Class in Session

Research is neither validated nor invalidated by who pays for it. Any sane person would have heightened suspicion if they learned that a particular study was paid for by a person or entity who had something to gain or lose by it. In such circumstances, we should go back over the ground more carefully, to see if there is data curiously absent, or conclusions drawn for us that are not quite sound, or even - and it does occur - that the whole thing is a put-up job and a pack of lies. But it is the discovery that there is missing data, or poor reasoning, or flat out lying that ruins a study. The mere fact that The Industry paid for it means nothing in itself. Nor does the fact that The Government or Non-Profits paid for it prove that it is objective, for government is itself an industry, with jobs, reputations, and incomes to protect. And non-profits are similarly an industry with fish to fry as well. If the CEO of Hamster International makes $200K, and twenty people working for HI make $50K, then their situation is the same whether HI is an advocacy group that works to protect hamsters, or an agribiz that farms hamsters for profit. How they raise money and how they handle what is left over will be different, but they will pay their employees in the same way.



Pay no attention to those hamsters. Their cuteness is distracting you. Keep focused on the logical point here. Research is invalid when it is shown to be invalid in some way. Whether the Sierra Club, or the Commonwealth of Virginia, or Big Hamster, or Uncle Wilbur paid for the research is only a warning bell, a red flag, not a disproof.

Are we clear on this? Good. Then will someone call up the reporters at NPR and tell them about this strange and wonderful idea in science? Because, seeing that they are smarter than us and have to package everything in the right way so that their audience doesn't get any wrong ideas, I thought they should know about the latest advances in logical thinking.

Education Credentials

Via Maggie's.

George Leef comments on In The Basement Of The Ivory Tower. I don't know the book, so I'm not linking or recommending (though it sounds promising).

We have constructed a situation in which an ambitious young person must acquire an expensive and often useless degree in order to have any credibility in applying for many jobs. I absorbed the view, from reading and from family, that college was only indirectly about preparing for work - it was about becoming a complete person, a man of many parts, thoroughly grounded in Western Intellectual Tradition. One got into the most prestigious college that would accept you, studied what you wished within a narrow range of approved majors that reflected the Canon, and Western Civilisation rewarded you with employment suitable to your station at the other end. One Christmas, when college sweatshirts were fashionable for boys, a flock of them were given to our boys and their cousins: Stanford, Duke, Yale, William & Mary, Dartmouth. The message was clear.

We only gradually abandoned this; our older sons still showed a great deal of this approach themselves, though they were already breaking that mold by the time they left. The two Romanians went even farther afield, but there was still much of the old system put upon them. We still owe tens of thousands on that, too. I hope there is some clarity by the time Kyle is choosing.

Independence For South Sudan

Update: Photos are up



We attended the Manchester celebration of the new Republic of South Sudan. (No, that's not anywhere in New England above.) A few people told us they had been up all night watching the events in Juba, the new capital. A misty-eyed time, and the Sudanese did not shrink from mentioning their suffering, despite their joy. There was a great deal of talk about self-improvement and education for the sake of the community and the nation, not just for oneself. We always wonder how such will hold up after a generation.

There were a few references to being good to enemies, which I found touching, and likely even harder to sustain. The Arab persecution of South Sudan has been unimaginable.

We saw a few people we knew, and a few of the children recognised us. We didn't take pictures, as we knew Sponge and his wife would be there, and he is a much better photographer than I. Whether he will run those pictures at his blogsite or at Life For Sudan, I don't know, but keep an eye out over the next few days.

She's More To Be Pitied, etc

It used to be common for some more intense Christian groups to insist that if Christian believers would just "get back to God," in some way - sometimes defined, sometimes not - then God would bless America(2Chron 7:14). Or perhaps, many would come to believe in Christ, because they see Christ in us. The world will be amazed. The scriptural backing for the idea is weak. It is far less than half true, though it does have some truth-elements in it. There are many Muslim groups which take this attitude, that if they are obedient, the world's problems will be solved.

There is a variation of this on the left as well, that if we Americans would just build schools for people and stop thinking we are so superior, other countries would not be so resentful of us. It is a pretty idea, but one that has little evidence to suggest that it goes any deeper than "sometimes, if you are nice to people they are nice back." Which is true, but unremarkable.

