This Explains the Odd, Romance-Free Sexuality in Contemporary Cinema

Hollywood Is a Sex-Grooming Gang

It also explains why Hollywood ridicules Christians and other people of true faith.

I Have No Issue with This

Spare me this pagan revival: Pagans are generally perverts, and not even sexy ones.

Kathleen Kenyon

There was a time when archaeology was more an avocational pursuit by wealthy adventurers and treasure-seekers than a branch of anthropological and scientific inquiry.  In fact, the earliest techniques adopted by archaeologists were the same used by the tomb-robbers who had vexed every important site, whether a burial place or ancient structure, from Egypt to the Hebrides since before anyone bothered to record such occurrences.  One of the great frustrations to Egyptologists is that every single pharaoh's tomb, save for the rather small and poor one of Tutankhamen, was robbed within a year of a pharaoh's committal.

Obviously, such a state could not be allowed to exist as, between the larceny of tomb-robbers and the avariciousness of well-connected hobbyists, many of the world's great treasures were being stolen, lost, destroyed or otherwise mishandled.  Heroically, and using the power that came with being British subjects at the height of imperial power, the faculty and staff of some of the colleges and institutions at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, chiefly those from the Ashmolean Museum, dedicated themselves, their influence, political power, and academic training, to reversing this trend.  There are many great personalities that were involved in nudging archaeology into its proper place in the pursuit of human history, but one seems to stand out not only for her academic rigor and her willingness to lead in the field, but also for her resistance to pressures that would have disrupted the objective purity of her discipline.

Kathleen Kenyon was born in the early part of the 20th century; her father was the director of the British Museum and a renowned scholar of the Bible.  She was a powerful scholar herself, graduating from Somerville College, one of the women's colleges of Oxford University, with a degree in history.  I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like to be a child and to have complete access to the wonders of a world-class museum, to have free reign to wander through its halls and exhibits whenever you wished.  Clearly, one of the things it does is make a great archaeologist.

Shortly after her graduation, Kenyon became the official photographer for an expedition to the lost city of Great Zimbabwe, under the tutelage of Gertrude Caton–Thompson, a pioneer for the many active women in the field of archaeology.  [Note: There were quite a few women who worked in this field, even as early as the 19th century; not to mention of number of married couples.]  Kenyon continued her work in other locales, from early Roman sites in Great Britain to those in Samaria, in what was then British-controlled Palestine.  It was in this latter site that she learned the benefit of what is now called stratigraphic sequencing, which is simply digging a trench in a likely place to reveal the events that have occurred over the course of time, mainly through analysis of soil, mineral composition, and the really cool pots, tools, and other human-made items that turn up.  This practice would eventually lead to her greatest discovery.

Did anyone find my car keys?

In the 1930's, along with a number of other British archaeologists, Kenyon founded the Institute of Archaeology at the University of London, an organization that sought to organize, and normalize, archaeological work throughout the world and ensure that the next generation of diggers and squints would follow proper scientific practices.  During this decade she also continued work on early Roman-British sites, work that was interrupted by the Second World War.

After the war, and her service as a Divisional Commander of the British Red Cross, Kenyon went to work, now as the director of the Institute of Archaeology, to re-establish all of the arcane expeditions that had been on hold during the six years of war.  She was not yet forty-years-old.

Kenyon using her x-ray specs on some pot shards; I think ready to use that formidable cane on a disappointing student's skull.

In 1951, she began work on what would be the defining expedition of her career, and the one that brought attention to her style of "digging".  The earliest incarnation of the Israeli government gave Kenyon and her crew permission to dig in the West Bank in the area of the Biblical city of Jericho.  At the time, much was unknown about the early city and its fabled wall that "came tumblin' down", and it was a site that was particularly favored by stratigraphic analysis.  In so doing, Kenyon altered notions of what neo-lithic life was like, not to mention discovering things that were inconsistent with the Biblical narrative.

It's interesting that in our contemporary age, mostly due to the non-theism that has been institutionalized in higher education, it is difficult to gain funding for archaeological work on Biblical sites unless there is a sure chance that it will disprove Biblical accounts or otherwise undermine the belief of the literalist Christian or Jew, as they are often seen in secular political opposition to faculty members.  In Kenyon's day, it was the opposite.  In general, the taste in universities was much more Christo-centric and, hence, when Kenyon discovered evidence that contradicted the Biblical account of the siege and storming of Jericho by Joshua and the Israelites, she did receive some pressure to "re-evaluate" her data.  In the name of intellectual purity, and to her credit, she didn't.

