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New Yorker Cartoon: One Party's Heaven Is The Other's Hell

November 22, 2014, 4:54 am
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It's Official: The Religious Right Is Calling It Quits

November 22, 2014, 5:09 am
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Gay marriage could be pushing the religious right out of the public square.
Gay marriage could be pushing the religious right out of the public square

It's official: The religious right is calling it quits
A new essay in the magazine First Things could mark a watershed retreat by conservative Christians
What a difference 10 years can make.
In the weeks following George W. Bush's re-election to the presidency in November 2004, with exit polls saying that the election had been decided by voters who were moved primarily by "moral values," the religious right felt giddy. Its push to get states to adopt referenda banning same-sex marriage had been wildly successful and helped to mobilize conservatives. With the greatest political champion the movement had ever known assured of four more years in the White House, the religious right began to dream of passing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would permanently define marriage in traditionalist terms.
Fast forward to November 2014.
The federal marriage amendment is dead. Many of the laws and state-level constitutional amendments passed in 2004 have been overturned by judges. Same-sex marriage is allowed inwell over half the states in the union. The religious right arguably has less power within the Republican Party than at any time since before Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign for president.
And now First Things, the intellectually formidable monthly magazine that played a decisively important role in formulating the interdenominational and interreligious ideology that once galvanized the religious right, has decided to pick up its marbles and go home.
Maybe I'm overstating the significance of a brief article published on the First Things website earlier this week, but I don't think so. Authored by editor R.R. Reno, "A Time to Rend" appears to put the magazine's moral and intellectual weight (which remains considerable on the religious right) behind a movement that calls on churches to cease administering civil marriages.
That's right, the magazine founded by the late Richard John Neuhaus to fight secularism and champion religiously grounded moral arguments in the public square now thinks that priests and ministers should refuse to participate in marrying parishioners by presiding at wedding ceremonies and signing state marriage licenses. I mean, sure, they would still perform private wedding ceremonies in churches. But those couples would then have to get married a second time at city hall to become married in the eyes of their home state and (via the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution) the rest of the nation.
The reason Reno has taken this draconian position is, of course, the widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage. Up until the past few years, conservative priests and ministers have presumed that what the state means by the term "marriage" is roughly equivalent to what the church means by it: a one-flesh union between two people of different genders ultimately oriented toward the generation of children (even if this proves impossible for a given couple stricken by infertility or another obstacle to childrearing).
A disjunct between ecclesiastical and civil marriage opened up in the 1960s and '70s with the liberalization of divorce law, but not enough to lead the churches to rethink the sacred-civic alliance. Roman Catholics were always free, for example, to add additional ecclesiastical notions of marriage on top of those presumed by the state. A Catholic could file for a civil divorce, but the church was free not to recognize it as valid and to proclaim that the partners could go their separate ways, remarry, and remain in good standing with the church only if they received a Vatican-approved annulment.
The controversies currently roiling the Catholic Church involve Pope Francis' seeming desire to smooth over these post-'60s tensions between civil and ecclesiastical notions of marriage by bringing the church into closer conformity with secular-civic norms of when and how marriages can be dissolved.
First Things is proposing a radical move in the opposite direction. The use of the word "rend" in the title of the essay is theologically significant. In addition to the violence of the image itself, which involves tearing or ripping of fabric, there is its meaning in the Jewish tradition, which calls on Jews to rend a garment as a demonstration of grief at the death of a loved one. This gesture can also be used as an expression of disgust at a family member or other member of the community who has committed a grave offense. When a garment is rent in such cases, the offending party is henceforth treated as if he were dead.
Reno would seem to be saying that conservative Christians need to tear themselves away from secular-civil notions of marriage, mourn the death of genuine marriage in American public life — and perhaps even utter a curse against what remains of it.
It's also important to grasp what Reno isn't saying. He isn't declaring, "No matter how many states permit same-sex marriage, churches should never be forced by the government to perform them." That would be a position that all liberals, religious and secular, should be able to affirm, since it would permit churches and clerics who are pro–same-sex marriage to preside over such marriages while also allowing those who reject their validity to remain true to their beliefs.
Reno seems to believe that the institution of civil marriage has been so compromised and defiled that churches will get their hands dirty by participating in it at all, even when the wedding involves a traditional marriage between a man and a woman, and even if the husband and wife pledge to live their lives and raise their children in full conformity with church teaching.
This is an astonishing proposal that would signal an unprecedented retreat of theologically conservative churches from engagement in American public life. That it is being put forward by a magazine dedicated, until now, to halting and reversing that retreat is extraordinary — and a particularly striking sign of the religious right's rapid collapse into a defensive, sectarian subculture.
It's also an indication that if the religious right is to have any future at all, it lies in the direction of the largely apolitical "Benedict Option" championed by The American Conservative's Rod Dreher. Inspired by Catholic philosopher Alasdair McIntyre, this vision suggests that conservative Christians should give up the ambition to remake and redeem the morally polluted common life of the country in favor of a drive to preserve and protect Christian virtues and families from the corruption of an increasingly aggressive secular culture and state, much as St. Benedict founded Western monasticism in the early sixth century to preserve Christian civilization amidst the ruins of the crumbling Roman Empire.
In some ways, this sounds like a return to the early decades of the 20th century, when fundamentalist Protestants lost an earlier round in the culture war with theological modernists, and responded by withdrawing almost entirely into the shadows, which is where they remained until the late 1970s.
Yet there is at least one important difference between then and now: this time conservative evangelicals may be joined, or even led, in their retreat by millions of Catholics. That would be a monumental change.
And it may well have begun this week.

Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a consulting editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.


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New Yorker Cartoon: War Propaganda

November 22, 2014, 5:31 am
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New Yorker Cartoon: Text Trance

November 22, 2014, 5:37 am
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“I’d never say this if Matt weren’t in a text trance, 
but I’m having a fling with our FreshDirect guy.”



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New Yorker Cartoon: Top Ten Commandments

November 22, 2014, 5:40 am
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“Are these the Top Ten Commandments?”

