March 14, 2020

The original Mad Max is still good. Road Warrior is still the best.



Yesterday's 70 degrees must have ignited the Flowering Pear Trees. Forsythias will be next.



Looks good: Machiavelli: The Art of Teaching People What to Fear by Patrick Boucheron.



I wanted The Decameron, but had to order it. A perfect book for this Coronavirus outbreak.

June 19, 2017

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli's Lifelong Quest for Freedom by Erica Benner or Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli in His World. The first is the international edition and was reviewed in today's NYT.



“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”

― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince



I also thought of a Wendell Berry poem:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1973. Also published by Counterpoint Press in The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999; The Mad Farmer Poems, 2008; New Collected Poems, 2012.

June 4. 2017

Perfect score !



The wheel of Fortuna sometimes spins in the other direction. Was up $140, then a cold streak left me losing $70 by the end of the game. Great hands though, when I lost, I always had good cards.



It was the haircut that made me notice.

September 5, 2011

Monday and a Holiday = Greenmarket Lite. Still, picked up White Corn, Onions and Heirloom Tomatoes. The Heirlooms have recently gone down considerably in price.



Orchids for $20 a pot. Made me think of The Big Sleep and General Sternwood:

"A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy," he said dryly. "You are looking at a very dull survival of a rather gaudy life, a cripple paralyzed in both legs and with only half of his lower belly. There's very little that I can eat and my sleep is so close to waking that it is hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider, and the orchids are an excuse for the heat. Do you like orchids?"

"Not particularly," I said.

The General half-closed his eyes. "They are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. And their perfume has the rotten sweetness of a prostitute."



My boys hit Polo hard, 30% off and an extra 20% for being on their On-Line account.



Coach had a big sale with 30% off. Big line just to get in, and then a 1/2 hour wait to pay.



I hit the Converse store for some cool T-Shirts. I still have my Back High-Tops.





Nooooooo !



A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain.





Bobby Womack.

November 1, 2008

A Month of events and holidays.
A period of reflections and
gatherings.



Happy November which starts with All Saints Day.



Día de los Muertos, November 2.



Don't forget to vote.



Veteran's Day.

John McCrae "In Flanders Field":

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.




Thanksgiving.
Wild Turkeys off Route 55,
Bethel, NY.



A gift from Hubble:
a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.



Time for a re-read of an
old classic.

From Letter to Vettori:
"On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them."