The following is from a site for school-children [which makes it perfect for me] so, while written simplistically, it summarizes Kenyon's finds admirably:

As Kenyon and her team dug down into the mound they made some discoveries that awed archaeologists the world over. It seemed that there had existed a productive well-built city, with massive walls dating from 7000 - 5000 BC, as well as a village community that housed a religious shrine and facilities used for grain storage. What this in fact meant was there had been people living a settled life in the Neolithic Period, 3000 years before pottery was invented. Needless to say, this new discovery completely contradicted the old theories and previously held ideas about the development of pottery.

Kenyon and her team also uncovered massive walls, although they were not the walls Joshua encountered. They were in fact far older. Some parts of the walls had even been built as early as 7000 - 5000 BC. The actual construction of these massive fortifications was truly amazing because they had been built by people that lived 3000 years before the use of pottery, and without the aid of metal tools. 

Kenyon and her team also uncovered skulls dated around 6000 BC. The skulls had the flesh removed and cowry shells inserted into the eye's sockets. The features of the skulls had been moulded in plaster. From these skulls as well as bones found on the site, archaeologists have been able to deduce that the first main inhabitants of Jericho had been small-boned, 150cm tall, with long skulls and delicate features. This would not have been possible if not for Kenyon and her excavations at Jericho. 

Remains of houses found by Kenyon and her team showed that they had comprised of a dome-like structure made from wattle and daub, and then later, rectangular mud-brick houses. There were no roads or streets among these houses, people communicated through open courtyards. 

Remains of equipment included finely carved limestone bowls and polished stone querns. Although no pottery was found it seemed that flint was widely used and flint javelins, arrowheads, hoes and sickle blades were among the remains. The stone querns used for storage of cereals pointed to the harvesting of crops, possibly wheat and barley. It seemed that these early inhabitants also hunted gazelle, identified by animal bones found on the site.

It doesn't look like much now, but you should have seen it in its heyday.

Kenyon became the most famous archaeologist in her field, as she accomplished that which has been the goal of every worker in the arcane since before her and, certainly, after her, as she dramatically and incontrovertibly re-defined our understanding of the past.  Every single textbook that covered the Neo-Lithic age had to be re-written because of this stout Englishwoman and her deliberate, painstaking style of field archaeology.  She also served as an inspiration to the next generations of archaeologists and anthropologists and as the voice of caution to those who think that we are ever complete in our knowledge of the past.  There is, and always will be, more left to discover.

Kathleen Kenyon died in 1978 at the age of 72, spending her final few years in solitude in a remote Welsh cottage, editing her manuscripts.

For those interested in further reading, I would recommend:

Archaeology in the Holy Land, by Kathleen Kenyon
Royal Cities of the Old Testament, also by KK [and my personal favorite]
and
Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land by Miriam C. Davis

Or Not

2,000-year-old ‘Pilate’ ring just might have belonged to notorious Jesus judge

A Spirited Defense of a Poet by a Publisher, also an Apt Lesson on How Not to Read a Poem

On Toby Martinez de las Rivas

Really, good for him.  This kind of stand these days takes θράσος [which is Greek for "audacity"].  I notice the critic's religious education has been retarded, too.

(Whispers) In the Church, Too

In academia, censorship and conformity have become the norm

Archaeological News

Archaeological project reveals new insights on world’s first cathedral

You Could Start by Reading It

How to experience the Bible in a digital world

Every Smart Person I've Known Either Did or Did Not Go to College: Every Puzzlewit I've Known Went to College

The Case for Dropping Out of College

Archaeological News

Galilean Synagogue’s Stunning Mosaics Seen For the First Time

New images of the spectacular mosaics discovered in the early fifth-century A.D. synagogue of Huqoq in Israel’s Galilee region have just been released, according to The Times of Israel. The highly detailed and brightly colored mosaics depict popular religious stories including the tale of Noah’s Ark, the parting of the Red Sea, and Jonah and the Whale, as well as a remarkable scene of the building of the Tower of Babel.

Science!

Because I'm fatigued with all of the low-AGL folks lecturing me about global cooling warming climate change disruption cooling, I thought we'd feature some science.  The apolitical kind, that is, since I'm not using studies to justify a fat government grant.

