Waterless Places
Posted: August 30, 2017 Filed under: Christianity, religion, the California Condition Leave a comment
from:
Dorothea Lange
Posted: August 29, 2017 Filed under: photography, the California Condition Leave a comment
Three of the four Arnold children. The oldest boy earned the money to buy his bicycle. Western Washington, Thurston County, Michigan Hill.
Let’s look
Child living in Oklahoma City shack town
at a sample
Cotton picker, southern San Joaquin Valley
of the
Woman in pea picker’s camp. California. “I seen our corn dry up and blow over the fence back there in Oklahoma”
Children of migratory Mexican field workers. The older one helps tie carrots in the field. Coachella Valley, California
Dorothea Lange photos
Pregnant migrant woman living in California squatter camp. Kern County
Japanese mother and daughter, agricultural workers near Guadalupe, California
Mexican girl who picks peas for the eastern market. Imperial Valley, California
Children of migratory workers, hauling water, American River camp, San Joaquin Valley, California
WARNING TO MASSACHUSETTS DRIVERS!
Posted: August 28, 2017 Filed under: Boston, maps, New England Leave a comment
Discovered a serious error in my DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer
You can’t actually drive from Moon Island to Long Island! There’s a road on the map that’s just not there!
Be careful out there guys and ALWAYS double check visual clues before attempting to drive from one island to another.
Trouble at the Allah-Las concert !
Posted: August 24, 2017 Filed under: music, the California Condition Leave a comment
In Rotterdam, a concert cancelled after Spanish police warn Dutch police about a possible bomb plot.
I wonder what the terrorists don’t like about this band.
The name?
Colin Drury of The Guardian, Aug. 2016, reports:
They chose to use Allah – Arabic for god – because they wanted something “holy sounding”. But they say they never realised some might interpret it as trivialising or mocking their religious beliefs. “We get emails from Muslims, here in the US and around the world, saying they’re offended, but that absolutely wasn’t our intention,” says Michaud. “We email back and explain why we chose the name and mainly they understand.”
In Turkey, a show got pulled because the promoter didn’t feel comfortable. “But what’s the alternative?” asks Siadatian. “We’ve had the name so long I don’t think we can change it. That wouldn’t work. We don’t dwell. You know, no regrets.”
What the band do regret is the growing gentrification of hometown LA.
I guess if I stand for anything it’s for a band’s right to call themselves whatever, without anybody getting blowed up over it.
Free speech protections do not equal endorsements. But in the civilized world you can call your band whatever you want.
Don’t know much about the band. I like this song Catamaran. Very cool song.
Cube Houses of Rotterdam by wiki user Hanselpedia
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McCain
Posted: August 21, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, heroes Leave a comment
Happened to be reading this this weekend.
Michener says:
The ugly old aviator:
Dropped dead four days after the Japanese surrender.
What can we learn from Lee?
Posted: August 16, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
source, wiki photo by Cville Dog
Lots of conversations about history, how we should remember our history, etc. Amateur historians love arguing about Lee, how can you not, he is interesting.
Robert E. Lee had many noble personal qualities, as did many officers in Hitler’s army.
If there’s anything to learn from him, might it not be that a man of principle and dignity can end up on the outrageously wrong side of the most important moral issue of his time?
Nobody should judge John Kelly without reading this Washington Post profile of him by Greg Jaffe.
About 12 hours later, the elder Kelly e-mailed his extended family in Boston, preparing them for the possibility that Robert might be maimed or killed. Kelly knew that Robert went out on almost every patrol with his men through mine-filled fields. One of the Marines at Bethesda told him that Robert was “living on luck.”
“I write you all to just let you know he’s in the thick of it and to keep him in your thoughts,” Kelly typed. “We are doing a Novena a minute down here and there is no end in sight.”
On Oct. 31, Kelly sent a second e-mail to his eldest sister, the family matriarch. “I am sweating bullets,” he confided. “Pray. Pray. Pray. He’s such a good boy . . . and Marine.”
