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"What should they know of England who only England know?"

"Bishop says collapse of Christianity is wrecking British society — and Islam is filling the void," headlines the UKs Daily Mail.

"What should they know of England who only England know?" Pakistani-born Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of the Church of England quotes Kipling in support of an outsider's ability to see what eludes the locals, and it's huge:

In a lacerating attack on liberal values, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, said the country was mired in a doctrine of 'endless self-indulgence' that had brought an explosion in public violence and binge-drinking.

In a blow to Gordon Brown, he mocked the 'scramblings and scratchings' of politicians who try to cast new British values such as respect and tolerance.

The Pakistani-born bishop dated the downfall of Christianity from the 'social and sexual revolution' of the 1960s.

Enjoying the freedom to let it all hang out in our salad days at the time, we had no idea of the unforeseen consequences that lay ahead. We did what came naturally and enjoyed the ride. Girls just wanna have fun, after all. Christian values were the farthest thing from our mind.

Dr Nazir-Ali's attack on the decline of Christianity appears to put him in the opposite corner to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and many of his fellow bishops.

But he holds some views in common with the Church's other widely-heard and popular prelate, Ugandan-born Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York …

The bishop warned that views not founded on Christianity would not produce the same values. "Instead of Christian virtues of humility, service and sacrifice, there may be honour, piety, the saving of face, etc," 

Exactly what we've been flogging/blogging here forever, the importance of being noticed. We're reminded of a couple of things we were just talkin' 'bout with our imail correspondent this afternoon. Unforeseen consequences:

We: It's scary how they use high-tech -— ultrasound — to facilitate the ancient practice of female infanticide. Talk about your unforeseen consequences.

She: I was thinking about how Lincoln was reviled, in his day. If we had the instant soundbite in those days, we would be two separate nations now, which could be a good or bad thing. I'm tired of Florida and its problems, aren't you?

We: Big time. And you're right. The soundbite thing is equivalent to ultrasound as far as unforeseen consequences.

As someone out there said today, when you substitute man's law for the laws of nature and nature's God, you're traveling down that well-beaten path to Hell, as George Weigel explained in his powerful essay "Is Europe Dying? Notes on a Crisis of Civilizational Morale" three years back, blogged here:

The proponents of nineteenth-century European atheistic humanism turned this inside out and upside down. Human freedom, they argued, could not coexist with the God of Jews and Christians. Human greatness required rejecting the biblical God, according to such avatars of atheistic humanism as Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche. And here, Father de Lubac argued, were ideas with consequences — lethal consequences, as it turned out. For when you marry modern technology to the ideas of atheistic humanism, what you get are the great mid-twentieth century tyrannies — communism, fascism, Nazism.

And female infanticide on a global scale.

Update: Maggie's links.

Peter Rabbit's Soup

"I think carrot soup has a future," exclaimed Tuck during lunchtime taste trials of Peter Rabbit's Soup, the latest entry in our Cold Turkey Cookbook. It reminds me of your coffee carafe," wrote our imail correspondent re the vibrant colors of the Day-Glo orange soup cooling on the counter in its clear plastic Glad container with cobalt-blue cover (above). Recipe below.

"The formal design is an abstraction — in reverse colors — of a heavenly sphere rising out of the horizon, the essence of daybreak. In the real world the orb is orange, the landform blue," we wrote of our orange-and-cobalt-blue Alfi La Ola thermal carafe last winter.

Mummy always tried to get us children to eat our vegetables by playing the guilt card, telling us that Peter Rabbit would be upset if we didn't finish those carrots. Excerpts from a late-afternoon imail chat:

She: I ADORE the Peter Rabbit's Soup concept.

We: Tuck does too.

She: I always remember Peter, because, when he hid in a watering can … "It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it …"  I must have read that story to Matt eleventy-two times. Chris never liked being read to. That's why I am THRILLED that he's become quite the reader, all on his own.

We: Yes. All things in their time. It is truly a wonderment.

"First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes." The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library.

In fond remembrance of all things bright and beautiful past, we present our version of carrot soup. Using Bon Appétit's Carrot Soup at Epicurious as a jumping-off point, we halved the portions and simplified according to our own preferred cooking methods and ingredients.

Peter Rabbit's Soup

1 lb carrots (about 9 medium) pared and coarsely sliced

6 cloves roasted (or fresh) garlic coarsely chopped

Bouquet garni of 8 cloves and 1 tbsp of peppercorns (we wrapped them in a small piece of cooking cheesecloth, twisted the top and placed 'em atop the carrots)

2 cups fat-free chicken broth

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Steam carrots and garlic with bouquet garni of spices in steamer 30 minutes.