It is the idea that an essential balance must be restored - that the barbarians must be denied access to power because they are not the rightful bearers. The sense of entitlement decrees that 60% majorities for Democrats are the normal course of events, and anything less brings forth real fear that the country is being "controlled" by not only the right, but the most extreme elements of it. When one compares the rhetoric with the actual numbers, one is - well, puzzled. What kind of unreality do these folks live in?

What we have in current American political discourse is a step vaguer still. This same primitive belief, also quite religious though the terms may be avoided, holds that if everyone would just become like liberals culturally, international strife would diminish and perhaps even be resolved. You may think that I'm a dreamer, but if you read Cynthia Boaz's essay I highlighted from the last post, and remember that however foolish or wrong Fox and its listeners may be, there are equivalent errors which can be easily -

- and I would like to highlight the word easily here -

found among HuffPo and alternet readers and the left in general, I think you will see that this is a cry of the heart that we choose the particular unreality of the left, and all will be well.

As primitive a sentiment as it is, it is at least a step better than my usual tribal criticism - that on such arbitrary items and ways of perceiving the culture, they stand to benefit as it is their base culture, and they know the steps. They know the language and subtle cues in this culture, so adopting it would give them higher status with virtually no effort.

The temptation in contradicting my point would be to maintain "Well, yeah, but we think the world would be better because those values are better. Our ideas are true and really would work, that's why we believe them. Let me give you some straw men and false choices to illustrate my point." That can only be a discussion among people who both admit that they could be wrong.

There are of course real generosities, real altruisms, real self-denials amongst the motivations on the left. Few among us are so base as to have no good impulses whatsoever. But I declare again, as I have for years and continue to find evidence for: Much of liberalism is founded on social correctness, arbitrary distinctions not based on intellectual or moral virtue, cultural hegemony - even hipness. Until there is at least an acknowledgment of the mere possibility of this, there is no discussion.

She's More To Be Pitied Than Censured

Setting the stage...

I was sent a Cynthia Boaz HuffPo column. You can see that her focus is peace and change, nonviolent studies, that sort of thing. Just to kick her right up front, I direct you to her articles on how encouraging Egypt's February (sorta) revolution was (How'd that work out?), and how evil it was to leap to the conclusion that Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan's "motive was jihad and that the murders fell into the category of political terrorism," except of course, that this is exactly how things turned out. Why would I start out by slamming her, when my purported goal is to try and see her actions in a different light? Perhaps I'm just not so nice as I hope to be. But my own thought is that the amazing wrongness of these essays is what drove me forward to think more deeply.

Had I written such essays in a national, public setting and then been so quickly proved wrong, spectacularly wrong, I would be ashamed to appear out in writing public again. These are not Strong Opinion Pieces with which one might disagree, nor are they areas where she got things partly right and partly wrong.

She's not the only one, of course, and I'll warrant that if challenged, she and others could come up with elaborate rationales why what they said was understandable in context and still containing much worth listening to, etc. But in all normal circles - at work, in school, at church, in the neighborhood - making pronouncements like this and then having them served to you to eat just a bit later would cause us to slink away. What gives?

(If you really want to torment yourself, you can try On The Moral Depravity Of Capitalism In 21 Tweets. As thoroughly vacuous an essay as you will find.)

The essay sent to me, however was on the topic of how Fox "News" brainwashes its viewers to be dangerously stupid, and what a dire situation that is for the future of the republic.

Just a word or two on that. "News" in quotes. The first sentence includes the phrase "nothing more sacred..." Yet she is complaining about the attempted manipulation by others. When I read this language, I don't envision brave, unclouded souls speaking Truth to Power. I don't have images of stalwart faces staring off to the horizon, resolute and stern. I see Victorian women with wrists to the forehead, looking for fainting couches. Or is you prefer a deeper historic allusion, a David Garrick production of "The Merchant of Venice," Portia with heaving bosom. Or best of all, the Tragedians of comedy: Henry in "The Fantasticks," or Jack in Chapter 13 of Lewis's The Great Divorce.

So if I were to follow my usual script, I would excoriate her for being such a dangerous, violence-enabling airhead. I would make my usual demurrer that most liberals are of course not this stupid, noting only that they give such folks far too much credibility; that more lefties have some element of this than admit it to themselves, etc, etc. Yeah, fine. But I've said that for years, and is anything any better? Do we know any liberals who have, on the basis of being trounced intellectually, asked themselves "I wonder if there is even a 1% chance that we are wrong, not just in method or strategy, but in core principles?" Of course not.