Since the current occupant of The White House is to blame for...well...everything ever, including the rise of sea levels, I thought it might be useful to track sea levels from the earliest records, as categorized by U.S. presidential terms.  Please note, the sea levels have been rising at a steady rate since Lincoln was in The White House:

Oh, my gerd!  We need to do something about this now!  Quick, socialists, raise the taxes!

Well, hang on a moment.  Here's a chart that compares natural sea level increase with human-caused increase:

I regret that it says "man-made" instead of something uber-woke like "Xer/Xhe-made", but these are from Europeans for whom English is a second language and they haven't been "educated" as to our Woketopic system, yet.

Anyway, starting at the end of the glacial age, the reader may see five arrows indicating natural increases in sea levels.  Then, there is the sixth arrow indicating "man-made" [again, sorry about that, wokesters] increases.

Can you see the human-made increase?  Maybe if you squint, I don't know.  The point is that the effect of humans, and human industry, is microscopic.  It is not caused by one person, or one generation, or even any generation as 99.9% of the increase is natural.  That is, organic.

However, the natural rise and fall of sea levels is not useful in scaring voters into supporting greedophiles in elected office nor for encouraging acquiescence in raising tax revenue so that politicians will have more funds to shovel to their cronies.  So, there continues to be science vs. "science". 

So, Psychology's Great Discoveries are at Least 50% Bull

Psychology’s Replication Crisis Is Running Out of Excuses: Another big project has found that only half of studies can be repeated. And this time, the usual explanations fall flat.

Ironically enough, it seems that one of the most reliable findings in psychology is that only half of psychological studies can be successfully repeated.

Not My Kids

Kids Spend Less Time Outdoors Than Prisoners

It's to no one's benefit to raise a pasty nerd.  Jeez, let them go free range.

The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner

Mr. Bellow’s planet

The academy has shoved his novels down the memory hole. Bellow is off the syllabus, and has been since before today’s undergraduates were born. He is “problematic,” and in these days of what his Artur Sammler calls “this present shallowness,” problems can be forgotten about if you put your mind to it. All anyone with ambitions in the English department of an American university need remember about Saul Bellow is the remark attributed to him by his ex-friend Alfred Kazin: “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I’d be glad to read him.”

Well, most of the current literature educators whom I have met would have been regarded as sub-literate in my day, so their opinion is unimportant.  Read what you want; enjoy what you enjoy.

Areopagitica was Published Today in 1644

John Milton's spirited defense of expression free from the control or coercion of the government or the church was invaluable in the development of what became our Bill of Rights.

Do the Media Really Hate Their Families or What?

Seriously, what's with the Unclephobia?

An Obituary of Note

Polish nun who helped hide Vilna ghetto rebels during Holocaust dies at 110

Buzzfeed is Staffed by Gormless Children With Flat Educations

Buzzfeed Smears Smokey The Bear. It Goes Horribly Wrong For Them.

I Was Hanging Mirrors Today and Was Reminded of This Cartoon

You're Supposed to Play This Game Sober?

'Drunk' Canadian curlers kicked out of tournament final

You Will Never Go Broke Predicting the End of the World

The Earth is Sucking Up Its Oceans and the Planet Might Explode!  Run Away!  [Also, note the difference between "might" and "may" when used in a sentence.  Or a headline.]

Don't Argue with Science

This Flu Season, Consider Whiskey over Modern Medicine

In This Brave New World, You're the Product

Amazon has everything it needs

Things That Make Me Wish I Still Taught High School English

The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner

Literary Hoax is the Most Underappreciated Genre

Dear DC Government: Get Stuffed.

DC Bans Churches From Handing Out Straws With Free Coffee

It seems that "separation of church and state" lark only works one way.

Oh, this isn't totalitarian: "The District also is asking residents to report businesses or churches to the government if they hand out free straws or coffee stirrers."

Because If You're "Blue Collar", You Aren't Normal?

Hiram Bingham III

Originally published on March 1, 2013

Once upon a time, when I studied archaeology, my world was divided into two distinct groups: Diggers and Squints.

Squints worked in laboratories with elaborate machines that were known by esoteric terminology and were so complicated that they looked like something from one of Jack Kirby's nightmares, or sparky whirligigs from old Universal Pictures "Frankenstein" movies.  Squints would take items of great antiquity, place them in their infernal devices, and then tell us, with rather smug precision, how old the piece was, what it was made from, and whether or not it was important enough to study further or place within the museum's permanent collection.