Discard bouquet garni, transfer carrots and garlic to food processor, add 1/2 cup of the broth, brown sugar and lemon juice and purée.

Return to bottom of steamer, add rest of the broth and bring slowly to a boil, stirring to blend. Serve hot or cold. Enough for four as an accompaniment to lunch or dinner.

Note: It's time to congratulate us. Today's the one-year anniversary of our Cold Turkey odyssey! As we blogged the other day, "41 and counting." And guess what? Tuck reports that the doc we share told him he's using our case to inspire his adiposity-challenged patients to just say no.

Whichever way the wind blows

How big is a Silver Maple samara? It depends upon your point of view. To Tiny they're tiny and no big deal. Possibly something to go for the jugular of (of which to go for the jugular?) when they're stirred up by the wind.

Fun facts about the Brown Snake (Storeria dekayi): It is not uncommon to find several (or many) brown snakes under debris in vacant lots, parks and cemeteries. Earthworms and slugs are their preferred foods; however, they will also take sow bugs, insects, spiders, small fish and small frogs." Tuck found a plump, juicy slug under the very next brick he overturned.

To this tiny Brown Snake (x 2) Acer Saccharinum's winged fruit can be the roof of a springtime cabana. Tuck came upon this little fella between a brick and a hard place — nestled between two loosely stacked bricks, that is — as he was tidying up the woodpile and surrounds behind the house this afternoon. We didn't notice at the time, when all eyes and camera lenses were focused on the totally awesome li'l serpent, but the remains of an arachnid of unknown provenance (lower right) were under there too. We carefully picked the snake up by the tip of its tail and relocated it safely away from the suburban renewal site.

To the samaras themselves, they are The People, elegantly engineered winged wonders yearning to breathe free.

To Google searchers of SpongeBob, who knows? We brought it up because we noticed an unusual number of "hits" via SpongeBob searches in our Site Meter stats this afternoon. Googling, we found that our own venerable post of November 2004, "How to get a zillion hits on your blog," has worked its way to #2 in the images at the top of the search results page. It's also the second image on the "image results for spongebob" page. We take 'em where we get 'em. Like the winged fruits that go whichever way the wind blows, our blog posts are at the mercy of the googlewinds.

To bring himself back into the scheme of history

They're not the tiny samaras of early spring we knew. Mature but still clinging earlier this week to the spent female flowers of our Silver Maple — whose courtship we documented in "Not just another pretty face" and "He may not be pretty, but he has a sense of humor" early March — they (x 3) were swept off their feet stems by the high winds and heavy downpours of Tuesday's thunderstorm and now lie scattered about the terrace, thinking about putting down some roots. Acer Saccharinum seeds require no dormant period and germinate as soon as they hit the ground. The shimmering albedo of daylight reflected from a nearby window works magic with the sun's early rays.

"It's a different Scott from the Scott I knew," disappointed former White House colleagues are telling the press re former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's "blockbuster" kiss-and-tell, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, whose publisher, Public Affairs, is "affiliated with the far-left The Nation magazine" and George Soros, reports NewsBusters. The book skyrocketed to the top of Amazon's best-seller list on the super-cold liquid hydrogen fuel of anti-Bush pre-publication hysteria as gleeful BDS sufferers proclaimed McClellan's version of the story proved they had been right all along [Bush Lied, People Died™]:

Harry Smith on CBS "Early Show" Wednesday:  There's another quote from the book. "Rather than choosing to be forthright and candid, they chose to sell the war and in so doing they did a disservice to the American people and to our democracy." These are damning, angry words.

Mike Allen, who broke the story Tuesday in Politico: Yeah, well, and Harry, what's fascinating about them is that they echo both the substance and even the rhetoric, the phraseology of left wing liberal critics."

Echo, echo, echo. Did Allen realize the irony in that last bit? Meanwhile McClellan's old boss, Ari Fleischer, and others on the right side of the aisle were speculating as to what had happened to their old friend to cause him to turn on his kind:

I think Scott was magnanimous when he was asked to leave at a time that was earlier than Scott had intended to leave … But since then, Scott has a lot of second thoughts …

We were wrong about whether Saddam had a WMD but that didn't mean the president manipulated anything. And Scott uses the very same words that the far left uses and I find that troubling because I find it inaccurate.

