Wanna' Move to England?

Let's move to England, buy one of these closed Anglican churches currently for sale, and remodel it into a home (complete with permanent grounds crew -- at least until the last trump sounds):

For the Love of Art

Google's new Art Project applies streetview technology to the great art museums of the world -- view the masterpieces down to the level of minute brush strokes.

A video explaining the project is here, with examples. The Google Art Project web site is here.

Lookin' Good, Feelin' Good

I try to save trips to my local big-box grocery store for Thursdays since that's "Seniors Day": five percent savings for those over 60. Today being Thursday, I made a quick trip to pick up a few items. And I came out feelin' good -- and not just because I saved five percent on my tab.

As I was watching the cashier ring up my items, a young female store employee -- a teenager, by my reckoning, with an "alternative" look to her -- came walking by and said cheerfully, "Nice hat!" I thanked her energetically, duly impressed with her outgoing and complimentary spirit. I found this wool hat (from Woolrich) this winter and have worn it appreciatively -- it won the approval of my son David who has long worn models similar to this (and whose breadth of sartorial approval runs the gamut from light gray to black). I think my young admirer's approval at the store, and my son's, are linked by their mutual alternative perspective. (Has my cap gained me entrance?)

The cap:

David (and buddy Bruiser), who gave his approval -- sporting a toboggan rather than his version of my cap this Christmas:

Feelin' good, and lookin' good (remember the closing scene from Trading Places?), I received the total of my bill from the cashier, a likewise friendly teenager.

"Did you include my Senior Discount?" I inquired.

His sheepish look communicated "No," and he adjusted the total. Then he said, "Sorry -- are you really over 60?"

His polite tone revealed that he wasn't challenging my qualification for the discount.

"Yep," I said. "Be 63 next month!"

"Wow -- you don't look that old." That's exactly what he said.

Gathering my bags, I told him Harris Teeter ought to train all their cashiers to do what he did -- compliment the customers on the fact that they don't look old enough to qualify for the Senior Discount.

Now -- I don't think for a minute that I look sub-60 in years. I was talking to a young teenager who hasn't lived long enough to judge peoples' ages by how they look. But I left pretending he knew exactly what he was saying. At my age, I'll take compliments where and when I can get them. "Nice hat!" and "You don't look that old!" -- especially from teenagers -- made Senior Day at the grocery store the highlight of my week (so far).

(I'm obligated to say, for those who don't know me, that the "lookin' good" part of this post is in pure fun. True story, but told in fun. The hat is nice; the old grey head, not so much.)

The News in BIG Pictures

Two news sites with amazing, beautiful, LARGE format pictures from the day's news. I don't know how they do it, but these pictures don't take any longer to load than the typical small pics on most sites:

The Big Picture from The Boston Globe

In Focus from The Atlantic

Eat Some Kale Every Day

A great blog by a multi-time cancer survivor, and registered dietician, on ways to eat kale every day of the year. 

Pomology

I learned a new word recently: pomology -- the scientific study and cultivation of fruit.

I came across this word while perusing the pages of Old Southern Apples: A Comprehensive History and Description of Varieties for Collectors, Growers, and Fruit Enthusiasts (rev. and expanded edition). This second edition of apple hero Creighton Lee Calhoun, Jr.'s classic book has become a go-to source for information on historic, heirloom Southern apples. (Calhoun is a legend in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina where he makes his home.)

While the book is a treasure itself, it pointed me to another treasure that resides deep in the belly of the USDA beast in Washington, D.C. -- the National Agricultural Library (NAL). This library is a huge repository -- way too much to explain briefly -- of American agricultural history. Lee Calhoun mentions the NAL because of the efforts that began in the late 19th century to identify and catalog thousands of varieties of American fruit. Here's a quote from Calhoun's book:

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) established a Division of Pomology in 1886 to collect and disseminate information to fruit growers. Almost instantly it was overwhelmed with boxes of fruit from the public with cover letters asking "what kind of apple (or pear or peach or cherry) is this?" By 1888, the Division of Pomology had received over 10,000 fruit specimens for identification!

Accurate depiction of American fruit became necessary to aid in the task of identification. With color photography a distant invention, the division hired a series of accomplished watercolor artists, beginning in 1887, to paint pictures of American fruit. But the time this effort ended around 1940, over 7,700 paintings had been made of fruits and nuts. Some of these paintings were reproduced in USDA publications such as the annual Yearbook of Agriculture, but most were filed away and faded from public view. . . .