Another possibility
As I am currently primed to consider anosognosia and the Dunning-Kruger Effect, I wondered why intelligent people - for this sort of liberal is usually intelligent in some sense: educated, facile with words, familiar with popular culture references* - thinks this way.

The second article sent with this one, plus a discussion at Althouse about music therapists, brought it into focus. The other article was about a team of people sponsoring an event in San Luis Obispo displaying quotes from holy books and having people guess which one they were from. The point being, of course, that there are some nice things said in the Quran, and therefore Muslims aren't really evil. A Methodist minister was involved in the design.

Reality check here: Anti-islamic prejudice in SLO is responsible for precisely none of the problems in international relations. What type of insane mind thinks that running such a program has any effect whatsoever? Then I remembered the music therapists, which reminded me of aromatherapists and "bodyworkers" and the artist in NYC who made female superhero sculptures after 9-11 so that women would feel empowered and safer. People pretend that what they do is useful, because it's all they have to keep away the night.

Cynthia Boaz is like that kid in the country song who wants to buy red shoes for his dying mother, but only has thirteen cents. "But it has to be enough, mister! It's all I've got!" Yeah, I know, there are other stories with that same plaintive cry, the wail that one is giving all one has, how can that not be enough? The world is dangerous and evil people want to kill us. We cannot bear to do nothing, so we employ a variety of psychological fantasies to keep the horror at bay. We blame ourselves; we pretend our paper swords are deadly; we declare the evil already defeated. It's just our pathetic, human nature selves.

This attitude can be noble, pathetic, or destructive in the human soul. There have been dramatically beautiful works of literature, as well as a thousand saccharine but uplifting stories, about those who gave their loaves and fishes and changed the world. It can be. But all good things can be made dark, and this one goes to especial darkness. The first key is humility. There is a difference between knowing that one only has thirteen cents, or a few loaves and fishes, or mere hobbit-strength to battle against evil - and claiming that such items are the great power that enables you, the elevated and noble, to hold the dark at bay. And still worse is the attitude which says that all those others are getting in the way of you and your thirteen cents conquering the serpent with your all-purpose goodness, and those others must be brought to heel and made to worship at altars you direct.

Yes, such things can go wrong. All good can be poisoned. But for the moment, have pity on the Cynthia Boaz's and Cindy Sheehan's and earnest rescuers. They at least started out loving the poor before they became addicted to the pleasures of kicking the powerful. They started by hoping everyone could get along, like in the movies, before the resentment of not being Princess overtook them.

75% chance of more to follow.



*Less-popular culture, such as anything between Sumeria and 1950, less so.

European Antisemitism

Bruce Kesler over at Maggie's has a discussion of a blogwar on the right between Pam Geller and Gates of Vienna. I, as usual, saw a "tribes" connection and mentioned it.

Old Route 28 - Sidebar

My notes contain the remaining scattered bits about the preparation and execution of the trip. Yet when I looked them over, I discovered a theme. The difficult and sad parts of the story were most of what remained. Twenty years ago I would have jumped to the conclusion that I was avoiding these topics in some way, refusing to "deal" with them - a word which has no meaning, BTW. I would have resolved to plunge ahead and discover what important pain I was refusing to embrace, what secret I refused to allow to be told. You know, like the movie reruns they used to have on TV.

A young woman in search of her past returns to her (or her parents'/her great-uncle Wilbur's) home town only to discover a dark (or horrifying/ultimately pointless) secret. Natalie Wood, George Peppard. 1963, Unrated.

I don't think that now. If facing uncomfortable truths about the past needs to be done, I have certainly done enough of it. I have come to believe it is only a way of avoiding uncomfortable truths about the present. Plus, anyone we make a critical observation on is likely to be remembered fondly by another. Hell, I have found that people object if you are not gushing enough about Uncle Wilbur; or, I suppose if you say anything nice about his wife, Aunt Phyllis who they have never quite forgiven for taking the good piecrust table of Gram's. It's a minefield.