Gratuitous cute-kitty shot with Babe out by the woodpile, gazing intently at things we don't see, to give a sense of scale to the Silver Maple samaras (see below his ruff, lower right).

"Scott told me that his editor did 'tweak,' in Scott's word, a lot of the writing, especially in the last few months,” Fleischer told CBS Evening News, and somewhere out there in 24/7 land we caught this from Fleischer's lips:

He may be trying to hit the reset button on a new career, which has been hard since he left the White House … I find it hard to understand what made Scott change 180 degrees.

Thinking about McClellan's betrayal of his former friends and colleagues and betters in the White House, our own ur-theme, "The importance of being noticed" — based upon Peter F. Rowbotham's essay (scroll down) of the same name — came to mind. Beyond the desire to make a pile, was the insecure young man who was asked to leave his WH post "earlier than [he] had intended" motivated above all by an existential need to regain lost honor? As Rowbotham wrote:

We search for honor in favored venues and in chosen social institutions. We avoid those places and those social groupings which inhibit our search, which do not advance, and may even set back, our moral careers.

And as we wrote in "The real issue is, whom do we select as our peers":

The importance of being noticed makes the world go 'round, from al-Queda types who intimidate through cold-blooded murder of innocents to impress their "brothers," to internet hackers who wreak havoc amongst online innocents to impress their own fellow travelers. On the good side, each one of us seeks, through our accomplishments, to earn a place of honor among our peers. The real issue is, whom do we select as our peers. Once again we recall Peter F. Rowbotham's citation of the unorthodox bonding rituals of Hell's Angels and British soccer fans as examples of a "system of honor that is an alternative to mainstream moral orders."

American Elm's (Ulmus americana) fringed, notched, single-seeded samaras (x 6) intermingle with maple fruits on the terrace. Both are flood-plain species, whose airborne offspring would normally fall on water during spring floods, to be carried off downstream from the parent tree. Just as our nephew's Trinity College commencement ceremonies were wrapping up years ago — with assembled guests seated on the green beneath a grove of stately elms — the wind blew up and showered the company with samaras, a thrilling metaphor for the promise of educated young adulthood.

In another context, writing of what motivates leaders of the Islamist terrorist community — blogged here — Shelby Steele put his finger on what may seem counterintuitive to some but makes perfect Darwinian sense:

The dark achievement of bin Laden, Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad, names we know only because of their association to menace, is that they have used menace to make their people visible in the world, to bring them back into the scheme of history. And they are greatly loved for this. If their achievements follow from evil rather than from good, this is a small thing. Worse than evil is invisibility.

Might McClellan have rationalized something similar for his own behavior? Unable to get respect from his former White House colleagues, he turned to their nemesis, the BDS community, who welcomed him with open arms and seemingly brought him "back into the scheme of history," if only for a few news cycles.

Update: Modulator welcomes all things bright and beautiful at Friday Ark #193.

Update II: Rationalizations for all manner of bad behaviors now on display at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

The heart that loves is ever young

"I'll kill you before you have a chance to kill yourself," says our totally glamorous sis to her Barney II just before mounting the Harley behind him and heading out for parts unknown this afta.

They made it back in time for Susie's totally awesome rhubarb pie with cheddar cheese. Tuck couldn't decide between the cheese and ice cream and so opted for both.

You are so beautiful to me. Lookin' good.

Ain't she sweet? The Chelsea Grays LOVE it Down East. No tethers. All whatever you want to do all the  time.

Oh, yes, and lots of good feeding opportunities. Just ask the Babe.

Susie and her babies make the eternal Madonna and Child forever young.

"Because we sailed too close to the shore"

"For the beauty of the earth, For the Glory of the skies…" Grapefruit and lilacs for breakfast Down East early morning.

"I'm savoring the revealing contrast between Drake's seafaring 'reach for the stars' vision and Michelle Obama's landlocked 'audacity of whining' (Powerline's expression)," we wrote in the comments of Bird Dog's totally awesome "Annual re-post: Sir Francis Drake's Prayer (1577) at Maggie's Farm.

Sir Francis:

Disturb us Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore…

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

What we said two Mem Days back still applies, big time: "Sunrise this morning over Eastern Point across the river from Goomp's, headquarters for the family's Memorial Day salute to the awesomely brave and good and true fellow Americans who give their all so we might enjoy such natural wonders. We think you know who you are, our beloved fellow bloggers and readers who serve and love those who serve. We cannot thank you enough. God bless."

Michelle Obama:

You start working hard and sacrificing, and you think you’re getting closer to the bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, you get right to that bar, you’re reaching out for the bar, and then what happens?