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Here's #1 in the New Testament:

"Love Your Enemies. Do Good To Those Who Hate You," Luke 6: 27-42

Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"

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New Yorker Cartoon: Americans' Relationship To Work

November 22, 2014, 5:45 am
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New Yorker Cartoon: How Our Descendants Will See Homo Sapines In A Million Years

November 22, 2014, 5:52 am
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Treat Us Like Dogs And We Will Behave Like Wolves

November 22, 2014, 6:01 am
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Germany's Shared Prosperity Versus America's Pyramid Scheme

November 22, 2014, 6:13 am
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A file photo taken on January 10, 2013 shows an illuminated EURO sign in front of the European Central Bank, ECB in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany.

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"

"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium

"Taibbi: The $9 Billion Whistle Blower At JPMorgan-Chase. Financial Thuggery At The Top"

Excerpt: "Employment stands at a record high, and real wages are increasing. The German government is supporting this trend with the introduction of a minimum wage of 8.50 euros an hour, or about $10.60... What's needed today is private investment complemented by targeted investments from the public sector. The German government recently increased its investment program considerably... Europe is clearly Germany's No. 1 policy priority, because Germany cannot be strong without a strong and competitive Europe... For Germany to be successful, a competitive and thriving Europe is essential and, therefore, at the core of our efforts."

Alan: It is unthinkable that the United States even mouth the words - much less mean them - "For the United States to be successful, a competitive and thriving hemisphere is essential, and, therefore, at the core of our efforts."

Germany sees its growth as important for the whole euro

By Peter Wittig November 21, 2014

Peter Wittig is Germany’s ambassador to the United States.
When I came to Washington as the new German ambassador in May, one thing really surprised me: Nearly everybody I talked to had a strong opinion about the German economy and whether it is fostering or hindering development in the world. A lot of those opinions were positive, stressing the sustainable practices and income equality in Germany. But others continue to be fiercely critical, asserting that Germany holds an irrational belief in belt-tightening and has a solely export-driven growth model, and that this is the main impediment to economic growth in Europe and worldwide. I therefore feel it is time I offer my take on these questions.
First, let us get the facts straight: Germany is projected to grow faster this year and next than it did in 2012 and 2013. It continues to be an engine of growth in Europe. Employment stands at a record high, and real wages are increasing. The German government is supporting this trend with the introduction of a minimum wage of 8.50 euros an hour, or about $10.60. As a result, the German economy is increasingly driven by domestic demand.
Our exports are also a source of growth for our partners. People around the world like to buy high-quality German products, such as cars and machinery. These products rely to a great extent on a global supply chain. Imports, mainly from our European partners, account for 40 cents of every euro worth of German exports. Furthermore, we are not exporting more than we are importing from the euro zone. A current account surplus is not a target of German economic policy. Our policy is rather to create the right framework for companies to thrive. We are convinced that this is the best approach to foster sustainable growth. One important element to achieve this aim is the successful conclusion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the United States and the European Union.
Is Germany investing too little, as critics say? I beg to differ. We all agree: Investment is the key to future prosperity. But we need to make sure, especially when spending taxpayer money, that we achieve lasting results and not just a flash in the pan. What’s needed today is private investment complemented by targeted investments from the public sector. The German government recently increased its investment program considerably. Rising government revenue from more employment and higher consumption provide breathing room for additional investments. In contrast to debt-financed short-term investment programs, this balanced approach helps to maintain long-term confidence in the stability and reliability of our fiscal stance.
Make no mistake: The solid foundation of German growth and the sustainability of our fiscal policy are an important anchor for the whole of the euro zone. Without the markets’ trust in German “firepower,” it would not have been possible to stabilize the euro zone. We shouldn’t put this at risk. Europe is clearly Germany’s No. 1 policy priority, because Germany cannot be strong without a strong and competitive Europe. Therefore, we need a farsighted approach. We are now witnessing that the — often painful — structural reforms in some E.U. countries have been paying off over the past two years. Their economies are growing again. And with respect to the institutional and economic framework in place for the euro zone, which some have criticized as being too unforgiving and unyielding, its rules have been agreed upon by all the members. They contain flexibility, which we are using. Only the combination of structural reforms, fiscal rules and targeted investments will preserve long-term trust in the euro zone’s stability.
Finally, it’s not just about policies but also about convictions. Our government’s commitment to a balanced budget and a reliable fiscal policy enjoys broad support among our citizens. Like many industrialized countries, Germany is experiencing a dramatic change in its demographics. This means that the debt we incur today will need to be paid back by fewer people in the future. We simply can’t kick the can farther down the road. The reliability and sustainability of our policies and finances are preconditions for well-being and shared prosperity. This is true for Germany as well as for Europe. One fundamental cornerstone of German policy is clear: For Germany to be successful, a competitive and thriving Europe is essential and, therefore, at the core of our efforts.
Read more:

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Can Pope Francis Heal The Deep Divisions In Christianity?

November 22, 2014, 6:46 am
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Pope Francis leaves at the end of a mass to mark the opening of the synod on the family in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican Oct. 5.
Pope Francis leaves at the end of a mass to mark the opening of the synod on the family in Saint Peter’s Square at the Vatican Oct. 5.
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!""Why shouldn't I?" he said. "Well, there's so much to live for!""Like what?""Well... are you religious?" He said yes. I said, "Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?""Christian.""Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant ? "Protestant.""Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?""Baptist""Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?""Baptist Church of God!""Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you reformed Baptist Church of God?""Reformed Baptist Church of God!""Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?" He said, "Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!" I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.   
Emo Philips

Alan: Recently, my sister Janet and I reminisced on "growing up Catholic" in the 1950s. Like many Catholic friends, we were children of "Roosevelt Democrats," imbued with the sense that "dogmatism" and "parish life" were important facets of Catholicism, but that the church's brightest beacons were monks - Thomas Merton foremost among them.


Merton Quotes
Monks rarely dwell on "rules and regulations" as much as they seek inspiration through direct apprehension of The Divine. 

The essence of monastic life is "beyond words" - the pursuit of the intrinsically ineffable and inexpressible. 

From this vantage, it is fitting that "the words" of scholars, dogmatists and hierarchs take a back seat to people "in the know." 

British author Graham Greene described the chasm between Catholic officialdom and the equally Catholic impulse to get beyond The Official Story into the bowels of human experience, the loins of human relationship and the merciful heart of human transcendence.