Courtesy of the estate of Jack Kirby

Diggers, on the other hand, were those in the field who, sometimes at great personal peril, found the remote treasures of the past using the eldest tools of the human race: shovels and trowels.  Diggers were at turns historians, contractors, linguists, soldiers, diplomats, and detectives.  Those talented in the sciences tended to become Squints; those less easy to categorize favored the ranks of Diggers.  Naturally, I, and everyone I knew, wanted to be a Digger.


A typical Digger

The archetype for the Diggers was a thin, oft-bespectacled son of a Presbyterian missionary named Hiram Bingham III.  Born in Hawaii in 1875 while his parents were on an extended mission to the Sandwich Islands, Bingham was educated at Philips-Andover, Yale, Berkeley, and Harvard.  He then became an instructor at Princeton working closely with the university's president, Woodrow Wilson.  He was lured away to the history department at Yale in 1907. 

It was while on an official trip to a science conference in Chile that Bingham heard of the existence of a remarkable lost city somewhere in the jungles [oops, now they're "rain forests"] of Peru.  Thus, he did what any well-trained academic would do.  He did some research, wrote some letters, interviewed some experts, and then plunged into the Peruvian jungle to search for an Incan city that disappeared sometime around the 15th century reign of Tupac Inca Yupanqui [whose nickname in English is something like "Tupac the Keeper of His Enemies' Skulls"].

In the summer of 1911, after an arduous climb through thick foliage and at an insane altitude, Bingham and his party came across the most complete and unmolested city ever yet discovered, Machu Picchu. 


Oh, you mean this lost city?  It's been here for years.

One of the most compelling scenes in popular entertainment is the moment the intrepid explorer comes over a rise and gazes upon that which has not been seen by modern eyes.  It is so compelling, it has been overused to the point that it is now cliche.  Bingham and his party were the first to actually experience such a moment in modern times and the discovery transformed the study of archaeology, turning a rather staid field of inquiry into something much more exotic and desirable by young academics.

There was much intrigue and diplomacy that was involved in the story of Bingham and Machu Picchu, not to mention some derring-do.  A good source for further research would be Bingham's own story, Lost City of the Incas, or the sensationally-titled, but very competent, Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu.

Bingham's explorations would be interrupted by World War I, during which he would serve as a decorated officer in the Army Air Corps.  He would marry into the Tiffany jewelry family and continue to serve his country in public office, chiefly as a two-term senator from Connecticut.  [In keeping with the noble tradition of Connecticut senators, he would even be censured for financial hanky-panky.  No, the Christopher Dodds pere et fils aren't the only ones.]

There have been times, when toiling away in some humid climate, shielded from a brutal sun by a ridiculous hat, that I have day-dreamed of looking through a phalanx of mangrove trees or field of elephant grass and finding some massive example of a lost world, or even an artifact that completely altered the accepted view of the ancient world.  Because of Bingham, we can still dream of such things and imagine that there are still, even in this world of Google Earth and thousands of cameras in orbit, places waiting to be discovered.

Also, because of Bingham and his peers, we can climb ancient pyramids just for fun.


Actually, going up was the easy part.  It was coming down that presented the challenge.

Hardly a Surprise

Study: Men with beards are more attractive

Oops

Climate contrarian uncovers scientific error, upends major ocean warming study

Last Winter, a Robot Made Me a Manhattan and It was Perfect

Keurig launches a cocktail-making pod machine

That's for Dang Sure

After Thousand Oaks, It's Time to Dethrone the Mental-Health 'Experts'

An Obituary of Note

Stan Lee, Marvel Comics' Real-Life Superhero, Dies at 95

Interesting sword of two edges with Lee.  Undeniably, he ripped off his artists as often as possible, taking credit for more than he should have.  On the other hand, these artists would never have been as well-known, nor as influential, if not for Lee.

Real life is complicated, isn't it?  Mozart and Jack the Ripper have more in common with one another than one would ordinarily think.

I have to hand it to him, though, as my life would not be as rich without his influence.  His comic books encouraged me to read mythology, then literature, then scripture.  My facility with archetype, as worked through multiple scholarly studies through the years, was developed through the medium he popularized.

Ave atque vale, Stan.