They raise the bar. Raise the bar. Shift it to the side. Keep it just out of reach.

"Let us not wallow in the valley of despair," Martin Luther King famously said:

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream.

Is Michelle Obama "too pleased with herself," venturing on Francis Drake's "wilder seas" even as she urges her listeners to instead "dream too little" and sail "too close to the shore"? The soft bigotry of low expectations?

"Grand temples to the mystery of mechanical progress"

Springtime in Paris, again and again. "Car showrooms were once the wonders of the modern world. grand temples to the mystery of mechanical progress. Citroën, always one of the most forward-looking of firms, was amongst the first to embrace modern architecture’s potential for making spaces to showcase their wares," says Yanko Design. Now Citroen's "famous double chevron logo is woven into the 30m-high faceted front" of the carmaker's flagship showroom, C42. Designed by Manuelle Gautrand to replace Citroën's once cutting-edge Art Nouveau showroom on Paris's Champs Elysées, it features a "central mast rising up the full height of the space, containing suspended rotating platforms to display cars and concepts." Their "Unmistakenly German" ad has left us reeling. Thanks to Archinect for the heads up.

"The Al Dura controversy is the biggest media scandal in the world," French media watchdog Philippe Karsenty told Front Page's Jamie Glazov in May of 2006, just under two years to the day before the French court pleasantly surprised the seekers-of-wisdom-and-truth community this week by dismissing charges brought against Karsenty by truthiness-monger France2. Congratulations to our dear friend Richard Landes for his ongoing, heroic efforts to expose the big lie that is "Pallywood … the staging of scenes by Palestinian journalists in order to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression." As Richard has written:

They are able to succeed in this endeavor in large part due to the credulity and eagerness of the Western press to present these images, which reinforce the image of the Palestinian David struggling valiantly against the overpowering Israeli Goliath.

"Originally a mass-market car maker with relatively straightforward designs, Citroën shocked the world in 1934 with the innovative Traction Avant, the world's first mass-production front wheel drive car (1934-56)," according to Speedace.info. Isn't that the cutest car ever was? They've never had much of a business model, having been forced into foreclosure and been taken over by their biggest creditor, Michelin in 1934. Another takeover was completed in May 1976, as Peugeot SA purchased a 90% stake of Citroën SA and the companies were combined into a holding company, known as PSA Peugeot Citroën. Nobody said being cutting edge was going to be easy.

We were particularly struck by something Karsenty said to Glazov in that Front Page interview:

[Al Dura] occurred more than five years ago and it twisted the brains of hundreds of millions of people, thinking that the Jews, or the Israelis, which is the same for many people in Europe, kill Arab kids on purpose. This image is now in everyone's brain. It’s a forgery that developed anti-Semitism, but not only, also anti-Americanism and I’d say, anti-Western values all over the world. Never forget it occurred a year before 9/11.

But, but … didn't "the world" love us before Bush McHitler made them hate us? Just ask Barack Obama. As with every totalitarianist ever was, rewriting history — or is it merely not studying history? — seems to be his stock in trade. As we've blogged here from way back in December of 2006, we're with Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer re "Obama's Troubling Instincts" and "A Gaffe, an Absurdity, and a Policy."

When cats garden

When the Chelsea Grays went out to inspect the new plants — mostly annuals plus a couple of perennials to be bedded out in the parterre garden — Tiny was at first more interested in the labels than the leaves of the catnip and catmint. Overnight we'd had at least one feline visitor, probably one of the neighborhood toms, who'd knocked over the catnip container and partaken of "the bubbly." Scent checking for trespassers trumped chewing on the weed itself for our sweet tiny girl.

The Babe, on the other paw, went straight for the catnip plant itself, only later catching up with his scent reading of the tea leaves.

Sniff, sniff, sniff!

Tuck got everything planted in just a few hours. As always, he made it look easy. The petunias are Maxfield Parrish's  colors of daybreak — pink, purple and lavender — with marigold accents (just above Tiny's head, above) the color of the rising sun.

Update: Lots more cats, dogs, birds and all creatures bright and beautiful at Modultor's Friday Ark #192.

It's the adaptive dishonesty, stupid

"Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) produces the highest yields in full sunlight and under cooler conditions," according to UWI/UMN's  'Alternative Field Crops Manual.'"  Unlike annual crops, the leaves do not readily wilt during extended periods of drought due to its deep root system." 'Reminds us of GW. This specimen (x 6.5), the latest generation of a few clumps taken years ago from Mummy's Down East garden, is enjoying its best year ever on the estate here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea.