Wikipedia
The Power and the Glory was somewhat controversial and,in 1953, Cardinal Bernard Griffin of Westminster summoned Greene and read him a pastoral letter condemning the novel. According to Greene:
The Archbishop of Westminster read me a letter from the Holy Office condemning my novel because it was "paradoxical" and "dealt with extraordinary circumstances." The price of liberty, even within a Church, is eternal vigilance, but I wonder whether any of the totalitarian states ... would have treated me as gently when I refused to revise the book on the casuistical ground that the copyright was in the hands of my publishers. There was no public condemnation, and the affair was allowed to drop into that peaceful oblivion which the Church wisely reserves for unimportant issues.
Evelyn Waugh in Greene's defence wrote, "It was as fatuous as unjust – a vile misreading of a noble book." In 1965, Greene met Pope Paul VI, who assured him, "Mr. Greene, some aspects of your books are certain to offend some Catholics, but you should pay no attention to that."[20] Many novelists consider the novel to be Greene's masterpiece, as John Updike claimed in his introduction to the 1990 reprint of the novel. On its publication, William Golding claimed Greene had "captured the conscience of the twentieth century man like no other.""
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"Graham Greene's Vatican Dossier"
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The pope himself -- aware that punctilious church officials were intent on condemning Greene's masterpiece -- advised the author to "pay no attention to that."

I repeat the pope's direct counsel: "Pay no attention to that."

Catholic traditionalists would have us believe such departures from rigid orthodoxy are sins worthy of schism.

On the other hand, prudent Catholics have always known that rigid orthodoxy is virtually unlivable and in the end is but one way to be Catholic. (Catholicism is The Smithsonian Institute of Christianity: rummage in the attic long enough and you'll find a "school" well-suited to your spiritual needs.) 

Ironically, rigid orthodoxy is so fearful, finger-wagging and just-plain-unlikable (to anyone "outside the tribe") that even the "chosen few" who manage to "clear the pilpulistic bar" do so at the loss of humanity and, often, their souls.

Recently, a Catholic traditionalist blogger, "The Thinking Housewife," proudly laid the groundwork of her own schism, stripping Bergolio (as she calls the current pope) of his Catholicism -- yes, you heard right: "the pope is NOT Catholic) -- declaring Francis a "sloganeering papal impostor" whose outsized ego draws attention to his charitable trumpery.


Compendium Of "Pax" Posts On "The Thinking Housewife," Laura Wood

Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"

"Love Your Enemies. Do Good To Those Who Hate You," Luke 6: 27-42

Bill McKibben: "The Christian paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong."

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/06/bill-mckibben-christian-paradox-how.html


Recently, "The Thinking Housewife" was hoist on her own petard, proclaiming St. Augustine's criticism of "cafeteria Catholicism" only to discover herself chief cook in her pseudo-spiritual fast food joint.

Saint_Augustine_by_Philippe_de_Champaigne
"If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself." 
St. Augustine

Here's how Ms. Wood rejects what she doesn't like... a practice that's fine with me. 
I'm sure the church is big enough to accommodate her.
Better to be "in the church" than leave in a snit.

"The Thinking Housewife And The Normalization Of America's Only Divorced President"

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Can Pope Francis Heal The Deep Divisions In Christianity?
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/11/21/can-pope-francis-heal-deep-divisions-christianity/EvN3T5m2CzroFtGmVJBRFL/story.html

By Austen Ivereigh  
This piece will be featured in the Nov. 23 print edition of The Boston Globe.
OCTOBER’S GATHERING of senior Catholic church leaders from across the world revealed Pope Francis’s extraordinary capacity to live in tension.
Faced with a small but angrily vocal minority of bishops determined to check his aim of moving the church in a more missionary, and merciful, direction, and an apparently inconclusive finale — the 190 voting members failed to agree on two vital issues — he did not flinch. In an unprecedented act of transparency, he ordered the concluding document to be published together with the vote tallies and gave one of his finest addresses to date.
In it he urged the synod fathers (and, by extension, the whole Catholic Church) to spend the next year discussing and discerning, in advance of a second gathering in October 2015, the two issues on which there was no clear green light to move forward. One was how to bind the wounds of the divorced while promoting marriage indissolubility; the other was how to embrace gay people while celebrating marriage as a conjugal institution.

In the manner of the master Jesuit retreat-giver he once was, Francis warned against “temptations” to flee the tension, whether through conservative inflexibility or liberal conformism. And he told them not to worry, that those who saw only a “disputatious church” needed to realize that they were gathered sub et cum Petro — with and under the pope — who was the guarantee that the Holy Spirit was present in it all, guiding the process.
Francis has experience in this area. After a decade leading a disputatious and divided Jesuit province in Argentina through a quicksand of its own temptations — left-wing revolution, right-wing dictatorship — Father Bergoglio spent years in deep study on how the Holy Spirit acts within the Christian body. In a doctorate he began but never finished, the future pope set out to understand how differing views in the church, freely expressed and properly channeled, opened spaces for the Holy Spirit to bring about new resolutions, just as it had in the early-church councils. Equally, he wanted to understand what destroys that path to convergence — the temptations that turn disagreements into contradictions — and how views fall out of the unity of the whole, and develop in opposition to the body. At this point they turn into closed human constructs, or ideologies. What follows is rivalry, conflict, and schism. That is the post-Reformation story.
Francis isn’t just applying these insights in the synod — urging its participants, for example, to speak out boldly and listen humbly — but also to healing the wounds of Christian division. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio forged a remarkable set of relationships, unique in the world, between leaders of the different churches. Unlike the usual “dialogue” between churches — a theological negotiation leading to agreements on doctrines — this was something quite different: friendship born out of regular meetings, joint prayer, and common projects.
After he was prayed over by evangelical pastors at a Catholic-Pentecostal rally in 2006, Cardinal Bergoglio met with them every month in their churches, arriving alone by bus and subway. To anyone involved in Christian unity work he made the same point over and over: Christians divided by denominations should be in relationship, living in the tension of their separate identities and not trying to resolve disagreements. Nor was this an elite activity, for priests and theologians, but something every Christian parish could do.