Life in the Post-Religious Age

The age of easy and instantaneous connectivity, globalization, and related phenomena have created a new kind of “lonely crowd,” full of people who feel isolated, inadequate, insignificant — and resentful of being made to feel that way. There are many ways to assuage that loneliness, but many of them — family life, religion — have fallen out of fashion. Ordinary politics provides insufficient drama, as anybody who has observed the real business of government in action knows. Fantasy politics — I’m fighting the Nazis! — offers a lot more emotional oomph.

Although, the best line from this may be, "These play-acting buffoons aren’t the moral equivalent of the French Resistance — they are mincing would-be thugs looking for something that will make them feel better about themselves. Apparently, terrorizing Tucker Carlson’s wife scratches an itch that weed and NetFlix don’t."

For further reading: The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character

The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner

No Nobel Prize for Literature? Thank Goodness.

Max Hardberger

Originally published on February 15, 2013

There was one evening, almost twenty years ago now, when the sun in the Leeward Islands had just set with a memorable green flash on the horizon, when the rigging on the sailboat we had chartered was making the familiar sound of ratcheting and releasing cordage, as the splash of the flying fish could be heard over the gunwales, and when the clear sky revealed more stars than one would think even God's imagination could hold, that I thought that the last thing that I ever wanted to do was to return to a Massachusetts winter and the scabrous demands of the underemployed faculty of the private school at which I was working in those days.  Whatever work I could find in the islands or along the Costa Maya, even as a marina deckhand or tour bus guide would have been fine with me.

Of course, I went back to the Berkshires and listened to the disgruntled and outraged, patiently smiled as the prosaic pretended to be the perspicacious, and saved my money so that I could again return to the Caribbean and that lonely boat in the middle of the Gulf Stream.

Max Hardberger was a high school teacher of history and English with a graduate degree in fine arts when he reached that point of no return that many in the more lyrical professions tend to reach when relating the subtleties of Shakespearean sonnet form to a roomful of ungracious adolescents.  He quit that nonsense and started his own very small air transport company.  Mainly, he transported the remains of the dead from one location to another, sometimes circumventing local laws by dressing the corpse as his co-pilot.  You can see why I like this guy; this is what "questioning authority" is really all about.

He then drifted into work on freighters, eventually getting his master's license and serving as a well-respected captain.  Then, one fateful day in Haiti, he found what was to become his life's work.  As anyone who has spent even a short amount of time in some of the ports of the Caribbean can testify, it is a remarkably corrupt area.  In the 1980's, small local governments were notorious for using their courts systems to "legally" seize any ship or boat that caught their fancy.  One day, Hardberger found himself on the pointy end of some rifles [Or are they now "assault weapons"?  I'll have to ask a politician, TV reporter, or movie star; they know everything.] while in Port-Au-Prince when his ship was seized by some local "businessmen".  Naturally, he surrendered the ship.  Sort of.

While a handful of guards were left on board, Max threw them a party with lots and lots of rum.  Once the guards were unconscious, unarmed, and locked in a cabin, Hardberger quickly moved his ship into international waters and placed the former guards in an open boat to row themselves back to the Haitian mainland.  When the story became known, Hardberger became a legend in the commercial shipping community.

So much so that, from that point on, he was asked to, essentially, "steal" back ships that had been seized by corrupt governments or their local bureaucrats.  It became a surprisingly lucrative enterprise.  Although I'm speaking as one who was never more than on the outside of the very remote orbit of Caribbean sailors, I can testify that Hardberger is regarded as a combination of Robin Hood and Captain Morgan, maybe with a little bit of Superman thrown in for good measure.

I could relate some more of his adventures, but I don't think I could do so with the same linguistic panache as the writer whom I quote below.  A word of warning, though; if you choose to go to the link, you will find the paragraphs laced with pungent language:

Hardberger once repoed a freighter from the Russian Mafiya [sic] in the ice-covered Baltic port of Vladivostok, Russia. One time he captured a ship in Central America by hiring a prostitute to flirt with the guards and give them shots of booze lined with Hardberger's-homemade handy-dandy insta-sedatives. During the Haitian Revolution of 2004, Hardberger sailed into the battle-torn hive of destruction in the middle of a warzone, boarded a ship pretending to be a potential buyer, and got his men to distract the guards while he snuck off, repaired a damaged engine, and cut the anchor chains with a blowtorch. Another time in Haiti, he used a Voodoo witch doctor to freak out a crew of AK-47 slinging pirates and send them running from the ship. In Venezuela he straight-up convinced the guards that the...ship was sinking, and he did such a good job of it that the entire crew of bad guys all ran to the life boats and rowed back to shore, leaving Max and his buddies plenty of time to leisurely pull the ship out of dock. He also snuck a boat out of Greece by buying the Coast Guard a case of Ouzo on Greek Easter and sailing out right under their noses. More recently, he's hired a team of ex-Special Forces operatives to help him extract ships from Somali pirates armed with assault rifles and RPGs, but by this point it was about as routine as filing a TPS report.