So. There are stories about my mother and father before they divorced, and stories of the man my mother almost married, and stories of the man she finally did marry, who never liked me much. That's three swamps to avoid just with Mom alone, without even getting to the parts where she almost died - which she a lot, actually. Usually within spitting distance of Rte 28.

Did I avoid the incidents because they were uncomfortable? Maybe. But the discomfort would come more from the effort it would take to word things correctly to my own satisfaction, for this would be the only record of many events. A few of the stories might be generally interesting. A few more, interesting to the family. Then an equal number of uninteresting stories that beg to be included for completeness' sake, or because they are a counterweight to some other impression I have given.

I don't think there's going to be much in the last post after all. Not interesting enough.

The Core

At the fireworks last night - rather disappointing, BTW (spoiled, I guess) - we briefly discussed Evangelical Covenant principles of agreement on the important points of the faith and freedom in the less-crucial. This stemmed from my son's recounting a question he had received at the information booth that morning - were we more Wesleyan or Calvinist in our theology?

The difficulty, of course, is that we don't all even agree on what are non-negotiable points of Christianity and which are less important. The Evangelical Covenant has some families who baptise infants, and some who hold to the importance of believer's baptism. (We have disagreement about that even in the family. Tracy and I consider infant baptism to be scriptural, Jonathan and Heidi had Emily dedicated instead of baptised. We're correct, of course, but what can you do?) A full-immersion Baptist would be unlikely to consider that a peripheral point. We take the Lord's Table only once a month in our congregation, and real presence is believed by some (us, again) and not by others. There are those who would find that looseness and lack of focus on the Sacrament to be a point too crucial to overlook in choosing a church.

CS Lewis had a paragraph or so on just this problem, with better examples. I am going to guess it is Mere Christianity, but it is evidence of my loss of grip on the Lewis corpus that I can no longer instantly tell you where it's from.

I may write a bit on what I see as the core.

Winters

Who Gives?

In a post about educational change and teacher's unions, Carl over at NOfP includes a series of graphs about political contributions, by industry. Enlightening.

Media Value

Dave Kopel over at Volokh was discussing which periodicals to read, and makes the following observation about news media:

For example, the latest issue had an article explaining that Poland is going full speed ahead with natural gas development via fracking. Because I previously had never thought about Polish natural gas, I learned a lot by reading the article. Overall, The Economist is still a strong source for weekly world news, as long as you don’t take its editorial judgements too seriously.

I think that's about right. Traditional media has been good at that sort of job. On any given story, there may be many people who could have done a better job with it. But the brand names were able to guarantee you some minimum of expertise, combined with some minimum of relevance. That minimum is sometimes all that you need. If the article is a bit slanted, or even if it gets some important facts wrong, it was a trade up from what you knew.

That still has some value, but I fear that in slanting ever more steeply, and being caught too many times leaving out stories of important relevance, put them under suspicion. Once that happened, people found that on the internet, they could achieve both minimums with little effort. Now Newsweek and Time are just DC versions of People magazine, pretending they are more.

Anti-Aging

Okay, now that I'm really tired of the discussions on other sites (not listed) with the men's rights people, many of whom are unable to see any POV other than their own; and the gay marriage advocates (not listed), many of whom insist there is nothing but bigotry in any opposition to their legislation; and the government union people (not listed), who insist that all this recent hullabaloo is not about principles but power, not for them, of course, but only for those evil other guys; I thought a nice philosophical discussion about whether life extension was a wise idea, and how much tax money should go to encouraging it, would be an invigorating, mostly-intellectual affair from first principles.

And note these are what are generally considered peripheral issues, rather than getting into who is more hypocritical than who in getting us into wars, or giving jobs to cronies, or covering up corruption in his own party - issues where one would expect that people would be a bit partisan and defensive, even at the best of times.

And oh yeah, one of the coaches on Kyle's team quit just before the championship because of his argument in the dugout with the head coach the night before. It was about whether they should hold the runner at third with the bases loaded or the third baseman should play in to try and stop the run. Life or Death, really.

I conclude that none of us - well, none of you, anyway - are capable of listening to even the remotest suggestion that we have made stupid assumptions. My whole series about May We Believe Our Thoughts? MWBOT 1-17, in which I offered the moderately comforting idea that we are influenced by nonrational factors, but are essentially rational creatures? I take it all back. I should go back to fundamentalist Christian sites to argue with people that the KJV was not designated by God as the acceptable translation. I think I had more success there.

