Queens Elizabeth
Posted: May 21, 2018 Filed under: beheadings, Ireland, war, women Leave a comment
O’Byrne’s corpse was butchered and for months the head and quarters hung on pike staffs on the wall over Dublin Castle drawbridge. Several months later the pickled head was presented to the council secretary at London by an English adventurer, who was disappointed to find that the head-silver due on O’Byrne* had already been paid in Ireland. The queen was angered that, “the head of such a base Robin Hood was brought solemnly into England“.
Read enough Irish history and you gain a grudging respect for Queen Elizabeth I. She’s always delivering withering remarks and savage putdowns to people giving her bad news.
In 1603, Elizabeth had seemed a foolish old woman, as men looked expectantly to a Stuart king. By 1630, when Stuart kings had proved rather a disappointment, she had become the paragon of all princely virtues.
-
Christopher Haigh,The Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth I—Myth or Reality? Awake! magazine, 2010, 1/10 pp. 19-22.
At this remove, who can say if Elizabeth was a foolish old woman or one of history’s canniest power players, but I’m team power player. She managed to survive rebellions, armadas, assassination attempts, plagues, you name it!
Just surviving as a queen is tough.
The (current) Queen did not seem that into the wedding. The Crown may have fooled us into thinking the Queen is more woke than she is.
* was reading about O’Byrne after seeing convo on Tom Ricks’ twitter about the origin of “firebrand”
This guy Jordan Peterson
Posted: May 20, 2018 Filed under: heroes, writing Leave a comment
The first piece of advice in his book
is
stand up straight with your shoulders back, as a lobster does.
(paraphrase)
That’s as far as I think I will get in the book, partly because I seem to have misplaced my copy.
Stand up straight with your shoulders back is good, valuable advice, a reminder we could all use, maybe even worth the price of the book.
(Surely Joan Didion and Jordan Peterson could agree on John Wayne?)
Is it funny that stand up straight with your shoulders back is literally the opposite advice of :
(reminded of course of:
) Greaney once claimed the secret to life is posture. He’s rarely 100% wrong.
Is Jordan Peterson just a less chill Joseph Campbell?
If you are a lost young man may I suggest Joe Campbell will let you into a lot of the same insights in a way that may be less likely to prove distasteful to women you are trying to get with?
Very YouTubable and less into being aggro.
Tom Wolfe observation
Posted: May 18, 2018 Filed under: America, America Since 1945, writing Leave a comment
There are, of course, all sorts of gradations of status, of power, of wealth, influence and comfort, but it is impossible to break America down into classes in the old European sense. “But there is a … dividing line, and above that line are those who have bachelor degrees or better from a four-year college or university. Below that are the people who don’t. That line is becoming a gulf that grows wider and wider. “Like the rest of the West, we live in a highly bureaucratic world and it’s impossible today to advance to the heights of ambition without that bachelor’s degree, without being a part of what Vance Packard used to call ‘the diploma elite.'”
Had to go looking for the source of that one, it was in a 2005 Duke commencement speech. How about this?:
For the last four years, you have been trained to be the leaders of an extraordinary nation. There has never been anything like it. … It is the only country I know of in which immigrants with a totally different culture, a totally different language, can in one-half of a generation, if they have the numbers and a modicum of organization, take over politically a metropolis as large as, say, Miami.
As a Tom Wolfe (Ph.d) superfan, kind of disappointed by the tributes and obituaries. Most of them seemed pretty limp. Maybe because so many journalists were so in awe of him, they seemed to sputter on about the same stuff and barely touch on the vastness of Wolfe’s interests and insights.
Best one imo was Louis Menand. (Update: lol whoops hadn’t seen Friend of Helytimes’ Graeme Wood’s.)
Felt literary world scoffed at
but how many 74 year olds would take on a seven hundred page book about college, rap, hookup culture, basketball, and attempts to get in the head of (among others) a nineteen year old female virgin? A little crazy but I thought it was cool! Also came pretty close to predicting the Duke lacrosse scandal.
