As Perfect As Could Be

From Victor Hansons' blog, a month ago:

Wisdom and Idiocy in Farming

I can recall, comparing great things to small, the same changing wisdom in farming: pick grapes early for a safe drying period for raisins; or pick late to ensure a sweet ripening grape for a better raisin. If September was dry and hot, then the late guys who saved their heavy sweet raisins were geniuses; but if it rained, the early pickers who at least salvaged their crops when no one else could were considered brilliant.

But some September mornings it would cloud up and threaten; then the neighbors almost hourly would praise the early pickers as visionaries. But by afternoon when the clouds blew away and the sun appeared, the same critics would blast those who had their grapes prematurely on the ground as idiots who panicked and would have “wheaties” not raisins due to their sour grapes on the tray.

I wrote about the daily changing wisdom in Fields Without Dreams, and how fickle human nature is, rather than looking at things in a tragic sense that there are no great choices, but often just bad and worse, and that wisdom is predicated mostly on the perception of success. In 1982 I picked early and thereby avoided a horrendous tropical storm that ruined the industry, saving thereby 200 tons of raisins that sold for over $1400 a ton; in 1983 I picked early again, the clouds blew away, and in weeks of perfect weather I produced lousy, sour, and light raisins, selling scarcely 140 tons for $400 and lost far more than I had made the year before. I was neither a genius the year before, nor a fool the next, but rather did the best I could in both years, recognizing that we are still subject to fate, despite our vaunted technology and knowledge. I am not advising helplessness, simply some recognition that the verdict is out on Iraq, and what looks bad today, might look far better very soon—and that erstwhile supporters turned vehement critics might well reinvent themselves a third time.

The field of choices from which we much chose, everyday, in order to live our lives are rarely ever crucial or great. They're generally found in the mundane and pointless. We make them big, but they are not of themselves. Only after the fact do they become the stuff of stories or legends we tell others, or others tell still others.

Laugh, Clown, Laugh

The key line:

"Laugh, clown, laugh, even though your heart is breaking."

A great line of what seems to be a great movie, a silent film from 1928, starring the then famous horror actor Lon Chaney and a very beautiful Lorretta Young (15 years old!?!). It was on Turner Classics tonight. It featured a new (2002) and very good soundtrack by H. Scott Salinas as the poster to the right indicates. Here is IMDB's listing of the movie, which includes what seems to be a knowledgable write up by a viewer.

I caught the ending but was immediately taken in the same way that Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise caught me. --The simultaneous glimpse of how actors' lives and stage performance interact and influence each other. This is, I like to think, not mere ephemeral and superficial interest such as one might find in supermarket tabloids that cover the private lives of celebrities. The interest arises from how life's experiences become grist for the creative imagination.

It is much more obvious in Children of Paradise, one of my favorite films, and I might indeed be misled with the little that I saw of Laugh, Clown, Laugh, but perhaps not. The critical scenes in each seem to be, at least to my way of thinking, wherein the protagonist (a mime in COP and a clown in LCL) looses his beloved to a rival. For the mime, it becomes the source of inspiration for his shows, which is why he becomes so popular among the poor and downtrodden. For the clown, it leads to his inspired performance that shows him, in the midst of his show, swing from the elation of learning her love to the succeeding moment when he learns that he was misled. His show must go on and his inspired playing which thrilled the crowd is dangerously close to being ruined with his subsequent disappointment. At that moment, the clown's friend prompts him to bow to the adoring audience, saying,

"You are theirs. . . Laugh, Clown, Laugh, even though your heart is breaking."

Obviously,....

(she said) regrets come back to haunt most any and sometimes every night.

But, tonight, for the first time--since I can't remember when--I saw the stars and, what is more, some of the everlasting constellations. The first was Cassiopeia. Then, Orion came springing over the tennis fence, running to defend the Seven Sisters (of whom the seventh still hid behind one of her sisters). Seeking to reorient my senses--as if that would translate to an existential adjustment--I scanned back for the North Pole. But since I could only find Cassiopeia (the Big Dipper was too low in the lights and haze of a corrupt city), I could, not surprisingly, only guess as which was Polaris. My guess was good, I am sure. There were not a lot of choices after all.

The night sky is only so satisfactory here, in this big metropolis. --How can one ever be satisfied with a dull, fuzzy and distant apparition when one has seen it face to face, where the twinkling tickled and the Milky Way glows luminiscent. Where the blackness is dangerously close to being violated and torn through with piercing, hard little lights. It gives one the hope of a damascusian road experience. But it never comes.

If stars were, as the story goes, God's manifold and rich blessings suddenly, because of our sin, arrested to be suspended for an eternity above us and forever out of reach, they are hard. And God harder. And falling stars less a promise of dreams coming true and more like a sadistic tease of what could have been ours.

Yet, I have never beheld, gazed and drank upon them in that way. Experience can't be wrong, can it?

A little less hard. And little more kin, please.

Finally...

a break in the heat. It is 70 degrees this morning and even though the humidity is high (near 70% I believe), the dewpoint feels comfortable. So, we have opened up the apartment. The forecast shows a slightly decreasing temperature for highs and lows and dewpoint of the next four days, so it should be getting nicer and nicer.

And next weekend could be drier and cooler, our first taste of fall perhaps. Just the right kind of weather for the State Fair (mentioned below). But we aim to go Monday, when it should be cool and comfortable enough.

The Big Tex

We are considering going to the Texas State Fair, or as the natives call it, "the Big Tex". Lots of farm animals and people, which is always good.

This week would be good except that it is too hot.... Mid-90's all week and dewpoint above 60 degrees.

Click on Big Tex to go to the website.

Islam's Appeal to Young Men

Raymond Ibrahim, at Victor Hanson's Private Papers, offers an interesting and plausible, I think, reason for why young men are attracted to Islam:

There is another subtle factor that makes Islam attractive. Traditional masculine roles are well preserved in Islam. Indeed, manly honor, courage, patriarchy, and a sharp division between the sexes are at the core of Islamic culture. This may be appealing to Western men who find it difficult to express their “manhood” in increasingly neutered societies. Harvey Mansfield, author of Manliness, defines that term as “a quality both bad and good, mostly male, often intolerant, irrational, and ambitious. Our gender-neutral society does not like it but cannot get rid of it.”

Read the rest here.

Fightin' Clean

From No Left Turns, this quote of a Beverly Hillbillies show:

Granny: "Remember what William Jennings Bryan said, ’fight hard but fight clean’?"
Jethro: "But you ain’t fightin’ clean Granny"
Granny: "Course I ain’t, William Jennings Bryan was a loser!"