MONICA PAZ/LATINCONTENT/GETTY IMAGES
Then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio greets the faithful after celebrating mass in 2012 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Now Francis is preparing the ground for a historic breakthrough between Catholics and evangelicals. This is his own initiative. The Vatican body in charge of dialogue, the Council for Christian Unity, only has relations with the historic Protestant churches — Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists. But most Protestant Christians no longer belong to these: Some 600 million of them, about three-quarters of Protestants worldwide, are in loose, autonomous networks of Pentecostal or “independent” churches, who worship in the charismatic style. Their rise has made the old controversies between the historic churches seem obsolete. On many moral questions they are closer to Catholics than to the mainline Protestant churches. Yet Rome has had no means of speaking to them.
Francis is changing that. In a series of private meetings brokered by old friends from his pre-papal days, he has this year spent hours in meetings with major evangelical leaders in the United States, including televangelists such as Joel Osteen, James Robison, and Kenneth Copeland, as well as the head of the World Evangelical Alliance, Geoff Tunnicliffe, and the pioneers of the “Toronto blessing,” John and Carol Arnott. In July he made the first ever private visit by a pope to a Pentecostal pastor, his old friend Giovanni Traettino, in Caserta, Italy, to apologize for the times when the Catholic Church had made life difficult for evangelicals in Italy. These are his own initiatives. The Vatican’s Council for Christian Unity is kept informed of these meetings but has no part in them.
They are convivial gatherings, in which there is joint prayer, shared meals, and plenty of laughter. Francis tells them that their shared baptism, and openness to the Holy Spirit, are enough; that a new era is opening up of relations between Catholics and evangelicals; and that they shouldn’t wait for theologians to agree before acting and witnessing together. “I’m not interested in converting evangelicals to Catholicism,” one of them later reported the Pope telling him. “I want people to find Jesus in their own community. There are so many doctrines we will never agree on. Let’s be about showing the love of Jesus.”
There are plenty of paradoxes. The pope of the poor is bonding with some of the wealthiest televangelists in the United States, while a body of Christians who look to the simple authority of the Bible are building bridges to a church famous for its ornate liturgy and papal magisterium. But building this relationship helps make up for gaps and to restore imbalances. Francis is attacking the power of the princes, rooting the church in the ordinary people, and shedding the trappings of papal monarchy. For their part, the evangelicals realize that they cannot all be popes in their own backyard — and that they need a means of forging unity.
Francis sees his task as pope to open up these new spaces, responding to opportunities as they arise.In January, a South African evangelical bishop called Tony Palmer recorded an iPhone message from Francis to megachurch leaders in Texas, in which Francis humbly spoke of the miracle of unity that had begun.The video went viral, and Palmer was deluged with requests from evangelical leaders wanting to respond. In June, a month before he was tragically killed in a road accident, Palmer took a number of the leaders — together, they represented possibly 800 million Christians — to meet Francis, where they proposed signing, on the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, in 2017, a “joint declaration of faith in unity for mission.” The declaration will open a new era for Christians, encouraging them to act and pray together across the world, in spite of their differences.
The agreement will allow Christians across the world to do what Francis has been urging on the synod: to be in relationship, live in tension without letting it become contradiction, and let God do the rest.
Related:
Austen Ivereigh is the author of “The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope,” out this month.


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Bill Murray Considers Ralph Nader “the Greatest Living American”

November 22, 2014, 10:09 am
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Founder Of Canada's Single Payer Healthcare System Is "The Greatest Canadian Ever"


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Sure, Bill Murray might show up at your ice-cream social, minor-league-baseball game, and bachelor party for an amusing cameo. But Murray also has a serious, contemplative side, which he displayed during a recently published interview withThe Guardian. The paper’s conversation with the actor veered through unexpected terrain, like Catholic mass and politics, landing on the one present-day figure whom Murray really champions: Ralph Nader.
After calling the 80-year-old political activist “the greatest living American,” he proceeded to explain his reasoning, citing Nader’s crusade for automobile safety in the 60s.
“People thought: ‘Why is this son of a gun making me wear a seatbelt?’ Well, in 1965 I think the number was 55,000 deaths on the highway a year. That’s a lot of people dying. So he’s saved just about a couple of million people by now. It’s crazy! And that’s just one thing he did!
“I mean, they made a movie about the German who smuggled the Jews out. He saved hundreds. Great man. Deserved a movie. Spectacular. Great film and a great human being. But this guy, Ralph—there’s no movies about Ralph.”
Murray’s fondness for Nader is not a new revelation—the comedian campaigned for the Green Party candidate during his 2000 presidential run. His Nader tangent continued:
“Businesses bitch about this guy and people hate him because he’s trying to make change. He hasn’t become, like, super-crazy-wealthy or anything and it’s not about his celebrity. He’s really interested in improving the quality of life for the whole world. Not just America, the entire world.”
The actor, whose family is Irish Catholic, also took a moment to gripe about modern-era Catholic masses. “I think we lost something by losing the Latin. Now if you go to a Catholic mass even just in Harlem it can be in Spanish, it can be in Ethiopian, it can be in any number of languages.” And it’s not just the Latin he misses. “I really miss the music—the power of it, y’know?” he says. “Sacred music has an affect on your brain.” The actor says he isn’t interested in hearing “folk songs” or “Top 40 stuff” at church.
Now if you ever catch the actor in a solemn mood, you have some appropriate talking points.
To read the complete interview, click here.

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Top Department Of Homeland Security Checkpoint Refusals

November 22, 2014, 10:26 am
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Weird Enuf Fer Ya? News From Barbaria #161

November 22, 2014, 11:57 am
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Hitler Painting Sells For $161K. If Adolf Had Gotten Into Art School, No World War II

November 22, 2014, 1:49 pm
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"If Hitler Had Been Admitted To Art School, World War II Would Not Have Happened"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/04/if-hitler-had-been-admitted-to-art.html
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The watercolor painting ‘Altes Rathaus’ (‘Old Town Hall’), which was painted by Adolf Hitler, was auctioned for $161,000 on Saturday.
BERLIN—A watercolor of Munich’s old city hall painted by Adolf Hitler a century ago has been sold for €130,000 ($161,000) at an auction in Germany.
Kathrin Weidler, director of the Weider auction house in Nuremberg, said the work attracted bidders from four continents and went to a buyer from the Middle East. She declined to elaborate.
The painting, which had been expected to fetch at least €50,000, was sold by a pair of elderly sisters whose grandfather purchased it in 1916.
Hitler’s paintings surface regularly, but the auction house said the 11-by-8.5-inch scene auctioned on Saturday also includes the original bill of sale and a signed letter from Hitler’s adjutant, Albert Bormann, brother of the Nazi dictator’s private secretary, Martin Bormann.