The recent burgeoning interest in heirloom fruits has renewed the public's desire to see the pomological watercolors. A monetary grant from a private source in 2009 allowed the USDA's National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland to convert the watercolors to digital format and make the files available to the public.

In Calhoun's book is a section of gorgeous color plates of 120 selected heirloom apple paintings from the NAL collection. Each painting contains, in the lower left and right-hand corners, in handwritten script, the artist's name, the date, the apple variety, the apple's location, etc.

This amazing art was created not just for apples, but for a variety of American fruits. Making my way to the NAL website I found a treasure trove of these digitized original paintings of apples and other fruits. And some prints have been nicely reproduced on 8" x 10" matte stock, suitable for framing and available for purchase.

Here, for instance, are the four apple prints currently available for sale via the NAL web site. (I borrowed these images from the NAL site without permission.):

The NAL web site is VERY large and not a little complex. But there is so much to see that it is worth the effort. Here are some links:

•The NAL home page is here.

•The NAL collections page is here. (Overview of the archives including the pomological watercolor collection.)

•Overview of Items currently available for purchase is here, including the four apple prints above which are the only apple/fruit prints kept in inventory for sale. Any of the pomological prints can be purchased, but the ones not kept in inventory are more expensive as they require one-off printing.

•The pomological watercolor collection is here. (Scroll down to link to watercolors of various fruits.)

•The apple watercolors begin here.

When I spoke with a nice woman at the NAL she said their goal was to get all the scanned watercolors printed and into inventory for purchase at the lower price. Right now, the only four apples available for purchase as 8" x 10" color prints ($25 each) are the four above. On the Collections page you can see a number of other products they have for sale in the spirit of agricultural history: note cards, posters, etc.

For North Carolina apple growers, one of the best sources of heirloom apples suitable for our climate is Ron and Suzanne Joyner's Big Horse Creek Farm ("specializing in antique and heirloom apple trees") in Lansing (Ashe County), NC.

I am gradually coming to understand more about antique apple varieties. Estimates range from 5,000 - 7,000 for the number of apple varieties once available in America. Today, consumers find the same 6-8 varieties in their grocery store. Thus, the effort being made by many to find and preserve "antique" apple varieties.

I've never understood the "Johnny Appleseed" idea of spreading apple seeds all around the NE United States in the early 19th century, resulting in the aggressive spread of apple trees -- when all apple trees today are grown by root stocks, not seed. Here's what happened as I understand it: Apple seeds can be sprouted and trees grown, but the vast majority of the time the resulting apple will be undesirable in one or more ways. "Pippin" apples, those sprouted from fallen apples that sprout their seeds and produce a new apple, are usually not keepers and are not reproduced. (Many of these were used to produce alcoholic hard cider more than a hundred years ago.) When a "pippin" apple tree arose and was found by chance to produce a desirable fruit, its branches (a scion) would be grafted onto an existing root stock and a tree grown to reproduce the desirable fruit.

So -- apple seeds will produce apple trees and apples, but these random efforts only occasionally produce "keepers" -- which are then reproduced via grafting to preserve the variety. (Please correct me if this is not accurate.)

I am more than willing to criticize our government for spending money we don't have, and for collecting taxes to pay for things that federal governments should leave to citizens and free enterprise. But I now find myself conflicted. The NAL archives are a store of history and pleasure for people like me, and while the digitizing of the fruit paintings was funded by a private donation, the library itself is obviously federally funded. If push comes to shove -- and it has definitely come to that with our bankrupt government -- I would have to conclude that things like the NAL would have to go if we can't pay for it. But for the moment, I'm glad it's there.

This short video is about Tom Brown, an antique apple hunter in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC/VA:

See No Evil

I recently finished watching the multi-part mini series Band of Brothers that originally aired on HBO -- the true account of Easy Company, perhaps the most storied military unit in the European theater of World War II. One of the most moving segments showed Easy Company moving into a German town that had been held by German forces who fled upon the Americans' arrival. In doing reconnaissance outside the town a squad of Easy Company soldiers came upon the shocking site of a concentration camp filled with dead and near-dead Jews, gypsies, and others. The American soldiers were shocked beyond speaking at the level of cruelty and barbarity they encountered. They had heard rumors of Germans rounding up "undesirables," but had not witnessed it first hand. And the German citizens in the town had turned a blind eye and done nothing (though they likely could have done nothing in the face of Nazi force). Easy company commanders forced every citizen in the town, 14 years of age and older, to go to the camp to bury the mounds of dead, help the survivors, and witness what their nation's government had sanctioned -- while the American troops began providing what food and medical attention they could. The segment was a grisly reminder of how it is possible for evil to be taking place in the midst of seemingly civilized and caring people -- or at least far enough away for most to be able to turn a blind eye.