If you hunger for Wolfe at full Wolfeness might I recommend his 2006 Jefferson Lecture?:
According to Korean War lore, a Navy fighter pilot began shouting out over the combat radio network, “I’ve got a Mig at zero! A Mig at zero! I’ve got a Mig at zero!” A Mig at zero meant a Soviet supersonic fighter plane was squarely on his tail and could blow him out of the sky at any moment. Another voice, according to legend, broke in and said, “Shut up and die like an aviator.” Such “chatter,” such useless talk on the radio during combat, was forbidden. The term “aviator” was the final, exquisite touch of status sensitivity. Navy pilots always called themselves aviators. Marine and Air Force fliers were merely pilots. The reward for reaching the top of the ziggurat was not money, not power, not even military rank. The reward was status honor, the reputation of being a warrior with ultimate skill and courage–a word, by the way, strictly taboo among the pilots themselves. The same notion of status honor motivates virtually every police and fire fighting force in the world.
Wolfe wrote about what was amusing. Even in say crime or war he found the amusement. A serious writer who was also funny. Not enough of those.
Gotta see if I can find this somewhere:
Weird London landmark
Posted: May 16, 2018 Filed under: beer, London Leave a comment
Sounds like he had it coming!
Julius Jacob von Haynau (14 October 1786 – 14 March 1853) was an Austrian general who was prominent in suppressing insurrectionary movements in Italy and Hungary in 1848 and later. While a hugely effective military leader, he also gained renown as an aggressive and ruthless commander. His soldiers called him the “Habsburg Tiger”; those opponents who suffered from his brutality called him the “Hyena of Brescia” and the “Hangman of Arad”.
I hope they mashed him good! The mashers were from the Anchor brewery. They should make Courage beer again.
Ominous remark from Charlie Munger
Posted: May 14, 2018 Filed under: business Leave a comment
Nick on Wikipedia. Thanks Nick!
Andy Serwer, editor in chief of Yahoo Finance, reports on our favorite former weatherman:
Finally, I asked Munger about Trump and reminded him he had previously said that the president’s behavior exhibited a form of “sickness.”
“I’ve mellowed because I consider it counterproductive to hate as much as both parties now hate, and I have disciplined myself,” Munger said. “I now regard all politicians higher than I used to. I did that as a matter of self-preservation.” He said that he had re-read “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and it made him “feel a lot better about the current political scene. We’re way ahead of the Romans at the end.”
That’s a pretty low bar, I pointed out.
“It’s very helpful — I suggest you try it,” Munger replied. “Politicians are never so bad that you don’t live to want them back. There will come a time when the people who hate Trump will wish that he was back
Summertime
Posted: May 14, 2018 Filed under: music 1 Comment
As Long June approaches, gravitating towards songs with Summertime in the title.
Six years after this song came out and I’m ready to be into it! Love that Lana Del Rey used to perform as Lizzie Grant before reinventing as Lana Del Rey, love that she went to Fordham, love the idea of Summertime Sadness, love “feeling alive” as an idea, love Calvin Harris etc remixes, love it all!
Mysterious Antiquities of Ireland
Posted: May 13, 2018 Filed under: Ireland Leave a comment
Way out there in the Dingle peninsula they’ve got the Gallarus / Gallros / Ghallrois:
What is it?
The oratory was built by early christians who loved their trade. Life was much simpler then, and men understood God and His ways much better than they do now
The construction is impressive. 
Wikipedia only adds to the mystery:
Dates and uses
Minor trial cuttings carried out at Gallarus in November 1970 yielded no finds or evidence of features or activity which might shed light on the period of construction and use of the oratory.
An early Irish stone church
Antiquarian Charles Smith[7] is the originator of the claim that the building is an early Irish stone church although no historical information is available prior to 1756 regarding its use.
Gotcha. It more or less “appears” in written history in 1756? This area, while beautiful, is remote. People still speak Irish there now, can only imagine what it was like in 1756
A Romanesque Church
In 1970, archaeologist Peter Harbison argued that the oratory might have been built as late as the 12th century for a number of reasons, mainly because the east window has a rounded top made of two carved stones (not a true arch).
Hmm! Arch evidence.
A private funerary chapel
Harbison also produced some evidence pointing to a later date and a different use: a letter by English traveller Richard Pococke who visited the oratory in 1758, two years after it was discovered by Charles Smith:[10] “Near this building they show a grave with a head at the cross of it and call it the tomb of the Giant; the tradition is that Griffith More was buried there, & as they call’d [it] a chapel, so probably it was built by him or his family at their burial place.”