So let's try some ideas on questioning whether we should devote hearts and minds to life extension.

1. It would be totally awesome, no matter how elegantly disguised and expressed, is sufficient reason for you to be in favor of it, but not enough to prove to me it's a good idea.

2. Opponents have some stupid objections is true, and must feel great to know, but is likewise not a persuasive positive case.

3. Great minds have been speculating about this for at least three thousand years, and most of them have seen both good and bad possibilities. That should be worth at least a look.

4. No one has ever been there. That should be worth a moment's pause.

5. I don't see the steady improvement in my personality that suggests living another hundred years would perfect me. In fact, I sense the opposite.

6. If you look around you, you will see that old people are not generally improving, nor do they say they are.

7. You, in particular, actually.

8. Waving off the last three points, claiming that all those things will be fixed when we have better knees and great digestions and electro-stim attitudes is just a wee bit wide-eyed in its optimism.

None of these is a true argument against life extension. It might turn out great. But criminy, is there anyone over there on the advocacy side who is intellectually capable of at least considering there might be teensie-weensie unintended negative consequences that don't disappear with a wave of the hand?

Reflections On The Second Commandment

This was one of the earliest topics I picked up on this blog. As it is not an entirely common view in this era - or in any era since the inventing of the printing press, actually - I probably should write about it more. I should write about it every month until everyone rolls their eyes and is sick of it, actually. The link a short post from 2006. Please read it.

The injunction not to take the Lord's name in vain has nothing to do with bad language, or with oaths. It is about false prophecy, a fairly common theme of scripture. We should not forge God's signature under our own opinions. Yet many Christians, do this, and do it often. They say "God wants us to..." or "The Scriptures clearly teach..." or "Jesus said..." and I don't think they have anything near the proper caution about this.

No, the word caution is much too mild. Whenever we make a claim for what God's opinion is on any matter whatsoever, we should imagine Jesus dangling us over a cliff, held by our shirts, looking at us intently and asking "Are you absolutely sure that is what I want people to hear?" We should be petrified to make any pronouncement. I think the idea of death or torment for getting it wrong should cross our minds. If we are quoting directly from the Scriptures, giving no hint of interpretation, then perhaps we are safe.

Example: At camp meetings and revivals back in the day, some preachers would give an altar call, and on the basis of many scriptures and their own personal experience would declare unto the people that God wanted them to come forward and commit their lives to following Jesus, turning from their previous ways. They would state right out loud "Jesus wants you to come forward this night, say the sinner's prayer, and give your life to Him." Every evangelical can cite, right of the top of his head, a few dozen places in scripture where that statement could be justified.

Yet I would still shrink back from such a declaration. I would phrase it as a question: "Is the Lord calling you...?" Or I would qualify it as an opinion based on scripture study "I believe that this may be your last chance. I believe God may be calling you tonight..." I would stress the general call; I would even hellfire-and-brimstone a story of a sinner who did not respond and died in a car accident the next night; hell, I would lie and make up stories about healings and conversions before I would let the words "Jesus is telling you to come forward this night..." escape my lips unless I was absolutely sure of what I was saying.

Because maybe it's next year. Or maybe the darkest mutterings of Calvinism are true and this is one of the damned, who will use my arrogant declaration for greater evil. Or maybe I've misunderstood completely and coming forward is irrelevant. Or maybe he came forward a dozen years ago and I am subtly teaching him to doubt his salvation. Or maybe, maybe, maybe, a hundred other things I never considered.

I believe all Christians should shrink back in horror from declaring God's will with any certainty, unless they dragged almost weeping like Isaiah or Micah or Habakkuk, or in the NT, Peter, or John of Patmos, barely daring to speak but compelled for the sake of the Gospel. We are held out over the cliff, our destruction spreading below us.

It is the Second Commandment, right? The first thing God wanted us to remember once we had first recognised Him. Don't put words in my mouth, y'hear?

