next time you walk into Rockefeller Center in New York City, try to imagine an enormous mural in the lobby area, painted by Diego Rivera. Imagining the mural is all one can do.
In 1932, after seeing some of Rivera’s murals, Nelson Rockefeller asked if he would be interested in painting a mural in the Radio Corporation Arts Building in Rockefeller Center. Interestingly, Picasso and Matisse were also asked but both refused the offer. Rivera himself initially rejected the invitation. But Rockefeller finally persuaded Rivera to accept
In 1933, Rivera began his work. The painting, Man at the Crossroads, was to depict the social, political, industrial, and scientific possibilities of the twentieth century. In the painting, Rivera included a scene of a giant May Day demonstration of workers marching with red banners with the clear portrait of Lenin leading the demonstration.
Rockefeller showed his concern over Rivera including a portrait of the Russian revolutionary leader in his mural. Nelson Rockefeller told Rivera that while the portrait was beautifully painted, it might easily offend a great many people. He asked the painter to remove Lenin’s face and substitute it with some unknown man. Rivera’s assistants told him that if he removed the head of Lenin, they would go on strike. Rivera agreed with his assistants and told Rockefeller that Lenin’s head would stay but that he would be glad to add the head of some great American leader, such as Lincoln, to another section of the mural.
As both sides could not reach an agreement, he was ordered to stop and the painting was covered and destroyed in February of 1934.

TODAY´S THOUGHT
Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
Blaise Pascal

A Breath of Fresh Air

Keen-eyed readers will see the blog has a new look. Classier, but a bit pale. Too feeble looking? We shall see. Meanwhile Let me refer you to the following story from Wednesday.

'Joe the Plumber' says war reporting should be 'abolished'

Jerusalem, Jan.14: 'Joe the Plumber', who is now in Israel as a foreign correspondent, says reporting on wars should be completely abolished.
"To be honest with you, I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war . . . . I liked back in World War I and World War II, when you'd go to the theater and you'd see your troops on the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for them," he said in an interview with the Associated Press.
"Now everyone's got an opinion and wants to down soldiers-our American soldiers, our Israeli soldiers. I think media should be abolished from reporting," he added.
Joe - whose real name is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher - is on location in Israel for the conservative Web site Pajamas Media.
For his first assignment, he was shown remnants of rockets and other war debris and in the video had difficulty coming up with questions to conduct an interview.
"I have thousands of questions but I can't think of the right one," he said.

Clearly, with seekers after truth like Joe stepping up to the plate, American journalism has nothing to fear.
Brooding on this while walking the dogs in the snow yesterday, it struck me, that though I have not had the pleasure of meeting the Great Common Man myself, I have met many other people.
Some were intelligent, some were dolts. Of the intelligent ones, a handful believed in God, but most did not. Of the dolts, everyone, without exception, believed in God. So, if you have ever met me, and believe in God, be assured that you are one of the handful. Naturally.
Does Joe believe in God? I don´t know. I can only surmise.

TODAY´S THOUGHT
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
Yogi Berra

The picture below is of Diego Rivera

A FUN VERSE
I PAINT WHAT I SEE
(A Ballad of Artistic Integrity)
by E. B. White

"What do you paint when you paint a wall?"
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
"Do you paint just anything there at all?
"Will there be any doves or a tree in fall?
"Or a hunting scene like an English hall?"

"I paint what I see," said Rivera.

What are the colors you use when you paint?"
Said John D.'s grandson, Nelson.
"Do you use any red in the beard of a saint?
"If you do is it terribly red, or faint?
"Do you use any blue? Is it Prussian?"

"I paint what I paint," said Rivera.

"Whose is that head I see on my wall?"
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson.
"Is it anyone's head whom we know, at all?
"A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?
"Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?
"Or is it the head of a Russian?"

"I paint what I think," said Rivera.

"I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,
"I paint what I think," said Rivera,
"And the thing that is dearest in life to me
"In a bourgeois hall is Ingegrity;
"However,...
"I'll take out a couple of people drinkin'
"And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln,
"I could even give you McCormick's reaper
"And still not make my art much cheaper.
"But the head of Lenin has got to stay
"Or my friends will give me the bird today
"The bird, the bird, forever."

"It's not good taste in a man like me,"
Said John D.'s grandson Nelson,
"To question an artist's integrity
"Or mention a practical thing like a fee,
"But I know what I like to a large degree
"Though art I hate to hamper;
"For twenty-one thousand conservative bucks
"You painted a radical. I say shucks,
"I never could rent the offices.
For this, as you know, is a public hall
"And people want doves or a tree in fall,
"And though your art I dislike to hamper,
"I owe a little to God and Gramper,
"And after all,
"It's my wall...."

"We'll see if it is," said Rivera.

.

Snow Jobs

Reb and dogs on the Camino yesterday. Santiago is in the other direction.

NO SHIT

Ex-Guantanamo detainees resume terror fight: Pentagon
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Pentagon said Tuesday that 61 former detainees are believed to have returned to terrorism since their release from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a big increase from its last count.

The above is the opening paragraph of a story from Tuesday. The story, which raises many questions, seems to indicate that these 61 are out of a total of 520 ex-inmates who have been released so far. If this is so, it implies that over 400 of them have not immediately gone back to the fray. I find this apparent restraint on their part astonishing. If I had done any time in "Gitmo," as we cozily call it, my first reaction after getting out would be to start killing Americans as soon as possible, regardless of whether I had done before or not.

UNRELATED POEM

After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics

If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so's,
Futility and grime,
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do,
Or the atoms in our brains.

Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
Wherein a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.

Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel
For, year after year, it repels
An ageing suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.

Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet Euclidian space:
Exploded myths - but who
Could feel at home astraddle
An ever expanding saddle?

This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.

It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.

Auden

Similies

Not this Englishman´s home, but just up the road.


Quite a bit of snow here this morning, though not up to Toledo, Ohio standard yet. Must try to get some pix for tomorrow.
Today´s topic. for no particular reason; similies. I have just been reading a couple of old Anthony Powell novels and one or two made me smile. Nothing like a good simile.
But I am having problems. I looked for a list of good similies on the web and can´t find one. Will have to make notes as I read and come back to the topic again. But here are a couple as I remember them.
The first is Dickens, on the lawyers in Lincoln´s Inn: "Like a lot of maggots in a nut."
One from Anthony Powell: "Perhaps," said Bernard, speaking as if he was pushing a heavy piece of furniture across the room, "perhaps it was what she did not do."
My favorite so far, paraphrased, I fear, from Nancy Mitford: "When Charles (a handsome man) entered the room, the women´s heads snapped round like those of dogs when they hear someone unwrapping a piece of chocolate."
Then a old favorite, very handy, from Anon, "About as much use as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest."
I will make a point of finding some more. Contributions welcomed.


TODAY´S THOUGHT
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

POEM
Me up at does
out of the floor
quietly Stare
a poisoned mouse

still who alive
is asking What
have i done that
You wouldn't have

e.e.cummings