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Jeb's Running! Spurns Dad And Dubyah To Curry Favor With Hateful Conservative Base

November 22, 2014, 3:11 pm
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Watch this video

Obama sounds exactly like Bush on Immigration

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Jeb Bush hammered Obama for unilateral action, but past Bush presidents have done similar
  • George H.W. Bush, son both gave relief to undocumented during their presidencies
  • Former Bush administration official says there's "hypocrisy" from both parties on the issue










Jeb Bush Ingores Family History In President's Immigration Pronouncement. Obama Sounds Just Like Dubyah.


Washington (CNN) -- Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's opposition to President Obama's executive action on deportations puts him in the uncomfortable position of running counter to policy moves taken by both his father and his brother during their presidencies.
It's the latest example of the complications Bush has faced on the immigration issue as he considers a 2016 presidential run. Bush has long drawn criticism from conservatives for his more moderate positions on reform, including his support for a pathway to citizenship for those here illegally.
His Friday statement on Obama's executive action to protect nearly 5 million immigrants from deportation was nuanced, taking aim only at the tactic, not the ultimate effect.
"President Obama's ill-advised unilateral action on illegal immigration undermines all efforts to forge a permanent solution to this crisis. Action must come in the form of bipartisan comprehensive reform passed through Congress," Bush said.
He later tweeted that the move was "an abuse of power."
But both Presidents George H.W. Bush and his son used similar unilateral action to protect immigrants from the threat of deportation under similar circumstances.
In 2001 President George W. Bush extended protections to as many as 150,000 Salvadorans in the United States illegally. And the elder Bush implemented a "Family Fairness" policy to allow an estimated 1.5 million close family members of newly legalized immigrants under the sweeping 1986 immigration reform measure to avoid deportationwhile they applied for legal status.
Those moves were used by Democrats to defend the legality of Obama's executive action.
And Julie Myers Wood, a former George W. Bush administration official who wrote a memo arguing for prosecutorial discretion on deportations, admitted that there was some hypocrisy from Republicans in opposition to this move.
"I think there's a lot of hypocrisy on both sides," she told CNN, "but certainly prosecutorial discretion has been a longstanding policy."
She said, however, Obama's move was unique because of "the broadness of the scope and the lack of individualized assessments," and because Obama was expanding access to work permits.
Wood echoed Jeb Bush's concern over the tactic used to solve the problem, saying that while she "actually liked the result that we're getting...it's an odd way to do it."
But she also acknowledged the President was running out of options to solve the problem.
"What was the President to do?" Wood asked.

She added: "This needed to be done. It's a pretty broken system."

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Adam Lanza: Conn. Concludes Access To Guns Relevant To Improved Public Health

November 22, 2014, 6:19 pm
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Adam and Peter Lanza when Adam was about 10


Adam Lanza Judgment: 'He, And He Alone, Bears Responsibility For This Monstrosity'


The Reckoning
The father of the Sandy Hook killer, Peter Lanza, searches for answers.

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ABC News Review Of Final Connecticut Report On Adam Lanza Who Killed 20 Children And 6 Teachers At Sandy Hook Elementary School In Newtown, Connecticut.

Two years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Connecticut's Office of the Child Advocate released a report today detailing the mental health profile of gunman Adam Lanza, noting potential missed opportunities.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/disturbing-things-learned-today-sandy-hook-shooter-adam/story?id=27087140
The Office of the Child Advocate, which investigates all child deaths in Connecticut for prevention lessons, released a 114-page report today.
Lanza was 20 on Dec. 14, 2012 when he shot his mother, Nancy Lanza and then went to the Sandy Hook Elementary School where he massacred 20 first-graders and six educators before taking his own life.
"It was not the primary purpose of this investigation to explicitly examine the role of guns in the Sandy Hook shootings," the report said. "However,the conclusion cannot be avoided that access to guns is relevant to an examination of ways to improve the public health. Access to assault weapons with high capacity magazines did play a major role in this and other mass shootings in recent history."


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Five Myths About Pope Francis