This is painful to watch:
What a dilemma: the American people have elected a mean angry fool, do I try and do what I can to contain him or resign knowing he might do more damage without me around?
What’s the point of a statue of Lee if not to learn from him?
From this take on Lee by Roy Blount Jr. in Smithsonian mag:
We may think we know Lee because we have a mental image: gray. Not only the uniform, the mythic horse, the hair and beard, but the resignation with which he accepted dreary burdens that offered “neither pleasure nor advantage”: in particular, the Confederacy, a cause of which he took a dim view until he went to war for it. He did not see right and wrong in tones of gray, and yet his moralizing could generate a fog, as in a letter from the front to his invalid wife: “You must endeavour to enjoy the pleasure of doing good. That is all that makes life valuable.” All right. But then he adds: “When I measure my own by that standard I am filled with confusion and despair.”
Let him deny himself
Posted: August 16, 2017 Filed under: history Leave a comment
Went looking for the source of a story that Robert E. Lee, asked by a mom for advice on raising her boy, said “teach him to deny himself.”
From Douglas Southall Freeman’s four volume 1934 R. E. Lee: A Biography. The source cited is one Joseph Packard’s Recollections of a Long Life.
Original source probably one JC:
And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
Luke 9:23, KJV.
The ignoble and unhappy regime
Posted: August 15, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, music Leave a comment
Evocative phrase from Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “War” (34:05 above) keeps popping into my mind.
The lyrics are a near-exact repetition of a speech in the UN by the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie. However, the two simple guitar chords and the semi-improvised, spirited melody put to Selassie’s words is unmistakably Marley’s.
Almond
Posted: August 13, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition, words Leave a comment
Take a break from your work and the stressful news to learn the etymology of the word almond.
Looked it up because I wondered if it might be Arabic. Not so.
From Greek amygdalos, a word of unknown origin, perhaps from Semitic.
Thanks Online Etymology Dictionary.
(From the Who Did This? section of Online Etymology Dictionary’s website:
My political ideas have no future and I keep them to myself unless provoked. They tend toward the -isms that begin with anti-anti- and take root among the kind of people who are steamrolled by developments, murdered by revolutions, and forgotten even in footnotes. I deplore politics based on herd and tribe and demonizing of the other, which means most of it. What else? Dogs and I don’t get along. I’m trying to think of qualities that matter to people’s weighting of integrity. I haven’t watched television since 1994. It might have been ’96. I put ketchup on hot dogs and mustard on french fries. When I played World of Warcraft I found I generally chose a rogue. Human. Female.
And:
Etymonline is a can-opener
Couldn’t agree more.)
The same root word is used to name the amygdala in your brain.
We don’t wade into neuroscience here on Helytimes. Using the brain to study itself feels grotesque. It’s too overwhelming, my brain refuses to learn about itself. (Only just learned there are two amygdala, for instance). And charts like this agitate because I suspect they are probably crazy oversimplifications to the point of being meaningless?
But some interesting bits from the Wiki page on amygdala:
Amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks.[59][60] Individuals with larger amygdalae had larger and more complex social networks. They were also better able to make accurate social judgments about other persons’ faces.[61]
And:
There are cases of human patients with focal bilateral amygdala lesions, due to the rare genetic condition Urbach-Wiethe disease.[67][68]
And:
The amygdala appears to play a role in binge drinking, being damaged by repeated episodes of intoxication and withdrawal.[70] Alcoholism is associated with dampened activation in brain networks responsible for emotional processing[clarification needed], including the amygdala.[71]
The story about Obama eating seven almonds a night was so perfect – that is a good number of almonds to eat! Obama’s explanation of it I found illuminating:
“Well, this is an example of the weird way that the press works,” Obama said. “So Michelle and Sam Kass, who was our chef here, one night they were talking about me and teasing me about how disciplined I was, that I didn’t have potato chips or I didn’t have a piece of cake. And this is when Michelle said, ‘Yes, and he just has seven almonds. That’s it.’ To really drive home the point that I needed to loosen up a little bit. And Sam relayed this joke to The New York Times in the article and somehow it was relayed as if I was counting out … the seven almonds.”
source
Almonds. Enjoy them.