A tomb for giants? I love this!
A shelter for pilgrims
In 1994 and 1995, Peter Harbison gave up the hypothesis of a 12th-century church and claimed that the placename Gallarus meant “the house or shelter of foreigner(s)” (Gall Aras), the said “foreigner(s)” being pilgrims from outside the peninsula.[12] However, this does not accord with lexicologist Padraig O Siochfhradha’s translation of the name as “rocky headland” (Gall-iorrus).
I remember the word aras in Irish because Bus Aras is where you catch the bus. The bus house.
Gall:
A steam bath? The English house? The walnut place?
Killer location, anyway.
Do ASRM people like Shelby Foote?
Posted: May 12, 2018 Filed under: voice Leave a comment
mesmerizing voice.
for the true Foote-heads the post-Ken Burns interviews are most compelling. Foote slower, more tired, perhaps exhausted by celebrity, but ever courtly.
just watch that second one until Foote tells about Maugham’s stammer.
Nobel / Pulitzer
Posted: May 12, 2018 Filed under: writing 1 Comment
Both the Nobel
and the Pulitzer Prize committees investigating sexual* abuse charges. Is this because:
- literature is full of creeps
- arts and letters communities are especially sensitive / responsive to charges like this
- unusually weird status imbalances and games in these communities
- lots of occasions for sin: alcohol, parties, conferences, etc
- culture of bad behavior semi-tolerated in the arts
- people with power will always take things too far
- all, none, other?
* kind of unfair for Katarina Frostenson to be blamed for her husband’s crimes imo, but I don’t know the deets. the betting tips is another matter. almost funny.
Stars of the National Portrait Gallery, London
Posted: May 12, 2018 Filed under: art history Leave a comment
Mrs. Simpson, who caused so much trouble, by Gerald Brockhurst.
Winifred Radford by Meredith Frampton.
She became a specialist in French mélodie
Ken Dodd:
Ayuba Suleimain Diallo (Job ben Solomon)
Recognized as a deeply pious and educated man, in England Diallo mixed with high and intellectual society, was introduced at Court and was bought out of slavery by public appeal
Joseph Collet
was away in China so long he had Amoy Chinqua make a statue of him out of clay to send home.
Here we have Margaret “Peg” Woffington:
source
says the caption on her:
she was known for her bitter rivalries with other actresses (she stabbed Mrs. Bellamy during a performance)
The winner though is Daniel Lambert as painted by Benjamin Marshall:
Welp time to look for lunch!
Thrice worry
Posted: May 10, 2018 Filed under: United Kingdom Leave a commentMoment I happened to see on British TV that stuck in my craw, occurs between :45-:55:
When Prince William says “thrice worry” about his children.
Is Prince William not a throwback fantasy of conservative manhood? (suspect Jordan Peterson, a Canadian, may be a secret monarchist). Even the graceful acceptance of the balding.
Longers for the past vs yearners for change, are these the main political groups? The rare few who can find the balance.
The comparison to the UK’s elected politicians at the moment:
Let Commons do the actual work, maybe that’s the trick. You just handle the fairy tale.
The endurance of the royal family. Incredible.
This portrait originally and now identified as Catherine Parr was wrongly identified as Lady Jane Grey for decades. (Master John for the National Portrait Gallery, from wiki)
“donned lewdly by Rihanna”
Posted: May 9, 2018 Filed under: religion Leave a comment
lol Ross Douthat are you doing a bit?
(h/t the Wrensh)
Update on Kentucky Derby times
Posted: May 7, 2018 Filed under: horses, sports Leave a comment
The Darley Arabian
Much stimulating discussion ensued after Saturday’s post about why Kentucky Derby winners aren’t getting much faster.
https://twitter.com/JimmySparkles/status/993380387521875968
Reader Avin D. sends us this 2014 Deadspin piece by Roger Pielke Jr. which has much better stats and looks at whether we’ve neared peak speeds in animal races:
One possibility, advanced by Denny and others, is that thoroughbred race times may have leveled off because the narrow genetic diversity of racehorses limits the genetic diversity in the pool of potential thoroughbred champions. Modern thoroughbreds are descendants of a small number of horses (less than 30 in the 18th century), and 95 percent are thought to trace their ancestry to a single horse, The Darley Arabian. Today, there are fewer than 25,000 thoroughbreds born each year in the United States. Compare that with the more than 7 billion people worldwide.3 The size of the human population may simply lead to a greater number of potential athletes with extreme speed.