In the modern animal rights movement, animals are often compared to those the Nazis deemed undesirable in the Holocaust. Ten billion animals are killed each year (in the U.S.; 60 billion worldwide, according to Kathy Freston, author of Veganist) at the whim of human beings who are stronger than the animals and who have the sanction of government and the majority of the population. Many in the population turn a blind eye and participate in the commercial raising and killing of animals because they like the taste of meat. That is their choice, of course. But I still believe many continue to support the commercial meat industry without knowing "what's going on just outside of town." Just as the Nazis put their concentration camps in out-of-the-way settings so as to hide what they were doing, so commercial meat farmers raise and slaughter animals behind close doors -- literally. The public is not invited and you will be turned away if your local organization wants to tour a commercial animal factory farm. That fact alone suggests the owners are not altogether proud of what they do.

Many courageous souls in Europe during the early days of Nazi rule -- Christians primarily, but others as well -- took an active role in fighting the atrocity of genocide. People like German pastor-scholar Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood publicly against Adolf Hitler, and the ten Boom family in Holland hid Jews in their home when the Nazis began their purges. Bonhoeffer was hanged and the ten Boom family was found out and shipped to concentration camps where all but Corrie ten Boom died. They knew the cost before acting but did so anyway.

So today, activists of various kinds are doing what they can to expose the brutalization of animals raised for human consumption. And that includes some who go into the factories to film undercover videos and make them available to the public. Others, like Mercy for Animals, compile those videos and make them available to a broad audience; to all who are willing to look truth in the face and ask what part, if any, they are playing in supporting such a system.

Mercy for Animals has just released a new 12-minute video, Farm to Fridge, revealing what goes on behind the closed doors of some factory farms. The production values are excellent -- this is not just a collection of random, gruesome videos. But it is gruesome. Why? Because this isn't CGI footage compiled out of the imagination of an animator in Hollywood. This is video of what is happening today in factory farms in America. I encourage you to watch it -- and then do what you can not to support such a system. This will stop as soon as people stop voting with their dollars at the grocery store. And it will continue as long as people choose to see no evil.

Food for Thought

From the pen of Elisabeth Elliot in Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (as cited in David Platt's Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream):

Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for Him, after all, so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first?

China

If you plan on being around 10-20 years from now, you might find this talk on China interesting -- given at a TED conference in London. Especially interesting in the last minute of the talk: a picture comparing the size (gigantic) of a 15th century sailing ship in which a Chinese explorer made his way to the coast of East Africa compared to the size of the Pinta (tiny by comparison) in which Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, also in the 15th century. Another picture is shown of a painting or tapestry from an early Chinese dynasty of people playing what appears to be golf. Point: what we (most Westerners) don't know about the history and culture of China (in particular, but lots of other nations in general) allows us to maintain an air of unjustified superiority in the West. (I recall having the same "Whoa!" experience when watching the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008).

Fast-talking, Funny, and Magic!

I have watched this at least 10 times, not to try to figure out the tricks but because I am mesmerized by this young guy's (James Galea, obviously an Australian) power to entertain, his confidence, his humor -- the whole package. I wonder why we haven't heard of him before? (Perhaps you have?)

Vegan Books #1 on Amazon

The #1 selling book on Amazon today is Kathy Freston's Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World. That's the second vegan book to hit #1 this month, the first being Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It! (Carr cured her cancer with a diet and lifestyle approach.) 

I'll refrain from editorializing about the implications for our culture -- I hope it's obvious.

(Thanks to vegan.com for the news item.)

Earth from Above

A beautiful and fascinating collection of aerial photographs from the eye and lens of Yann Arthus-Bertrand. The gorgeous photos were taken over a five-year period crossing six continents by air; pictures of how people live and how the earth is shaped.