In the current era, it is the apolitical who offend most in this way, those who believe that they have discerned the will of God for the world, as the recent 5/21 catastrophists were (I admit I don't even remember what they were called or who that guy was who led them); next, the religious right offends, jumping in almost reflexively on particular issues, declaring "God says..." Well, maybe so. They may have read the scriptures rightly, and have understood God correctly on any or all of their issues. But I get nervous about that certainty. The fear is not in them. There is a stretch, imperceptible at times, that says because God forbids homosexuality among his people, therefore He just MUST want homosexuality to be against the law in a pluralistic society, or MUST be opposed to civil unions. Well, maybe so. But the NT actually says almost nothing about what we should be convincing the secular powers to do.

Which leads to the more quietly stated, yet I think ultimately more dangerous violations of the Second Commandment by the religious left: the absolute assurance that they are declaring God's will for society, yet seldom making it ultra-specific. They are flexible on the details of the legislation, and eager for new ideas. Yet they have no one among them who questions the basic approach. They declare with confidence, even offhandedly, that they know what Jesus intends.

Let me step back from that a bit. I have framed this in terms of the political issues, because as a recovering socialist, I am still drawn to the political questions which make the news. But those may actually be the peripheral issues to God. My reading of history would certainly suggest that Jesus originally, and then the greatest minds of the Church thereafter, were not much concerned with the political issues of their days - there is almost nothing from any of them about Christians trying to influence the secular governments, on any level, about policy toward gays, or the poor, or women. That is our prism.

Rant over. Release the hounds, as Tigerhawk says.

Young Adult Books

It doesn't matter what the quality of the books on the list are. If you create a list of "essential" YA books and call them "timeless," but they are all new, you are guilty of dangerous chronological snobbery and are simply a fool.

Tribes-Related

Paul Zrimsek, commenting over at Ann Althouse:

Every NYT columnist is formed in the crucible of the memory of that first sneer.

(Related to David Carr's reference to Missourians and Kansans as "slope-headed," which everyone on Bill Maher's show laughed at nervously, and no one objected to.)

I looked up Zrimsek, and he doesn't have his own site, but his comments and numerous sites are marvelous. If there were an award for commenters. I would nominate him for it.

Medical Delusions

The wonderful Quackwatch site, which keeps track of aggressively-marketed medical frauds, has reprinted Worthington Hooker's book on medical delusions from 1850. It is remarkably wise for its era, noting how many conditions cure themselves over time because of the body's natural processes, and we should not credit that the cure results from Tar Water (Bishop Berkeley) or Homeopathy (Samuel Hahnemann) simply because they were precedent to the cure. Hooker identifies many general medical fallacies in his time which are still prominent today. I nodded serenely as he cut them down, but was brought up short on page 76:

But while we should avoid this ready and prurient credulity, now so prevalent, we should also take care not to run into the opposite extreme of skepticism. The precept of the skeptic is practically "doubt all things; hold fast to nothing but your doubts. He ever sits in his "doubting castle" well fortified against all the shafts of truth, sneering in self-satisfaction at all the rational beliefs, and the changing delusions of the world around him, as if the one were as unfounded as the other.

The pages are short and quick, BTW, no need to be intimidated by the length.

Or,

The errors of wise men are always useful for instruction.

True, that.

The fascinating part is how well this advice applies for all science, and indeed all belief. There are lessons to be learned about political and religious enthusiasms as well, here.

Glutenfree

A friend with celiac disease mentioned that some restaurants get it WRT gluten, and others don't. The latter say they have gluten-free dishes, but they don't, really. They have gluten-reduced dishes. I have puzzled over this, read up on cheap restaurants claiming gluten-free dishes around the country (rather random), and am down to three possible conclusions. Either they have no idea what they are talking about but want to stay in business somehow, rather like this Monty Python sketch.


Or they have substituted a gluten-free ingredient for a major ingredient that is ordinarily wheat-gluten based - rather a "Well it hasn't got much gluten in it" reminiscent of this Monty Python routine



Or they have included something which has the phrase "gluten-free" on the outside, as if glutenfree were some magical ingredient like pixie dust, which gives a dish that special something.

More like this.

Old Route 28 - Part 7

My original intent was to travel the route, looking for elements that would have been present in the 1930’s or the 1950’s, when my mother would have traveled it. I changed my mind.