During his adventures, Hardberger has been chased by pirates, shot at by Mafia bosses, accosted by Coast Guard officials, and pursued by god-knows-who-else. He once eluded...INTERPOL agents by grinding the ship's name and serial number of its hull mid-transit and painting a fake new name over top of it. In the Dominican Republic he was being pursued by a...naval cruiser, but even a...warship couldn't slow this moustachioed madman down – during his recon, Hardberger had noticed that the Dominican navy was using outdated radar gear, so he sailed his ship right into the middle of a horrible thunderstorm because he knew it would [mess]with their detection equipment.

Hardberger has written a book or two about his adventures; I can certainly recommend Seized: A Sea Captain's Adventures Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World's Most Troubled Waters, as it is a ripping yarn and great fun.  The chapter on how he "stole" 47 airplanes across Soviet airspace and got them to Venezuela is alone worth reading.

Hardberger is still recovering illicitly seized ships and still collecting remarkable fees for so doing.  Just as importantly, he still serves as the subject of some wonderful tales that can be heard in port and marina bars from Key West to Puerto Aventuras.

This is an Absolutely Terrible Headline

NASA has plans to probe Uranus in search of gas

Is everyone at this site 12-years-old?  I'm not giggling; you're giggling.

I'm Told Religion is Gone, Yet There is Nothing to Replace It Except...This

Blame Modern Life for Political Strife

It’s hard to argue against the comforts of modernity. Avocado toast, fiber optics, Roombas. What’s not to love? Technological innovation and trade liberalization have yielded prosperity and stability. Poverty, infant mortality, and global hunger have fallen. Human development, life expectancy, and food production have risen. Compared to our ancestors, we’re the glitterati.

But there are always tradeoffs. While urbanization and personal accumulation have enriched the West, they have also produced a culture of narcissism and illusion of time scarcity. This self-preoccupation and feeling of lost leisure time has reduced our participation in civic organizations. We’re engaging less with one another. And as a consequence, societal trust has dissipated. This has inhibited the development of common interests and shared identities, prompting a return to an archaic tribalism which prioritizes salient features over ideological values.

So, Pretty Much This is the Next Two Years, Then

Americans must have answers immediately as to the reasoning behind @realDonaldTrump removing Jeff Sessions from @TheJusticeDept. Why is the President making this change and who has authority over Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation? We will be holding people accountable. https://t.co/weykMuiCxm

— (((Rep. Nadler))) (@RepJerryNadler) November 7, 2018

This UGA Professor is a Genius

Now, that's Power Point.

Archaeological News

The Hidden Coastal Culture of the Ancient Maya

Good for Them

Generation Z Is Choosing Trade School over College

What, you don't want to bear $100,000 in student loan debt for a degree in "gender studies" that ensures that you'll be unemployable?

There is No Such Thing as Voter Fraud, Dang It!

The last time there was an election, I received a letter thanking my father for voting. Not only did he manage to vote while deceased, he voted twice.

I should explain that Dad had been the treasurer of the county Democratic Party, so I guess he had "lifetime plus" membership.

Sorry, but the West is Busy Fretting About a Two-Year-Old Election

Where are the West’s solidarity marches for Asia Bibi? Where are the t-shirts? Why aren’t ‘Free Asia Bibi’ flags flying on campuses? Why haven’t student progressives elected Asia as the symbolic head of their unions, as they did with persecuted Eastern European writers in the 1970s or African liberation leaders in the 1980s? 

Bibi, after all, comes across as an ideal person for those of a genuinely liberal or leftist persuasion to get behind. She’s a woman. She’s a farm labourer. She is part of a persecuted minority (Christians in Pakistan). And she has been subjected to awful punishments and deprivations merely for saying something.

If a "subject-predicate-Trump" sentence cannot be written about this, our thought leaders aren't interested.