Debt: A Non-event for the U.S. Congress

Under the current limit, the [U.S.] government can borrow another $234 billion, a ceiling that could be reached as early as March. Lifting the limit is usually a non-event: Congress has raised it 74 times in the past 70 years. (USAToday.com)

House Built Upon Sand

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.

Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (thanks to Joel Miller)

This Is a Test

I'm trying out a new blog posting interface tool called ScribeFire -- allows you to post from within your browser rather than from within (in my case) Blogger. It's a Safari extension, so you have to have Extensions enabled in Safari (5.0 or later). Go here to download and try it out. (Leave a comment if you have questions about installation and use. If you get it installed in Safari, look for a blackened quote-circle icon to the immediate left of the URL location window at the top of Safari [see the red arrow below]. Click on that and you'll get the ScribeFire interface window to open in Safari.) (Updated comment: I like everything except the leading -- the vertical space between lines of type. I don't see a way to decrease that in ScribeFire, which means you'd have to go into Blogger anyway if you want to tweak it. But the interface is actually cleaner and easier than Blogger's, IMHO.)

I Cried Laughing at This

Only in America . . .

That's Farmin'

What did I learn in my first season [of farming]? . . . That some farm days end in high-fives and others in tears. One night last spring it was the latter, brought on by utter fatigue and some now-forgotten frustration. Our neighbor Steve, who has farmed for nearly all his eighty years, pulled up in his truck as I was indulging in a good weep. He looked at my streaky face, asked no questions, passed a can of ice-cold beer out the truck window and said, 'Well. That's farming.' Then he drove off, to his own evening chores.

The words of Kristin Kimball from a 2005 essay on farming located here. (See more about the unique CSA she and her husband run at Essex Farm here.) I'm currently enjoying her book The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love. There's a short slide-show of Essex Farm with commentary by Kristin Kimball here. Note her comment about people being "hard-wired" to be agrarian. Her Harvard education must not have included the first three chapters of Genesis where the connection between "man" and "dirt" is laid out ("dust to dust").

America: At Point of No Return

David Stockman, former budget director for President Reagan, and now self-described libertarian, made some powerful predictions and recommendations concerning America's future in a recent interview. These two are a sample:

"It amounts to a failed opportunity to recognize that we are now at a historical inflection point at which the time has arrived for a classic post-war demobilization of the entire military establishment. The Cold War is long over. The wars of occupation are almost over and were complete failures -- Afghanistan and Iraq. The American empire is done. There are no real seriously armed enemies left in the world that can possibly justify an $800 billion national defense and security establishment, including Homeland Security. . . . Unless you have a profound change in foreign policy, you're not going to have the possibility of a radical change in defense spending. The later follows from the former. This is a profound disappointment that there's not even a debate -- a serious debate about dramatic change in our imperialist foreign policy and war-making establishment in this administration -- allegedly the most left-wing administration that we've had in modern time. I don't have much hope that what needs to be done will be done until it's finally forced on us by a world bond market crisis, which will happen sooner or later. . . ."

"We've reached a point of no return. The size of the government. The massive size of the deficits and the national debt that has been created. The precedents that have been established for bailouts and intervention in every sector of the economy. The K Street lobbying system which totally dominates the Congress. All of these are very unhealthy developments. And I'm not sure how they are going to be reversed or eliminated. It may be a permanent way of life. Then, if it is, it'll be both a corruption of democracy and a serious weakening of the private capitalistic economy."

I think his idea of down-sizing the military is a good one. My only fear is that the Congress would use the money saved to create more entitlement programs rather than paying off our debt. I don't read any smart people who agree with Fed Chairman Bernanke's lack of sheer terror (speaking for the whole administration) at the prospects for America's future. Most people who can add and subtract view the future in very dismal terms -- as if there could never be a collapse or revolution in America when it has happened to every country in history that used a fiat (paper money) currency system and a Keynesian-type approach (growth fueled by debt) to economics.

The most immutable law in the universe seems to be cause and effect, or, in biblical terms, reaping what one sows. It would be just like us to think it could never happen here.

Gunk or No-gunk?