Nostalgia is easy to write. Early on my trip I passed an ice-cream stand, long unused, with grass growing in the parking lot and letters missing from the sign. It’s a simple mattter to evoke a bygone era – pick any one, really: merely describe a family with small children, or a “guy bringing his girl” to this place. Get the period details right - the clothes, the make of car, and what was playing on the radio correct and you can have folks misting up in moments. I used to go to Andy’s in the 50’s myself. They had only five or six flavors then, but I think the ice cream was better…

There are writers and storytellers who do this well by giving added value. Garrison Keillor is best known, but if it were all that difficult, do you think he could produce a new one every week for that long? James Lileks does it best, not only because he evokes an era well, but because he does accurate research. You might remember him as the author of Mommy Knows Worst, a collection of bad parenting advice from the 50’s, or his analysis of the creepy falling-panty drawings of Art Frahm in the 50’s. Me, I like the Institute of Official Cheer. I have wasted hours there.

Missing letters on signs have been a nostalgist’s signal of decay since Lanford Wilson’s drama HOT L BALTIMORE in the 70’s. Hotels are especial targets, as their very names evoke the era of their heyday. I took photos of the Firebird Motel, on the Manchester/Hooksett line, because it was typical of the 50’s, and has this great name. I have no particular associations with it beyond driving past it – nor the Kozy 7, the Sunset, or the Dolly Dimple. They were likely respectable enough in their day, became dumps, and are now managed by nice Asian couples who are trying to resurrect them as best they can.

My other association with them is that guys used to rent those to bring their prom dates to.  But neither of my prom dates, nor any even potential prom dates, were "that sort of girl" when I was going with them.  They became that sort of girl about a year later, of course, but by then it was too late. For me, that is.

Between the motels and the restaurants, I found I was taking picture after picture of deterioration. But that’s not the spirit of the place, then or now, it’s just the natural course of inexpensively-made buildings when you come back 50-80 years later. It’s only depressing if you want it to be. No echoes of Ozymandias here. The faded grandeur of more elegant and imposing buildings may be worth noting – though I am less sure of even that since I took this trip. Things have their time.

I have always found those cute roadside cabins attractive. I can’t recall we ever stayed at one, so they aren’t part of my history, but I took pictures of the surviving versions and tried to imagine staying there. What’s to imagine? They’re small. They’re old. They are essentially wooden tents. They’ll have an odd smell, and you won’t have enough room to move around. These did have an advantage that no other cabins had, however.



They were right behind that magical souvenir shop with the totem pole, the beaded belts, and the rubber tomahawks.



Nostalgia is overrated. Much like staring into the embers of a fire; we aren’t really thinking deep and wise thoughts reflecting on the past, we just feel like we are. Garnish with wine or other alcohol. Serves 6 (decades).

I press on. What did we see on our trip, now that we don’t have to answer What did we learn today? Here's a good example of wasted time: I had spent hours online and at the library, trying to figure out whether Old Route 28 ran above the river or below it beyond Suncook. Had I driven there, I would have found out immediately.




I saw old farms. Even more than now, it was family farm country then – dairy, poultry, produce. A few newer roads have names like Pheasant Run, so those lands near the Suncook River are being put to suburban use today.

Up closer to the lakes, the old summer cottages were either grand or shacks. I dropped in at the boy’s camp I went to and had loved for years - until I became a junior counselor and saw behind the curtain. I suddenly understood why the campers who were arrogant, athletic jerks won so many of the awards. Because the counselors were arrogant athletic jerks and preferred them. My uncle had gone to the camp a generation before me – I saw his name above my bunk when I was a scared 6-year-old in the Red Squirrel cabin - and my brother went many of the same years I did, so I briefly worried that Mi-te-na might overwhelm me with nostalgia in spite of myself. Not to worry. I was pretty sick of the whole endeavor long before I got there, and one of the new recreation areas was named after the biggest jerk of a camper when I worked there. Rather minimal temptation to reverie and sighing.

Of course, I was a prize jerk myself then, and he’s probably improved greatly from when he was 14, so I should hold my criticism lightly.

Additional note:  My friend Mike Crossin and I hitchhiked up Route 28 in 1969 from camp, while we were working there as junior counselors.  We headed up to the YWCA camp about an hour north, where I had a girlfriend. It was an adventure that eventually included being stranded on an island across from the camp and having to swim out before dawn.  (And yes, this was one of those girlfriends who became "that sort of girl" about a year later.  Well, that guy was an old friend, and they married and seemed to have settled into a nice life, so I guess it all worked out fine.)