Previous Helytimes coverage of almonds.
Wicked Game
Posted: August 11, 2017 Filed under: music 1 Comment
A friend tells a story about a guy who had a cassette that was just this song over and over, they once listened to it all night while playing cards.
If you drove from LA to Portland just listening to this song on repeat would you go insane? Become a genius?
Ireland should take in two million refugees
Posted: August 9, 2017 Filed under: Ireland, politics 2 Comments
I’ve developed a radical policy idea. This is my position paper.
The Republic of Ireland should take in two million refugees.
Here’s my case.
Ireland is empty
Seriously, walk around the place. There’s like nobody there.
Almost nobody
Here’s Ireland overlaid on Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania has 12.78 million people. Similar landscape and climate.
Ireland has 4.773 million people.
Ireland has fewer people today than it did in 1841.
Not busy
What a wild fact. What other country is like that? Can we really trust that 1841 census?
My source here is the Central Statistics Office of Ireland:
Ireland is empty because people moved away.
There were all the people that died in the massive famine.
But post-famine emigration is really what depopulated Ireland. The whole story of Ireland is people moving away.
Even James Joyce looked for a life elsewhere.
The people of Ireland were themselves once refugees.
They weren’t always looked fondly on either.
They were considered to be dirty and dangerous fundamentalists from a scary religion.
Now look at them.
“Her father, Alfred Roy Carey, was of African American and Afro-Venezuelan descent, while her mother, Patricia (née Hickey), is of Irish descent.”
Says The Washington Post:
According to the Census, there are 34.5 million Americans who list their heritage as either primarily or partially Irish. That number is, incidentally, seven times larger than the population of Ireland itself (4.68 million).
That’s just the USA. There are something like two million Irish Australians and four millionish Irish Canadians.
What a great chance for Ireland to return the favor!
What a cool national mission for Ireland!
And remember, we’re just restoring Ireland to its historical population level.
some people could live here
Possible counter argument:
But that will destroy the unique national character of Ireland!
Meh.
First of all, maybe they won’t, maybe they’ll adapt to it. Or, as immigrants have done everywhere, offer new foods, traditions, ideas, and stir themselves into an overall blend.
Second of all Irish culture is pretty darn resilient, there’s dudes in Southie three generations removed who’ve never visited the place who have shamrock tattoos and sing some fraction of the songs while they get drunk together.
Third of all Irish culture has been well-preserved already.
You can count on the Irish to do a fine job preserving. source, shoutout to Wiki user Dilif
You can count on the Irish to do a solid preservation job.
(This song about boiling a policeman and spreading him like pavement is a fair example of Irish culture*.)
and
Frankly Irish culture could use a bit of a jolt.
Previous pinnacle of Irish culture?
Taking in two million refugees is a challenge.
But Ireland is up to it. This country is one of the best ever producers of nurses, caregivers, teachers, cops. It could be a a national project that would bring out the best in them.
You don’t think largely ceremonial president Michael D. Higgins could inspire and lead his countrymen in this task?
In conclusion, Ireland should take in two million immigrants.
Honestly it’s mostly sheep over there.
By the way, not asking Ireland to do anything I wouldn’t do myself. You could argue California has already taken in two million refugees. I haven’t crunched the numbers yet but I think we could take in a million more.
* I’m aware the song was written by a Scottish person
How big are the UK and Ireland compared to California?
Posted: August 7, 2017 Filed under: Ireland, the California Condition 2 Comments
The UK: 65.64 million people. 93,629 square miles.
California: 39.25 million people. 163,996 square miles.
Ireland: 4.773 million people. 32,595 square miles.
In 1841 the population of Ireland (just counting what’s now the Republic, not the whole island) was 6.53 million.
abandoned house near Killary photoed by Helytimes
Ireland is like a ghost town.
Today’s radical policy suggestion:
Ireland should take in two million refugees. Much as the world once took them in. It’s time to return the favor. Two million refugees would return the nation to pre-1841 population.