Very cool. Imagine if every current human runner was descended from, like, Guto Nyth Bran.
The Darley Arabian sired Flying Childers:
It is said he completed this race, over the Round Course at Newmarket, in 6 minutes, 40 seconds and that he reached a speed of 82 1/2 feet per second or 1 mile per minute. This was claimed to make Flying Childers the only horse on record as having matched the top speed of the unbeaten Eclipse. By way of comparison, this would be nearly 40 seconds faster than the unbeaten Frankel ran the Newmarket Rowley Mile in his famous 2,000 Guineas victory of 2011, over 30 seconds faster than the current mile track record and very close to the five furlong track record set by Lochsong in 1994.
As for Eclipse:
Eclipse is still remembered in the phrase “Eclipse first and the rest nowhere”, snowcloned as “[name of competitor] first and the rest nowhere,” referring to any dominating victory. This phrase is occasionally seen in American print media (most often in newspaper sport sections) but is more common in Britain.
A new one to me. If Flying Childers could keep his alleged top speed of 82.5 feet per second he’d finish the Kentucky Derby in a minute twenty.
Why aren’t horse races longer anymore, the way they were in the Stewball era?
Anyway, congrats to Justify:
Why haven’t winning Kentucky Derby times improved more?
Posted: May 5, 2018 Filed under: sports Leave a comment
is it interesting that the winner’s time on average hasn’t improved that much over 121 runnings at the current length?
The winner of the 1896 Kentucky Derby, the first run at the current length, was Ben Brush. He ran in 2:07.75. Only 4.16 seconds off the most recent winner, Always Dreaming.
Always Dreaming ran in 2:03.59. Crummy conditions, it’s true, but in 2015, on a nice day, American Pharaoh’s still only at 2:03.02.
Four seconds ahead of 1896. Would’ve lost to 1931’s Twenty Grand.
Twenty Grand finished in 2:01.8, which would stay the record until 1941, when Whirlaway shaved off .2, coming in at 2:01.40.
Whirlaway’s 1941 time that would’ve beaten 62 of the 76 winners since then.
Whirlaway and the great Barbaro in 2006, champions from sixty years apart, put in times less than .05 seconds off from each other.
source: KYbluegrass on Wiki
The winning time for the Kentucky Derby has hovered around 2:02 for sixty years.
In 1973 Secretariat broke the two-minute barrier. A special horse. It’s still the record. Monarchos cracked two minutes in 2001.
In the Kentucky Derby, the top ten all time fastest finishers represent six different decades.
Compare to humans:
A world champion human mile runner from 1941 could not hang with any serious Olympic miler of the current era. Champion human mile times have improved by about thirty seconds.
Maybe that’s the wrong comparison. The Kentucky Derby is a sprint and tiny differences are significant.
OK. Say like the 100 meter dash?
Usain Bolt would beat any 100 meter dasher from the 1940s. He’s a special case, the best ever, but even the sixth place finisher at the 2016 finals would’ve been breaking the world record from ten years before. Nobody from the ’80s would’ve come close, let alone anyone from the ’40s.
The world record holder in the 100 meter dash from the 1940s wouldn’t even make the finals at the 2016 Olympics.
You have to go down into the 200s of fastest Olympic times before anyone from before 1990 shows up:
Olympic gold medal times have improved by about 10% on what they were in the early 1900s. That’s in a race that lasts around ten seconds.
The human race that timewise is the closest to the derby, around two minutes, is the 800 meter dash.
Again let’s use the Olympics. Edwin Flack of Australia won in 1896 with a time of 2:11. By the 1930s he would’ve been smoked. By then, Tommy Hampson could run 1:49.7.
By the 1980s Hampson would’ve barely made the finals. By 2016 David Rudisha of Kenya is finishing at 1:42.15, a 29 second improvement over Flack.
Rudisha is very special of course. But even Yiech Biel of the Refugee Olympic Team, last finisher in his early heat, put up a time of 1:54.67, a healthy 17 seconds ahead of Flack.