November 22, 2014, 7:56 pm
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Pope Francis, shown here in St. Peter’s Square, will make his first visit to the United States next year. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images)
By Maryann Cusimano Love  November 21
Maryann Cusimano Love is a professor of international relations in the politics department at Catholic University and a fellow at the school’s Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. She is the author of “Beyond Sovereignty.”
The first pope from the Americas will make his first visit to the United States next year, to Philadelphia for the World Meeting of Families. Before millions of U.S. Catholics greet the man who seems to be revolutionizing their faith, let’s clear up some misconceptions about the new pontiff’s beliefs and impact.
1. Pope Francis’s critiques of capitalism are only his personal opinions.
Pope Francis is not shy in his economic teachings. His papal exhortation last year, “The Joy of the Gospel,” included the declarations: “No to an economy of exclusion . . . such an economy kills,” “No to the new idolatry of money” and “No to a financial system which rules rather than serves.” He was not speaking metaphorically. Pope Francis has launched initiatives to combat modern-day slavery and human trafficking, in which people die as part of the global economy.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has decried Francis’s stance as his personal opinions coming from Argentina; Rush Limbaugh has called the pope’s position “pure Marxism.” Others in the right wing have said the pope is well-intentioned but uninformed about capitalism.
Like it or not, these economic teachings are not unique to Pope Francis. They’re the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, who was likewise pilloried by the powerful 2,000 years ago for telling the rich man to give everything he owned to the poor. Jesus urged us to put people before profits. Popes have long been critical of capitalism — from Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” on the rights and duties of capital and labor, to Saint John Paul II’s critique of market “idolatry” and Pope Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in Veritate,” which teaches that the primary capital to be safeguarded is man.
2. Pope Francis is merely a “brand fixer” for the Catholic Church.
This year, Fortune magazine placed Pope Francis No. 1 on its list of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.” Business books such as Jeffrey A. Krames’s “Lead With Humility: 12 Leadership Lessons From Pope Francis” praise his management and leadership skills. Some call him a “brand fixer” similar to American businessman C. Dean Metropoulos, who takes well-known, once-beloved but now tarnished brands such as Twinkies and Pabst Blue Ribbon and restores them to their core markets.It is true that Pope Francis is a strong manager and a modernizer, and that he has boosted public perceptions of the Catholic Church. He’s reformed the byzantine Vatican bank and has forced out Germany’s “Bishop of Bling.” He avoids fancy clothes, cars and papal palaces, and is promoting bishops who also live humbly.
At meetings in Rome recently, I was invited to stay in the Santa Marta guest house, the pope’s home. As a political scientist in Washington for more than two decades, I’ve seen my share of world leaders smile for the cameras. I’ve never seen a leader of 1.2 billion people grab his own plate and fill it with grub in the cafeteria line daily. He sits with the secretaries, laughs a lot, and talks with the desk clerk, the cleaning lady and the security guard when there are no cameras around. If this is a PR stunt, he’s doing it wrong.
3. Pope Francis is concerned about poverty, not peace.
Polish Pope Saint John Paul II helped end the Cold War. Saint John XXIII helped the United States and the Soviet Union resolve the Cuban missile crisis without unleashing nuclear war. Pope Francis is often seen as more focused on reducing poverty than on building peace, but this is a misreading of his teaching. Media coverage missed that the pope’s “Joy of the Gospel” exhortation laid out his peace plan. It calls for dialogue within society and among states, with other faiths, and with reason and science, and urges the building of peace through reconciliation. Peace-building is “people-building,” Pope Francis tells us, and every person is called to be a peacemaker.
4. Pope Francis will allow women to lead in the church.
Women already lead in the Catholic Church. As a pastor, Francis understands a basic demographic fact: Women are more religious than men — whether the measure of religion is belief in God, membership in a faith community, attendance at religious services, personal religious practices, raising children within a faith community or keeping religious traditions alive in families. They serve in leadership positions in Catholic health care, schools, universities, parishes and dioceses, and as chief executives of organizations such as Catholic Relief Services. Pope Francis has sharply criticized clericalism, decrying “little monster” priests who hold themselves superior and view the church as their property, while calling for greater integration of women into the church.
Yet few women serve in Vatican positions — such as the special commission on marriage — and no women are ordained priests. With the decline in the number of ordained priests, the church increasingly relies on women and lay people to lead its organizations. But Pope Francis is likely to disappoint both those seeking women’s ordination and those seeking to block women from serving in senior positions in the Vatican. He has shown a willingness to appoint lay people, including women, to senior posts. But on women’s ordination, he has said his predecessors have spoken and “that door is closed” — while also indicating that the bishops are not willing to reexamine the issue.
5. Pope Francis will allow Catholics to divorce.
Catholics already divorce; the debate is over what to do about this. Current church policy is one strike and you’re out: If a first marriage ends in divorce, Catholics cannot remarry in the church without an annulment. Those who divorce and remarry without an annulment may be denied Communion. Annulments require the church to investigate whether the marriage was valid in the first place according to church law or whether there were flaws at the time the vows were taken. Differing fees, bureaucracy, wait times and a lack of understanding of the process mean that annulments are granted unevenly around the world, and few divorced Catholics seek them.
Some media reports have indicated, incorrectly, that the pope wants to make “Catholic divorces” easier to get. The pope wants those who had a wedding, but not a marriage in the sense of the church sacrament, to have due process, to be able to grow in their faith after a failed first marriage and not be excluded from their faith if they attempt to remarry. He has created a special commission to reform matrimonial processes, and he convened the Synod of Bishops on the Family last month, which will continue next year. Pope Francis wants the whole family at the Eucharistic table, but he is advancing Communion, not divorce.
Church leaders agree about the importance of marriage and family; the debate is over how best to support them.
Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-pope-francis/2014/11/21/bbd7fa30-7027-11e4-ad12-3734c461eab6_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop
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Black Seadevil Caught On Camera At Depth Of 1900 Feet

November 22, 2014, 8:55 pm
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anglerfish2
Black Seadevil: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_seadevil

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Black Seadevil sounds fierce and looks that way, too, with spiking teeth on the outside of its oversize, angular jaw — until you realize it's only 9 centimeters long.
Researchers at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute spotted a deep-sea anglerfish in their exploration of the Monterey Canyon, a Pacific Ocean canyon as big as the Grand Canyon that starts close to the central California coastline.
These anglerfish are remarkable for the flashlight-like appendage that helps them lure prey. When a smaller fish or squid approaches, its huge jaws inhale the prey caught in its sharp teeth.
"These are ambush predators," says Bruce Robison, a senior scientist at the research institute who led the dive using a remotely operated diving vehicle operated from a nearby ocean research platform.
Black Seadevils like this Melanocetus are quite elusive. Robison, who spotted the Black Seadevil last week at a depth of 600 meters (1,900 feet), said he believes this is the first time such a creature was filmed alive and at depth.


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Urusla Le Guin: Where Ideas "Come From" And The "Secret" Of Great Writing

November 23, 2014, 5:51 am
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Alan: A Wizard of Earthsea is my favorite novel; a coming-of-age tale complete with pride, fall, death and resurrection. 
LeGuin's use of language rivals Shakespeare at his best.

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Ursula Le Guin: "There Are Lots Of Ways To Be Perfect And None Are Attained Through Punishment"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/ursula-le-guin-there-are-lots-of-ways.html

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"My Favorite Fiction Writer, Ursula Le Guin Wins; Inveighs Against Amazon"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/11/my-favorite-fiction-writer-ursula-le.html

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Ursula Le Guin's Translation Of The Tao Te Ching
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-tao-te-ching-lionel-giles-1905.html

Ursula K. Le Guin on Where Ideas Come From, the "Secret" of Great Writing, and the Trap of Marketing Your Work