As Heard on the Radio

Senator Mark Warner [$500 million personal net worth] states, “I don’t believe modern American capitalism is working…”

Well, it's working for you, sparky.  I sure seem to be getting a lot of lectures on what's best for me from millionaires, and it's never about how I should be able to keep more of what I earn.

I Will Vote for Any Candidate Who Will End This Nonsense

100 Years Later, The Madness Of Daylight Saving Time Endures

Worth Reading

What Happened to Our Universities?

As extensively documented, our universities have been swept up into a new cultural movement, the so-called “social justice” movement. “Social justice” ideology is based on the Marxist vision that the world is divided into oppressor classes and oppressed classes. Unlike classical Marxism that divides the world into a bourgeois oppressor class and a proletarian oppressed class — that is capitalists oppressing workers — neo-Marxist “social justice” theory divides the world into gender, racial, sexual, and religious classes: male oppressors and female victims; white oppressors and people of color victims; heterosexual oppressors and gay, lesbian, transsexual, etc. etc. victims; Christian and Jewish oppressors and Muslim victims.

More Pungency

Another episode of "Get Woke, Go Broke":

Ratings: “The Conners” Beaten By Everything, Drops in Total Viewers and Demo as ABC Orders Only 1 More Episode

I never watched this show, even in its original incarnation.  I say that not to shore up my intellectual bona fides, but to note that all of what I know of it I've either read in the media or heard about from co-workers, etc.

One of those people, who is not sympathetic towards the current occupant of the White House or those who support him, actually complimented the re-introduced show for speaking in a mature, yet humorous, manner about families trying to figure out how to love one another in the midst of political disagreement.  Since no one else in entertainment is doing that, I noted it.

Of course, the star of the show began her career as an "outrage comedian", and has fulfilled that definition for a number of decades now, so the network knew whom they were hiring and what she was like.  The new, neo-Marxist, neo-Victorian rules of comportment caught up with them, however, and they panicked and killed off a money-maker.

I don't care about any of the actors.  Sorry, but their compensation from just one episode is equal to 8 and 1/2 years of my salary, so they'll be okay.  I do care about all of those people on the crew, who had found themselves working on a hit TV show, suddenly to be left unemployed because the network needed to appeal not to the viewing public, but to their own incestuous political world. 

The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner [Read These and You Will Know More]

William Hazlitt Was the Consummate Critic: Observant, Difficult, and Fascinating

Meanwhile, Outside of the Media Obsession with a Two-Year-Old Election...

Gunmen killed at least seven Coptic Christians in Egypt as they were traveling on a bus near a monastery — the most serious assault on the religious minority in over a year.

John Fitch

Originally published on February 1, 2013

“You know what makes a racer different from other people?  

The faster he goes, the more relaxed he becomes.”

I found myself thinking about John Fitch's words on the afternoon that he took me about the countryside, regaling me with stories of great drivers, great moments, and terrible tragedies while I blithely tried to ignore the fact that a man of nearly ninety was about to exceed that number on his car's speedometer and, all the while, looking like other men do when they sit in a recliner and watch football. I shouldn't have been worried; I doubt if I have ever been in safer hands.  The reason that I found myself riding in an open roof, hyper-powered vehicle on the winding road that is Route 7 and shooting through the West Cornwall covered bridge was because of one of those odd duties that has marked my career.

Not a bad weekend ride, eh?

Because my parish was next door to the well-known Lime Rock Park race track, and I belonged to the local volunteer fire department, I had been asked to serve as the "chaplain" to the track and its drivers.  My duty was remarkably simple:  I gave the invocation at the beginning of the race, standing at the start/finish line with the singer of the National Anthem, the honored guest who says, "Gentlemen and Ladies, start your engines", and some scantily clad Pirelli Tire girls.  I've had worse duty, believe me.

That reminds me; I need new tires.

Each year I would be "paid" with two season passes, which was a magnanimous compensation, a gift of either a book about racing, a facsimile of Steve McQueen's racing jacket from the film "Le Mans", or, one spectacular year, the chance to ride with John Fitch in a racing car of his own construction.  Yeah, that year was the best.  I only wish I had worn the McQueen jacket while doing so.

I suppose it looked better on him, but still....

John Fitch, his wife, children, and great-grandchildren, were Episcopalians and familiar to the Anglican community in the northwest corner of the state.  However, I was familiar with him because, as a fan of auto-racing, I knew a story about him, a famous one in auto racing that included the false reporting of death, an international tragedy, the half-century withdrawal from racing by one of the world's premier automobile marques, and the impetus for the creation of safety devices that would eventually become standard equipment on highways.