Today’s question:
Are there other countries where the population is significantly smaller today than it was around 1840?
(maps via the great site Overlap Maps which is run by Sunflower Education, a publisher of books for homeschoolers)
The Irish comic tradition
Posted: August 3, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, Ireland, politics Leave a comment
source. Barry McGovern / Johnny Murphy in Irish comic storyteller Samuel Beckett’s play
Just read this one.
It’s true. Bannon, as presented in this book, is funny. Makes it harder to dislike him.
At one point he describes Paul Ryan as
a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.
(source)
This vivid turn of phrase after speaking to an embattled Roger Ailes:
Bannon was surprised at his desperation. “He was babbling,” he later told an associate. “He was in the fucking mumble tank.”
Bannon’s key insight:
Monster, filthy, sick, beast – these are terms Bannon throws around as compliments, what bro doesn’t? But on the other hand he starts to sound a lot like a dark wizard delighting in his devil-powers as he launches demons at the world.
Anyway, fast, entertaining and insightful book.
Was interested in the perspective of Peter Schweitzer, who wrote Clinton Cash.
Could you argue the same about journalists and Trump? Both love Twitter.
Old Dale, CA
Posted: August 3, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
The people who populated this remote mining region were tougher than a tortoise shell and twice as dusty. To describe some of these hard scrabble miners as rugged individualists is like describing the Coen brothers as a couple of kids with cameras.
The miners defined the term colorful character, some of whom would made a cholla cactus seem cuddly by comparison.
Little is left but a grave
By April 1896, Dale had two small mills and an arrastra to process ore, a general store, an assayer’s office, a blacksmith shop, a saloon and a house of ill repute.
No structures remain in any of the settlements today. Everything has been salvaged, stolen, vandalized or burned to nothing but ash piles and rusty nails. Roofless adobe walls have melted back into the sands from which they rose.
Blow sand that had covered the arrastra at Old Dale has recently been excavated. Contrary to being pleased by the amateur archeological work, Wharff is wary, concerned that the people who did the digging may return to unearth the stones, looking for any traces of stray gold that may be left below the rock floor of the historical structure.
Hoover Boys
Posted: August 1, 2017 Filed under: children, heroes, politics, presidents Leave a comment
our Chicago correspondent sends us this find:
The authors:
How much do Americans care about military experience in their politicians?
Posted: August 1, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
Reading this Politico article about Seth Moulton. It’s assumed as a truth that “a war record appeals to voters.” But how much does it matter?
I haven’t seen a detailed study of this, but let’s look at presidential elections. Since 1988, the more impressive military record has lost to the less impressive one.
2016
Trump beats Hillary (no military service by either one, but Trump avoided the draft and Hillary was on the Senate Armed Services committee)
2012
Obama beats Romney (no military service)
2008
Obama beats McCain (no military service beats war hero)
2004
W beats John Kerry (went AWOL during the war beats war hero, partly by going right at Kerry’s war record)
2000
W beats Al Gore (went AWOL beats served in Vietnam)
1996
Clinton beats Bob Dole (draft avoider beats war hero)
1992
Clinton beats George H. W. Bush (draft avoider beats war hero)
1988
George H. W. Bush beats Dukakis (war hero beats Army veteran)
This is the only time in the last ten elections that the more impressive military service beat the less impressive one
1984
Reagan beats Walter Mondale (no service beats Army veteran)
1980
Reagan beats Carter (no service beats former US Navy officer)
This is a small sample of course and each of these elections was its own weird thing of course.
My theory is that reporters and pundits assume that being a war hero is more important to voters than it is.
I find this interesting because it feels like, logically, deciding to put yourself in harm’s way in service to your country is a good demonstration of character for someone running for a public service office. But I don’t think elections work through logic. Also I think America’s ideas about our own military are confusing and sometimes contradictory.
Again, I don’t know the answer, sometimes here at Helytimes we’re just asking questions! Consider this a classic “Is This Interesting?”
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