Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Fifty years ago......................................
Ripens..........................
It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning.
On curiosity......................
Perhaps there is no better skill to have and master than the skill of curiosity. . . . Learning requires you being open, interested, and ready to lean into differences. It requires surrendering being judgmental. It is impossible to be curious and judgmental at the same time. Curiosity is different than just asking a lot of questions. Curiosity is a deeper more soulful interest. People who are genuinely curious ask great questions because it originates from an authentic place. Asking questions without curiosity is just obnoxious.
-Mike Staver, from here
Monday, April 11, 2022
Licking County, Ohio sure makes it easy.........
............................to vote early. No line, no waiting. Plus, a paper ballot is created!
The hopeful.............................
..................birth of a sub-division: Episode 19
At the top of the aerial photo is Phase 1. Completed in early December, the builder (D. R. Horton) recently completed the purchase of all 49 developed lots. If you squint your eyes, you may notice they have about 15 houses under construction. The bottom portion of the aerial photo shows the early days of the 64 lots in Phase 2. Progress.
Checking in with Martin Gurri...........
In a magnificently ironic moment, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, referred to Mount Rushmore with reverence during his address to the U.S. Congress. Every one of the four presidents carved on that mountain has had his statue toppled and his name removed from some elite institution. Few right-thinking U.S. politicians would bring up their names today. Zelensky knows what so many of us have forgotten: That this is a war of systems as well as nations, and that the alternative to American democracy isn’t utopia but Putin and gangsterism. We should internalize this truth before the Ukrainian dead rise from their graves to remind us of it.
Fifty years ago............................
Opening paragraphs................
Salmon Portland Chase never liked his name. In his early twenties, Chase wrote to a college classmate that he was thinking of changing his "awkward, fishy name" to something more impressive, like Spencer Payne Cheyce. Five years later, he had another idea: Samuel Paca Chase, taking the names of one of the early justices of the Supreme Court, Samuel Chase, whom Chase believed was a distant relation, and William Paca, another signatory of the Declaration of Independence, apparently simply because his last name started with P. During the Civil War, when an admirer wrote that he was thinking of naming his son Salmon Portland, Chase replied that he "had the misfortune to be born about a year after my uncle Salmon Chase died at Portland; and to have a sort of monument to his memory made of me by giving me the name of Salmon Portland." His uncle "was an excellent man and Portland a very respectable city, but somehow I never liked the name derived from them." Chase urged the father to think of "the feelings of your boy, fifteen years hence or twenty," and to find a better name.
-Walter Stahr, Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival
Two realms.....................
In the realm of tradition, truth is something that precedes individual human beings, something we inherit and must hand down, in turn. We can discover truth and reason about it, to be sure, but we can't change it. In the realm of progress, however, truth is what individuals or groups can articulate or build on their own, through scientific inquiry and their acts in history. Truth thus becomes an ongoing project, a malleable thing. In our realm of progress, tradition is viewed as not only antiquated and inefficient, but as an impediment to achievement.
But what if that confidence of the modern world is an illusion, the product of a determined resolution not to confront the fundamental dilemmas of what it means to be fully human? Or what if beneath the moderns' complacency lurks a deep soul-soreness?
Pick your favorite negatively trending social indicator—loneliness, alienation, addiction, polarization, etc.—and the dire message is the same: the realm of progress can't fulfill our soul's yearning or satisfy our urge to put ourselves right with the sacred.
-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
About history.......................
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.
Sunday, April 10, 2022
A vacation................................
..............We journeyed south to Destin, Florida, with a brief layover in Nashville. A few observations: Nashville is an amazing place, but Broadway is a younger person's game. There is music everywhere. Next time we go, we will seek out more of the smaller, quieter venues. The traffic on I-65 from Nashville to the Florida Panhandle is ridiculous this time of year. Visiting Seaside is a wonderful idea, but during Spring Break the place is overrun with kids, of all ages. It is really easy to get sunburned in April. Renting a house for a week in Destin, and having the whole tribe join you, is a fabulous thing to do.
On freedom..............
Do not free a camel from the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
against a culture.........................
How do I transmit to my son the value of permanent ideals against a culture that will tell him that whatever is newest is also best, that everything is negotiable and subject to contract and consent, that there is no purpose to our common life but to fulfill his desires? How do I reinforce that fragile thread linking my son to a life of humane obligations and responsibilities? To a life anchored in stable and unchangeable ideals? To a life, in other words, filled with the goods secured by tradition?
-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Tread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos
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