Since long before the question of where good ideas come from became the psychologists' favorite sport, readers, fans, and audiences have been hurling it at authors and artists, much to their frustration. A few brave souls likeNeil Gaiman, Albert Einstein, and David Lynchhave attempted to answer it directly, or in Leonard Cohen's case to delightfully non-answer it directly, but none have done so with greater vigor of mind and heart than Ursula K. Le Guin – a writer of extraordinary wisdomdelivered with irresistible wit, and the eloquent recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
In 1987, Le Guin addressed the eternal question in an essay titled "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?," found in the altogether fantastic 1989 collection of her speeches, essays, and reviews, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (public library |IndieBound).
Noting that audiences frequently ask her the canonical question after lectures and talks, she considers the two reasons that make it impossible to answer:
The reason why it is unanswerable is, I think, that it involves at least two false notions, myths, about how fiction is written.
First myth: There is a secret to being a writer. If you can just learn the secret, you will instantly be a writer; and the secret might be where the ideas come from.
Second myth: Stories start from ideas; the origin of a story is an idea.
I will dispose of the first myth as quickly as possible. The "secret" is skill. If you haven't learned how to do something, the people who have may seem to be magicians, possessors of mysterious secrets. In a fairly simple art, such as making pie crust, there are certain teachable "secrets" of method that lead almost infallibly to good results; but in any complex art, such as housekeeping, piano-playing, clothes-making, or story-writing, there are so many techniques, skills, choices of method, so many variables, so many "secrets," some teachable and some not, that you can learn them only by methodical, repeated, long-continued practice – in other words, by work.
[...]
Some of the secretiveness of many artists about their techniques, recipes, etc., may be taken as a warning to the unskilled: What works for me isn't going to work for you unless you've worked for it.
Seconding Jack Kerouac's question of whether writers are born or made, Le Guin considers the role of what we call natural talent and what it lies beneath it:
My talent and inclination for writing stories and keeping house were strong from the start, and my gift for and interest in music and sewing were weak; so that I doubt that I would ever have been a good seamstress or pianist, no matter how hard I worked. But nothing I know about how I learned to do the things I am good at doing leads me to believe that there are "secrets" to the piano or the sewing machine or any art I'm no good at. There is just the obstinate, continuous cultivation of a disposition, leading to skill in performance.
She then turns to the second central fallacy of the origin-of-ideas question, namely the notion of the "idea" itself:
The more I think about the word "idea," the less idea I have what it means. ... I think this is a kind of shorthand use of "idea" to stand for the complicated, obscure, un-understood process of the conception and formation of what is going to be a story when it gets written down. The process may not involve ideas in the sense of intelligible thoughts; it may well not even involve words. It may be a matter of mood, resonances, mental glimpses, voices, emotions, visions, dreams, anything. It is different in every writer, and in many of us it is different every time. It is extremely difficult to talk about, because we have very little terminology for such processes.
Echoing Einstein's idea of "combinatory play" and artist Francis Bacon's notion that original art is the product of finely "grinding up" one's influences, Le Guin speaks to the combinatorial nature of the creative process:
I would say that as a general rule, though an external event may trigger it, this inceptive state or story-beginning phase does not come from anywhere outside the mind that can be pointed to; it arises in the mind, from psychic contents that have become unavailable to the conscious mind, inner or outer experience that has been, in Gary Snyder’s lovely phrase, composted. I don’t believe that a writer “gets” (takes into the head) an “idea” (some sort of mental object) “from” somewhere, and then turns it into words and writes them on paper. At least in my experience, it doesn’t work that way. The stuff has to be transformed into oneself, it has to be composted, before it can grow a story.
Mystical as the process may be, Le Guin goes on to outline its "five principal elements," which must "work in one insoluble unitary movement" in order to produce great writing:
  1. The patterns of the language – the sounds of words.
  2. The patterns of syntax and grammar; the way the words and sentences connect themselves together; the ways their connections interconnect to form the larger units (paragraphs, sections, chapters); hence the movement of the work, its tempo, pace, gait, and shape in time.
  3. The patterns of the images: what the words make us or let us see with the mind's eye or sense imaginatively.
  4. The patterns of the ideas: what the words and the narration of events make us understand, or use our understanding upon.
  5. The patterns of the feelings: what the words and the narration, by using all the above means, make us experience emotionally or spiritually, in areas of our being not directly accessible to or expressible in words.
Artwork from Stefanie Posavec's Writing Without Words, visualizing the patterns of sentences, paragraphs, and words in a text.

Echoing T.S. Eliot's notion of idea incubation, she adds:
All these kinds of patterning – sound, syntax, images, ideas, feelings – have to work together; and they all have to be there in some degree. The inception of the work, that mysterious stage, is perhaps their coming together: when in the author's mind a feeling begins to connect itself to an image that will express it, and that image leads to an idea, until now half-formed, that begins to find words for itself, and the words lead to other words that make new images, perhaps of people, characters of a story, who are doing things that express the underlying feelings and ideas that are now resonating with each other.
Considering the lopsiding of that five-point balance, Le Guin speaks to the importance of failure in growth:
If any of these processes get scanted badly or left out, in the conception stage, in the writing stage, or in the revising stage, the result will be a weak or failed story. Failure often allows us to analyze what success triumphantly hides from us.
In a sentiment that Rebecca Solnit would come to second decades later in reflecting on the shared intimacy of reading and writing, Le Guin deploys one of her characteristically animated metaphors that can't help but put a smile on the soul:
Beginners' failures are often the result of trying to work with strong feelings and ideas without having found the images to embody them, or without even knowing how to find the words and string them together. Ignorance of English vocabulary and grammar is a considerable liability to a writer of English. The best cure for it is, I believe, reading. People who learned to talk at two or so and have been practicing talking ever since feel with some justification that they know their language; but what they know is their spoken language, and if they read little, or read schlock, and haven't written much, their writing is going to be pretty much what their talking was when they were two.
She returns to the vital balance of those five elements:
There is a relationship, a reciprocity between the words and the images, ideas, and emotions evoked by those words: the stronger that relationship, the stronger the work. To believe that you can achieve meaning or feeling without coherent, integrated patterning of the sounds, the rhythms, the sentence structures, the images, is like believing you can go for a walk without bones.
Le Guin considers the epicenter of that relationship – of the elements, of reader and writer:
Imagery takes place in "the imagination," which I take to be the meeting place of the thinking mind with the sensing body... In the imagination we can share a capacity for experience and an understanding of truth far greater than our own. The great writers share theirs souls with us – "literally."
[...]
The intellect cannot do the work of the imagination; the emotions cannot do the work of the imagination; and neither of them can do anything much in fiction without the imagination.
Where the writer and the reader collaborate to make the work of fiction is perhaps, above all, in the imagination. In the joint creation of the fictive world.
With a self-effacing wink at her profession and the odd creative rituals of her ilk, Le Guin considers the writer's eternal tussle with his or her consciousness of, and often self-consciousness about, the audience – an audience that, today, is exponentially more able and willing to make its presence and opinion known via likes, tweets, and other innocuously named, spiritually toxic Pavlovian mechanisms:
Writers are egotists. All artists are. They can't be altruists and get their work done. And writers love to whine about the Solitude of the Author's Life, and lock themselves into cork-lined rooms or droop around in bars in order to whine better. But although most writing is done in solitude, I believe that it is done, like all the arts, for an audience. That is to say, with an audience. All the arts are performance arts, only some of them are sneakier about it than others.
Illustration by Jim Stoten from Mr. Tweed's Good Deeds

