Category: Arts and Aesthetics
All things creative. All things beautiful, profound, and moving.
We could use some relief after yesterday’s heavy (and eventually contentious to the point of closing comments) discussion. So I thought maybe you could help with a little blog “housekeeping.” Everybody seems to like the new blog (thank you). But I’m still tinkering with fine points of design. On two of those, I’d like to know your preferences. Organizing comments When Living Freedom was at BHM, comments were displayed strictly in chronological order. Here, we’ve got nesting comments. When you reply to another Commentariat member, your comment goes beneath theirs, slightly offset, instead of in the order it was posted.…
Did you see that fundraising thermometer? Over there on the right side (or scroll to the bottom for you people on mobiles). Did you see that? Holy cats. I owe some extremely serious thank yous and those thanks will be delivered as best I can deliver them. To say this was unexpected when I thought the fundraiser was winding down is an understatement. But every dime will either go into building the new website or go under my house (where the beetles munching on the present foundation beams will be surprised, sometime within the next year, to find themselves evicted…
Went to a summer festival this weekend with my friend G. There were were, among the strolling, carefree crowd, lugging these big saddlebags of gear.
G. and I are very different people. She’s a short, beautiful, church-going, civic-minded, family-oriented workaholic professional. I’m a tall, plain*, skeptical, Outlaw layabout who gave up family as a bad job 20-some years ago. She’s a staunch Republican conservative who worries about deteriorating morality and sports a “Hillary for Jail” bumper sticker on her vehicle. I’m an anarchist libertine** who’s v*ting for Sweet Meteor O’ Death.
But we are alike in that both of us, everywhere we go, haul these hefty bags of gear. In a pinch, if we needed to, between the two of us we could feed the multitudes keep ourselves fed and watered for a day, perform minor first aid, cut off a seatbelt, find magnetic north, call for help with a spare device, see in the dark, and have a good chance of preventing a bad situation from turning worse. Thanks to my new compact binoculars, I could even spot a rose-breasted grosbeak if some grosbeak-related emergency arose.
Okay, this is what the new blog template looks like as of today. Better? The header image, BTW, is a manipulated and arty-fied version of one of the shots I took on the day of the circular rainbows (actually halos, as I eventually learned, along with three or four related — and magnificent — celestial effects). I won’t be blogging at the new site until probably late August, and at that point I’ll most likely double blog the same content here and there for a while to give readers time to make the transition. Just so you’ll know …
My neighbor Andy built a number of pet coffins. He did this first for a neighbor’s 19-year-old dog. Then he started more to sell on eBay. Then one fine day he had a stroke and was gone like that. His widow, J., let me choose among the smaller boxes for Robbie’s ashes. “Smaller” is a matter of perception. One box was a clear standout despite being only partially finished. That box I brought home. But small it’s not. I filled the nail holes and cracks yesterday and now am contemplating its decoration. Andy would have stained and sealed it. I…
Well, dear people, the blog-foundation fundraiser swooped past two milestones yesterday: we passed that halfway point and we made it to the one-year mark.
Thanks to you, Living Freedom blog will move to its own dedicated site. And barring unfortunate incidents with my Lamborghini, it will live for at the very least another year on what you have already donated.
Now, if we can make it all the way to goal, we’ll not only have two assured years of bloglife, but He Who Fakes It Well and I will add interesting new features that take advantage of the very best thing this blog has ever had to offer: you guys.
How to kill an Islamonazi (H/T Y.B.) They can also be killed after the fact. But that’s just sad. How law and lawyers killed Europe’s Jews and have done plenty of other murder and tyranny. Which is merely the brilliant lead-in to a condemnation of the current “due process is an inconvenient luxury” anti-gun nonsense. The criminalization of speech. It starts young. Jeff Jacoby discovers the biggest armed mob in America. Good question, there toward the end. But we already know the answer. (H/T FH) It’s no longer some vague right-wing conspiracy that’s responsible for the nation’s distrust of Hillary.…
Thomas Paine wrote those words after the shooting had already begun at Lexington and Concord, after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a fact that always surprises me. We tend to think that by that time, the game was on, lines were irrevocably crossed, and everybody who was going to take a side and get involved was already committed. But not quite so.
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We of course haven’t even had our Lexington moment yet and frankly I pray we never do. Even in the best cases (and the American Revolution was certainly one of those), shooting wars ultimately play into the hands of the most wily statists. Who shoots first, shoots straightest, has the biggest weaponry, or has “God on their side” doesn’t always determine how free people are once the smoke has cleared.