Maybe that’s the wrong comparison. The Kentucky Derby isn’t a world record, it’s a specific race under changing conditions that can be favorable or unfavorable.
Fair point but aren’t Olympic finals conditions variable?
But the Kentucky Derby’s a one-off, you only run it once (when you are three years old)
That might be interesting but also so what? Shouldn’t that mean even more variance?
More: the Derby-length (1 1/4 mile) world record run by a horse hasn’t broken 1:57. Closest was in 1980.
The world record time for a horse running this distance hasn’t improved in thirty-eight years. Meanwhile human 100 meter dash times progress pretty neatly.
So here’s my question:
Has human running improved more than horse running?
Why?
One theory: horse racing reached peak times quickly and stayed there because there’s more money in it.
Are my assumptions wrong? Very open to that, maybe average racehorse times have improved, I don’t know and I’m not sure I’m gonna bother finding out!
Please, weigh in if you have a take.
Here’s my second question:
is this interesting?
The Generals, John Singer Sargent, 1922
Posted: May 4, 2018 Filed under: art history, museum Leave a comment
“I just don’t get it guys, why do we keep losing?”
Source and appropriate epic size, it’s at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Said Sargent, while working on it:
the Generals loom before me like a nightmare… I curse God and man for having weakly said I would do them, for I have no ideas about it and I foresee a horrible failure
French tourists
Posted: May 4, 2018 Filed under: Ireland Leave a comment
thought they were ruining my photo but now I see they were essential.
Advances in Cormac studies
Posted: April 9, 2018 Filed under: America Since 1945, Texas, writing Leave a comment
Morrow quotes McCarthy as saying that “even people who write well can’t write novels… They assume another sort of voice and a weird, affected kind of style. They think, ‘O now I’m writing a novel,’ and something happens. They write really good essays… but goddamn, the minute they start writing a novel they go crazy“
In early 2008 Texas State University announced they’d acquired Cormac McCarthy’s papers. The next year they made them available to scholars. Now two books based on rummaging around in these notes have appeared.
This one, by Michael Lynn Crews, explores the literary influences McCarthy drew on, which authors and books he had quotes from buried in his papers.
The quote about novelists going crazy is from a letter exchange McCarthy was having re: Ron Hanson’s novel Desperadoes, which McCarthy admired.
This one, by Daniel Robert King, takes more of a semi-biographical approach, tracing out what we can learn about McCarthy from his correspondence with agents and editors. A sample:
Bought these books because it gives confidence to observe that somebody whose writing sounds like it emerged pronounced from the cliffs like some kind of Texas Quran had to work and revise and toss stuff and chisel to get there.
From these books it is clear:
- McCarthy is a meticulous and patient rewriter
- it took decades for his work to gain any significant recognition
- he was helped with seeming love and care by editor Albert Erskine.
- he was patient, open, yet confident in editorial correspondence
These books are not necessary for the casual personal library, but if you enjoy gnawing on literary scraps, recommend them both. From King:
However, in this same letter, he acknowledges that “the truth is that the historical material is really – to me – little more than a framework upon which to hang a dramatic inquiry into the nature of destiny and history and the uses of reason and knowledge and the nature of evil and all these sorts of things which have plagued folks since there were folks.”
Wars Of The Irish Kings
Posted: April 3, 2018 Filed under: Ireland Leave a comment
In fact, land in pre-twelfth century Ireland had little political value. Although there were rich plains, it was not a farming culture but a decentralized grazing one in which wealth was measured in cattle. There were no cities, and the kingdoms, which rarely had roads or clearly defined boundaries, were separated by a dense forests and bogs, which were more of a deterrent to travel (or easy military movement) than the mountains. A reading of the sometimes-cryptic early annals suggests and endless series of battles and cattle raids. To be glib, early medieval Ireland sounds like a somewhat crazed Wisconsin, in which every dairy farm is an armed at perpetual war with its neighbors, and every farmer claims he is a king.
Some tite illustrations in the book:
For a dip into Irish history, you can’t top:
The illustrations go a long way towards telling the story.
It’s not all bad. 
Edward McGuire’s portrait of Seamus Heaney.