It should be no surprise that Fitch was born in Indianapolis, as that is the ideal spot from which to hail for an American racer.  Not just due to the famous track and its race, but because of the tradition of machines, metal fabrication, engineering, and manufacturing for which the Hoosier city is also known.  In this world, it was natural for Fitch to develop an interest in all of these things.  As his stepfather was an exec with the Stutz Company, makers of the famous Bearcat, Fitch was able to abide with those who showed him how to take junk metal and turn it into a functional car.  This, even before he was licensed to drive, became his hobby and passion.

Fitch enjoying another day at the office.

After serving as a Mustang pilot during WWII, his avocation became his profession.  Beginning in 1950, Fitch raced a Ford-powered Fiat 1100, which he soon modified into the "Fitch Model B", and drove in the first 12 Hours of Sebring. In 1951, he won the Buenos Aires Grand Prix, drove in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and became the first Sports Car Club of America national champion.  In 1953, Fitch competed in as many European races as he could afford to enter and was named "Sports Car Driver of the Year" by the automotive press.  The next season, he drove for both Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz and, in 1955, Fitch raced for the Mercedes-Benz sports car team along with Juan Manuel Fangio, Karl Kling, and Stirling Moss [the three best drivers of this era]. That year, Fitch won the production class at the Mille Miglia.

Then came the most notorious moment in road racing history, occurring as it did during that year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, to this day the world’s most demanding endurance race.  As the drivers race for 24 consecutive hours, they are made up of two or three-man teams, each alternating a couple of hours at the wheel with a couple of hours of rest.  That year Fitch’s teammate was Pierre Levegh, not one of the great drivers of his era, and a fellow who should have had nothing to do with a professional automobile competition of this calibre.

From an official retrospective:

Hours after flame and flying metal erupted, few of the spectators at Le Mans, France knew what had happened. It was days before drivers' stories and these pictures could reconstruct the worst accident in racing history. Some 250,000 spectators had gathered for Europe's classic sports car race, the 24-hour test around an 8.38-mile course. Concerned about a course laid out years ago for slower cars, Mercedes Driver Pierre Levegh complained, "We need a signal system. Our cars go too fast."

As the race entered its third hour the cars were breaking records at every lap when Jaguar Driver Mike Hawthorn received a signal from his pit crew to stop for gas. As he braked, an Austin-Healey swerved to avoid him. A few lengths behind, Levegh raised his hand, signaling another Mercedes to slow up. At 150 mph he had no chance to do so himself.

Hitting the Healey, the Mercedes took off like a rocket, struck the embankment beside the track, hurtled end over end and then disintegrated over the crowd. The hood decapitated tightly jammed spectators like a guillotine. The engine and front axle cut a swath like an artillery barrage. And the car's magnesium body burst into flames like a torch, burning others to death. In a few searing seconds 82 people were dead and 76 were maimed. Hawthorn, though unnerved, went on to win and set a new record.

Fitch's family heard on the radio that it was Fitch, and not his co-driver Levegh, who had been driving the Mercedes and been killed in the conflagration.  It took some time to straighten out the misinformation.  Mercedes-Benz would immediately withdraw its factory teams from all forms of competitive racing for half a century.

Fitch's close involvement with this tragedy lead him to grow beyond driving and car development and into the area of safety equipment.  While he was one of the first racers to build his own eponymous cars, he is best known these days as the inventor of "The Fitch Barrier", those sand-filled barrels often seen on highway off-ramps and bridge abutments.  Innumerable times they have rendered potentially horrific traffic accidents into one-car incidents with little or no damage to driver and passengers.

John Fitch died last October.  The Burial Office was read for him in the local parish.  He will be remembered for two things: His association with the deadliest accident in racing history and his determination that nothing like that would ever happen again, be it on a track or a highway.  Mostly, I remember him for that Sunday drive. 

Although, to be honest, once it was over I was tempted to kiss the ground like the Pope when I was released from that car.  I guess that's why I'm not a racer.

A Pungent Reaction

I think the last thing anyone needs is Oprah Winfrey ($3 billion personal net worth) lecturing us about income inequality.

Ditto B. Obama ($50 million personal net worth).

While I'm at it, Michael Moore (also $50 million personal net worth with NINE houses in his name) can sit down, as well.

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