"Having to wait for vindication will make it all that sweeter," comments Lucianne re Investor's Business Daily's "Bashers Beware," a warning for BDS sufferers of both the left and right whose fearful flight from facts has led them to believe their own rhetoric instead of their lying eyes (and ears):

It takes little courage — or brains — to join the mob vilifying President Bush. But the Democrats (and Republicans, too) depicting him as villain will one day regret it.

In the eyes of members of both parties, George W. Bush seems to be the cause [Bush's Fault ™] of everything from the recent GOP special election losses to a flagging economy to today's bad weather …

There is undeniably a lot of gloom and doom out there, with the Reuters/University of Michigan sentiment index at a 26-year low. But the National Association for Business Economics announced Monday that it expects the current downturn to be mild and brief …

When faced with the entire Washington establishment demanding an end to the war — including his own father's secretary of state, James Baker — President Bush stuck to his guns, placed a new general in charge and employed a surge strategy that is now winning the war in Iraq in resounding fashion.

"Looking for a hardy, pest-resistant, drought-tolerant plant that can handle sun or shade, has an extended blooming period and comes in a whole range of colors? If you answered yes, you've been saved by Coral Bells (Heuchera)," according to HGTV. Normally beet-red underside of leaf of Heuchera micrantha 'Palace Purple' — 1991 Perennial Plant of the Year — backlit by the morning sun glows crimson. Middleground: lanceolate leaves of Giant Onion (Allium giganteum). Background: pale purple blossoms of Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) taken years ago from the forest edge along Western Point Road on the way to Goomp's.

"McCain, meanwhile, seems to think it a wise campaign strategy to highlight his differences with the president, such as outgreening the greens on global warming," notes the IBD. It's the "adaptive dishonesty," stupid, explains Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. in today's WSJ:

"But honor, the value that underllined Mr. McCain's stand [on Iraq], is no use on an issue like global warming … Politics is often a business of adaptive dishonesty, and never more so than when dealing with an issue like climate change. Real solutions are lacking so politicians can only devote themselves to telling voters what they want to hear while dishing out favors to whatever lobbyists are handy … Nobody who seriously wants to be president in 2008 is going to question the "consensus" on global warming.

Migratory like the better known Monarch (Danaus plexippus), the Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui AKA Cynthia cardui) is "also known as the Thistle Butterfly because of the caterpillars' food preference and also as the Cosmopolitan because it is the most widely distributed butterfly in the world," according to online sources. This specimen stopped to take nectar this morning from the full-blooming lilacs along the porch front facing the river. Fun fact of the day according to an Iowa State web page: "There is increasing evidence that climatic anomalies such as El Niño trigger large-scale migrations of Painted Ladies." Who's going to tell Al Gore?

We'll be voting for McCain in spite of his jumping on the anthropogenic-climate-change bandwagon, of course. Back in November of 2004, when climatologist and Cato Institute Senior Fellow Patrick J. Michael told CNSNews.com that the Arizona senator was "trying to define himself as an environmental Republican, which he is going to use to differentiate himself from his rivals for the (presidential) nomination in 2008," we wrote:

We suspect that beyond media manipulation for funding purposes, the primal human need to believe we can control nature is what makes the human-causation thesis so appealing to both buyers and sellers of junk science. McCain knows human weakness when he sees it and is all too willing to cynically prey upon it in his grab for the golden ring.

Will it be enough to fool that segment of the undecideds — the ones we call the mushy middle of our fellow citizenry who go whichever way the wind blows, assisted by a carelessly left-leaning media — that he needs to beat The Great Appeaser?

Update: John Stossel makes sense of it all:

McCain's hero is Teddy Roosevelt, a hectoring, activist president. To justify government interference in our lives, it helps to have a crisis. In Islamic extremism, McCain has his foreign affairs crisis. In global warming, he has his domestic crisis.

Charge!

Update II: Bird Dog at Maggie's links:

The Queen of the Segueway meanders from Heuchera to Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy is in the Maggie's Farm Pantheon. He is a worthy role model for any politician — or any person.

Rough Riders rule!

Update III: Dr. Sanity takes a break from taking a break from blogging to barker the Carnival of the Insanities.

He sifts surface soil by the seashore

How long did you say till suppertime?

A new soil sifter comes in handy as Tuck prepares a section of the terrace bed for resetting bricks that had been lifted from their alloted spaces in the basketweave pattern under pressure from expanding Silver Maple roots.