Yes, I was sick of this whole trip by then, all my own fault. Started late, the onion rings at the Brick House were terrible, and the camera was on the wrong setting. The Circle 9 Ranch turned out to be from 1966, I had decided my original plan was stupid, and I could not positively identify the old family camp when I got there. The 160 year-old country store in Chichester did make its own doughnuts, but what is that? None of my family had ever stopped there, because the trip was too short, even in the 20’s. Two hours max. We went straight through.

I should have stopped for a drink, preferably somewhere that someone in the family had stopped for a drink before. There is nothing remotely like that there. I could have gone to friend Dave’s nearby, and likely received a fine drink, or more than one. And recovered my good mood. And stayed until dusk and had to cancel the rest of the trip. Pressing grimly and dutifully on, I did wonder why doing something I wanted was so irritating.

Part 8 will include long-lost relatives, and likely be the end.

The Rules

So...when you take church youth group to camp, and want to run over the rules, you can pass out printed sheets. Or you can have an earnest person with a clipboard stand at the front of the bus before everyone goes.

Or, if you church has its own filmmaker...

The Instapundit Update

I emailed Glenn Reynolds about his second Thomas Ball post, because I know something of the agency and court involved. He used it as an update, which is why we got comments that seemed out-of-place under the "Cheap Prescriptions" post. It was the only spot available to anonymous, so be charitable about his seemingly going off-topic. No choice.

Anyway, here's the quote that caused the controversy:

An email from famed blogger/blog commenter* Assistant Village Idiot:

Assistant Village Idiot here. People who have a hair across their ass in general about the family court system are trying to keep the Thomas Ball story alive as if he is some kind of victim. In his efforts to have unsupervised visits with his daughter, he was told to have his visits supervised by Monadnock Family Services. He refused because he blames them for his problems.

I deal with that agency all the time, though not the children’s services – I have for 30 years. They are entirely reasonable people who make adjustments and accommodations for people who don’t like them or are suspicious of them all the time. Hell, they are a mental health center, so most of their clients are difficult and suspicious. They are not some Orwellian controlling agency. Ball decided that being pissy and proving that he was right about one incident ten years ago was more important than seeing his daughter. He’s no victim.

Family courts may indeed be prejudiced against fathers – I hear that, but I don’t know. I’ve certainly dealt with many cases of NH courts ruling in favor of fathers in custody disputes, though, and I don’t see a massive trend here. It pays to remember that MFS cannot tell its side of the story because of confidentiality, and that some pathological people hide by trying to tie themselves to legitimate causes. Wolves hide in sheep’s clothing, because it doesn’t do any good to hide in wolves’ clothing, does it?

I stick by that, but let me give full disclosure of my prejudices for context.

Most of us only ever get one side of any family court (or divorce, or heck, any) story, and really, there may be three or four sides. I do sometimes get more than one side. The events over the years which brought our fifth son to us show some pretty strong examples of anti-male bias by a family court judge. So I know it happens, and I know it's bad.

But for many situations, there is one party that is wrong, and another that is far worse. So when someone is painting themselves as an innocent, a victim who contributed little to the whole mess, I get immediately suspicious.

Here's my prejudice: growing up under the shadow of a parent's suicide is hard on a child, even if the events are not advertised and well-known. Children blame themselves. They are sensitive to ostracisms that are mostly imaginary. It is a terrible burden to lay on your own child. When you make that exponentially worse by making it public and dramatic, so that your kids have to either move or be a pariah, so they have to keep explaining all their lives what the hell was up with your Dad to do that, it is hellish. If you were depressed, I have mixed sorrow with my anger, because in the throes of depression people do dumb stuff because it hurts so bad. But if your "depression," as revealed in your suicide note, was not clinical depression but narcissistic injury because you couldn't get everyone else to admit it was all their fault, you have lost my sympathy. Feeling bad and depression are not synonymous.

You do that to your kids and I have a hard time believing you love them. What you loved was the appearance of a nice family, and the approbation you got for yourself. Trying to hide behind a legitimate cause only makes me more disapproving, because now you are delegitimising people with real grievances.

* "Famed" is nice, but a bit thick. Identifying me as a blog commenter as much as a blogger is accurate, though. I may be better at the former than the latter, actually.