Mississippi Mound Trail
Posted: April 1, 2018 Filed under: America, America Since 1945, art Leave a comment
On one of the episodes of Theme Time Radio Hour Bob Dylan himself says that the actual highway 61 is boring now, nothing but ads for riverboat casinos. That may be true south of Vicksburg but north of the Biedenharn Coca-Cola Museum and the Catfish Row Art Park, I found the road compelling.
Mississippi Fred McDowell was born of course in Rossville, Tennessee.
It was Dave [David L. Cohn] in God Shakes Creation who said, “The Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel and ends on Catfish Row in Vicksburg.” He was always welcome at the Peabody; they were glad to see him – he stayed there whenever he was in Memphis – but they never even gave him a cup of coffee, and he thought it was rather amusing that they had so little appreciation of this publicity.
So says Uncle Shelby, of Greenville and Memphis:
Since we’d been to Memphis we steered towards Oxford Miss to visit Faulkner’s house:
On Highway 61 lots of blues type sites, Muddy Waters’ birthplace for instance:
marked by signs for the Mississippi Blues Trail. But many signs tell you you are also on the Mississippi Mound Trail.
Mounds make a thousand or more years ago by some lost culture, perhaps connected to the people who built Cahokia:
And where in the beginning the predecessors crept with their simple artifacts, and built the mounds and vanished, bequeathing only the mounds in which the succeeding recordable Muskhogean stock would leave the skulls of their warriors and chiefs and babies and slain bears, and the shards of pots, and hammer- and arrow-heads and now and then a heavy silver Spanish spur.
So says Faulkner in his essay Mississippi. In Sanctuary he says:
The sunny air was filled with competitive radios and phonographs in the doors of drug- and music- stores. Before these doors a throng stood all day, listening. The pieces which moved them were ballads simple in melody and theme, of bereavement and retribution and repentance metallically sung, blurred, emphasised by static or needle – disembodied voices blaring from imitation wood cabinets or pebble-grain horn-mouths above the rapt faces, the gnarled slow hands long shaped to the imperious earth, lugubrious, harsh, and sad.
You can only listen to so much of that though; when I pulled over for Dunn Mounds I was listening to Maron interview Jennifer Lawrence.
The Raven map tells the story of the Delta. Another flooding bottomland is the Nile delta:
where they also kept slaves, and built mounds.
source: Ricardo Liberato on Wikipedia
great tour of the Blues Trail sites here on Wiki by Chillin662.
Stewball
Posted: March 28, 2018 Filed under: animals, Ireland Leave a comment
Samuel Sidney [The Book of the Horse, 1875, repr. ed. Bonanza Books, 1985] stated Skewball “…won a great number of plates and prizes in England, and one famous match in Ireland.” The Irish turf callendar says he won six races worth £508 in 1752, when he was eleven years old, and was the top earning runner of that year in Ireland. The match became the subject of a ballad, Skewball, which has endured, in varying forms, to the present day.
The match celebrated by the ballad is listed in Pond’s Racing Calendar of 1752. It was held at the Curragh in Kildare, Ireland, on Saturday, March 28, with each participant putting up 300 guineas. Arthur Marvin (also Marvyn, or Mervin) owned Skewball, who carried 8st. 7lb. His opponent was “Sir Ralph Gore’s grey mare,” carrying the heavier weight of 9 st. Skewball was a gelding, which explains why he was still running at age eleven; although it was not uncommon for horses to run to ages 9 or 10 during that period, successful stallions were usually retired from the turf to commence their stud careers. He won the 4 mile race in 7 minutes and 51 seconds.
(source)
Whatever just noting that it’s the 266nd anniversary of a run by a horse in a race that people are still singing about.
A skewbald horse. Karakal’s own work on Wiki
They don’t seem to run many four mile horse races anymore. Some history on these “real stayers.”
Sir Ralph Gore, owner of the grey mare, was born at Belle Isle castle.
During the Battle of Lauffeld on 2 July 1747 all his superior officers were killed or severely wounded, so command of the battalion fell to Gore, who performed so well, that on the following day he received the thanks of the British commander Prince William, Duke of Cumberland.
The Curragh:
photo by Eoghan888
(Remembering now that I stopped there once to visit the Irish National Stud)
Helytimes own photo
Leadbelly’s version:
and one more from Leadbelly:
Check out the bowties on The Hollies:
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