This information is easily obtainable online, but thought I'd post it here as a quick summary in case anyone needs it:

I woke up last Saturday morning with pink-eye in my left eye -- have no idea how I contracted it, of course. Eyeball was red and it felt like there was something in my eye, and it hurt to rub the eye. I knew what it was, but couldn't remember the details, so here's the summary of what I found:

There are two types: bacterial and viral. Bacterial is the kind of pink-eye that glues your eyelid shut overnight with the crusty junk and is pretty uncomfortable. Because it's bacterial, it requires an antibiotic and thus a trip to "the doctor" for a prescription.

The other kind (what I had) is viral -- no itching or crusty junk, just red and mildly uncomfortable. Because it's a virus, it pretty much just has to run its course. But all drugstores carry generic pink-eye drops that will help with the viral kind. Their purpose is not to kill the virus but to do "other stuff" that makes the pink-eye less uncomfortable. I picked up some of these drops early Saturday morning and used them 3-4 times a day on Saturday and Sunday. They definitely helped the discomfort (which was mild to begin with) -- they reduce the feeling of having something in your eye that you can't get out. By Monday mid-day I had pretty much forgotten about it (very little discomfort) -- used the drops a couple time anyway -- and by today things seem about 80 percent back to normal -- just a little pink left.

So -- the flow-chart model would say: If you have a pink eyeball and the crusty gunk around the eye it's probably bacterial and may require an antibiotic. Without the gunk and no itching or pain, it's more likely viral and will run its course. The OTC drops definitely seemed to help, though I don't know how or why.

Gunk or no-gunk -- that is the question.

(No, that's not my eye in the picture -- though that's about how my eye looked.)

Tears for America

I couldn't stop the tears from flowing this weekend watching and reading the reports surrounding the shooting of the Arizona congresswoman and other bystanders. As badly as I feel for those killed and injured, and pray for the recovery of the survivors, the core of my grief is for the America that has given rise to these increasingly frequent events. The country has never been perfect, of course—I don't have any such romantic misconceptions. But it seems that, in recent decades, we have changed a lot.

And I don't mean what it seems most commentators are talking about—that it's the vitriolic screeds from the Right and the Left that have created, and are nurturing, senseless acts of violence to convey a political message. The shooting in Tucson was less a political act than a spiritual act; the act of a young man with no moral compass to keep him from veering onto an immoral path.

But how does any modern American find and follow a moral compass, given the schizophrenic, double-minded messages that our culture conveys? The country's lawmakers say "In God We Trust" and fund chaplains for our lawmakers using taxpayer funds, but forbid the same spiritual influences for children and young people in pubic schools or officials in other public institutions.

We hold unaccountable a mother who chooses to kill her infant in the womb yet hold accountable those who kill people outside the womb. While I decry the horror of both, I find it a bit of a double-standard to be horrified at one and not the other when our culture has established dual standards for killing vis-a-vis one's proximity to the womb.

We applaud the commercial success of movies, television shows, and video games that use violence—shooting, maiming, killing—as their drawing card. I know the arguments for using art to portray the human condition, but when young people grow up in a culture that glorifies mayhem as we do, should we be surprised when they decide to to act out the fantasies they have grown up watching? (I was shocked recently to watch the videos, released by the WikiLeaks group, of the U.S. military helicopter attack on a group of "insurgents" in Afghanistan. The videos, recorded in graphic detail by the video cameras on the attack helicopters, recorded the conversations of the pilots and their ground controllers as they moved into position and opened fire from miles away on a small group of men, then did the same when a civilian van arrived to collect the dead. My point: the helicopter pilots' dialogue was akin to teenagers playing a video game—laughter, congratulations, and all manner of machismo overshadowed the sad reality of the loss of life, including injury to two young girls. Yes, it's the fog of war. But it's also war being waged by young adults playing real-time war games with million-dollar weapons after being raised to wage make-believe war in their living rooms with hundred-dollar video machines.)

We write financial checks as a nation that we have no ability to cash, yet are surprised when people write moral checks that overdraw their innate human accounts of morality and integrity. How is one different from the other?

Proverbs 29:18 says, "When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild . . . ."

Psalm 33:12 says, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord . . . ."

Those top-tier principles (fill in the details as you will) suggest at the least that we have ignored the importance of a reason to be better than the events this weekend in Tucson suggest we are. It seems that as America, over her three centuries, has moved God to the periphery of her corporate consciousness, man's baser instincts have gained the upper hand. Sad as this weekend's events have been, they at least have caused me to consider any role I am playing in supporting or promoting values that work against what I know is best for the nation as a whole.