But her most piercing point – one she would come to echo three decades later in her National Book Award acceptance speech – is a monumental disclaimer:
I beg you please to attend carefully now to what I am not saying. I am not saying that you should think about your audience when you write. I am not saying that the writing writer should have in mind, "Who will read this? Who will buy it? Who am I aiming this at?"– as if it were a gun. No.
While planning a work, the writer may and often must think about readers: particularly if it's something like a story for children, where you need to know whether your reader is likely to be a five-year-old or a ten-year old.* Considerations of who will or might read the piece are appropriate and sometimes actively useful in planning it, thinking about it, thinking it out, inviting images. But once you start writing, it is fatal to think about anything but the writing. True work is done for the sake of doing it. What is to be done with it afterwards is another matter, another job. A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; it takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.
And yet the reader, Le Guin argues, is an essential piece of the telling of the story. The writer's work should extend an invitation for collaboration to the reader:
The writer cannot do it alone. The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it alive: a live thing, a story. ... It comes down to collaboration, or sharing the gift: the writer tries to get the reader working with the text in the effort to keep the whole story all going along in one piece in the right direction (which is my general notion of a good piece of fiction).
In this effort, writers need all the help they can get. Even under the most skilled control, the words will never fully embody the vision. Even with the most sympathetic reader, the truth will falter and grow partial. Writers have to get used to launching something beautiful and watching it crash and burn. They also have to learn when to let go control, when the work takes off on its own and flies, farther than they ever planned or imagined, to places they didn't know they knew. All makers must leave room for the acts of the spirit. But they have to work hard and carefully, and wait patiently, to deserve them.
Dancing at the Edge of the World is a glorious read in its entirety. Complement it with Le Guin on being a man and on aging and what beauty really means.

Complement for more timeless wisdom on writing from some of history's greatest authors, see this ongoing omnibus of advice, including Elmore Leonard’s ten tips on writing, Neil Gaiman’s eight pointers, Nietzsche’sten rules, Walter Benjamin’s thirteen doctrines, Henry Miller’s eleven commandments, and Kurt Vonnegut’s eight tips for writing with style,Zadie Smith on the two psychologies for writing, and Vladimir Nabokovon the three qualities of a great storyteller.

* C.S. Lewis would beg to vehemently differ, as would Tolkien, and Maurice Sendak would practically leap in protestation.

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The Spirit Of Sauntering: Wandering In The Holy Land. Henry David Thoreau

November 23, 2014, 6:23 am
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The Spirit of Sauntering: Thoreau on the Art of Walking and the Perils of a Sedentary Lifestyle

“Go out and walk. That is the glory of life,”Maira Kalman exhorted in her glorious visual memoir. A century and a half earlier, another remarkable mind made a beautiful and timeless case for that basic, infinitely rewarding, yet presently endangered human activity.

Henry David Thoreau was a man of extraordinary wisdom on everything from optimism to the true meaning of "success" tothe creative benefits of keeping a diary to the greatest gift of growing old. In his 1861 treatise Walking (free ebook | public library |IndieBound), penned seven years after Walden, he sets out to remind us of how that primal act of mobility connects us with our essential wildness, that spring of spiritual vitality methodically dried up by our sedentary civilization.


Intending to "regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society," because "there are enough champions of civilization," Thoreau argues that the genius of walking lies not in mechanically putting one foot in front of the other en route to a destination but in mastering the art of sauntering. (In one of several wonderful asides, Thoreau offers what is perhaps the best definition of "genius": "Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself – and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.") An avid practitioner of hiking, Thoreau extols sauntering as a different thing altogether:
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks – who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.
Proclaiming that "every walk is a sort of crusade," Thoreau laments – note, a century and a half before our present sedentary society – our growing civilizational tameness, which has possessed us to cease undertaking "persevering, never-ending enterprises" so that even "our expeditions are but tours." With a dramatic flair, he lays out the spiritual conditions required of the true walker:

If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again – if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man – then you are ready for a walk.
[...]
No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession... It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker.
Thoreau's prescription, to be sure, is neither for the faint of body nor for the gainfully entrapped in the nine-to-five hamster wheel. Professing that the preservation of his "health and spirits" requires "sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields" for at least four hours a day, he laments the fates of the less fortunate and leaves one wondering what he may have said of today's desk-bound office worker:
When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them – as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon – I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.
[...]
I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together.
Of course, lest we forget, Thoreau was able to saunter through the woods and over the hills and fields in no small part thanks to support from his mom and sister, who fetched him fresh-baked donuts as he renounced civilization.In fact, he makes a sweetly compassionate aside, given the era he was writing in, about women's historical lack of mobility:
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not stand it at all.
Thoreau is careful to point out that the walking he extols has nothing to do with transportational utility or physical exercise – rather it is a spiritual endeavor undertaken for its own sake:
The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours – as the Swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!

To engage in this kind of walking, Thoreau argues, we ought to reconnect with our wild nature:
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? ... Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure – as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.
[...]
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest.
[...]
All good things are wild and free.
One can only wonder how Thoreau would eviscerate this formidable set of civilizing regulations at Walden Pond, his beloved patch of wilderness. (Photograph: Karen Barbarossa)


But his most prescient point has to do with the idea that sauntering – like any soul-nourishing activity – should be approached with a mindset of presence rather than productivity. To think that a man who lived in a forest cabin in the middle of the 19th century might have such extraordinary insight into our toxic modern cult of busyness is hard to imagine, and yet he captures the idea that "busy is a decision" with astounding elegance:
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is – I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
"Nature Deficit Disorder And Sauntering"

"Nature Is Cheaper..."

Walking, which is available as a free ebook, is a brisk and immensely invigorating read in its entirety, as Thoreau goes on to explore the usefulness of useless knowledge, the uselessness of given names, and how private property is killing our capacity for wildness. Complement it with Maira Kalman on walking as a creative stimulant and the cognitive science of how a walk along a single city block can forever change the way you perceive the world.

"Thoreau On The Greatest Gift Of Growing Old"







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