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White on White

They're so cute when they're napping. This exquisite Mind of Mog composition of white fur against white brocade recalls the art of James McNeill Whistler -- specifically his "Symphony in White No. 1: The White Girl," blogged here. As we wrote, his was an art of "beauty for its own sake, in the form of pleasing 'arrangements' of shape and closely keyed harmonies of color. This aesthetic credo was widely emulated by other American artists for whom Whistler's paintings came to symbolize modernity and freedom."

For lots more cute kitty pictures -- from 30 different blogs around the 'sphere, including our own -- visit Carnival of the Cats #49, hosted this week by Mind of Mog. This woman doesn't do anything halfway, but somehow she manages to keep her sense of humor when all those about her are loosing theirs:

Thirty sites in the Carnival, took me most of the day to do when not cleaning the cat pee off the canisters. Done mucking with it. Hope I didn’t forget anyone.

We swear by our MOM mugs, on sale at CafePress.com.

The "D" word

"People power on the move," says FOXNews' David Asman, as freedom marches on before our eyes, this time live in Martyrs' Square, Beirut, where peaceful demonstrators -- awash in a sea of billowing red, white and green flags portraying the Cedar of Lebanon -- take in the intoxicating news that the Prime Minister, a puppet of occupying Syria, has just announced that the whole government will resign. "The opposition has raised its rhetoric in recent days," reports CNN, "taking its cue from international pressure -- led by the U.S. and France -- to force Syrian troops from Lebanon following [Prime Minister Rafik] Hariri's killing" two weeks ago.

Commenting on events unfolding on his monitor, FOXNews' David Asman mentions the "D" word -- the dreaded (by Bush bashers) domino effect.  In a later segment on Hollywood's and the Democrats' refusal to acknowledge that GW is on the right side of history, actor Ron Silver says "it's time for them to detoxify themselves from the Michael Moores . . . Hillary could possibly do that." She's no dummy.

Asman notes we're not used to seeing peaceful demonstrations in the Arab world, adding that this "Cedar Revolution" is more reminiscent of the recent "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine. But of course. These are not the "Arab street" demonstrations of yore, with pumping fists and anti-American banners, staged by tyrants as photo ops to shore up their own corrupt regimes. These are the people themselves -- Muslims and Christians together, waving their national flags in unity -- finding their voice, emboldened by the momentum of events precipitated by GW's visionary foreign policy. As Osama famously put it, "when people see a  strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."

Update:  InstaLanche in progress.

Update II:  Our first VodkaLanche.  We love Stephen Green's turn of phrase:

Adding to an Instalanche is more than a little like pissing into a rainstorm. But on the off chance you missed this link over at the big guy's blog, click and read it now.

A buggy-whip moment in time

Tiny inspects the venerable National Geographic INDEX 1947-1976 -- the latest bit of gold to appear in our sifting pan during the recent mining of the attic -- the Google search engine of its day.

It was on its way to the dumpster, but we just said no.  This one's a keeper.  The breathless copy on the inside flap of the book jacket of the National Geo INDEX catches a buggy-whip moment in time:

This new INDEX, a convenient and comprehensive reference tool, turns your collection of Geographics into a living encyclopedia, pinpointing any of more than 2,000 colorful articles published from January 1947 through december 1976 . . . nearly 5,000 subject categories and more than 14,000 entries.

An indispensable aid to libraries and a boon to the many National Geographic Society members who traditionally preserve their copies of Geographics.

Tiny washes herself in embarrassment at the thought of us National Geo Society members out here who faithfully "preserved" [= stashed in the attic] our copies of the magazine year after year and are now throwing them out with the trash.

Computers enjoyed a brief listing in the National Geo INDEX of 1947-1976, leading with an unwittingly prescient "Behind the Computer Revolution."

Sort of like drowning, cleaning out the attic.  Your whole life flashes before you.

"Snap out of it!"

"For a while you get mad, then you get over it," says funnyman Robin Williams, Academy Awards presenter censored by the guardians of Hollywood "virtue." [Drudge Report Flash 2005]

"They're afraid of saying Olive Oyl is anorexic. It tells you about the state of humor," says Robin Williams, commenting on "the" Academy's squelching of his proposed schtick at the Oscars show tonight. From a Drudge exclusive:

Williams, the presenter of the Academy Award for best animated feature, decided last week that his one minute on stage would be a prime time to lampoon a conservative critic, James C. Dobson, whose group Focus on the Family last month criticized the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants [blogged here just the other day as one of our blog totems] for appearing in a video about tolerance that the group called "pro-homosexual."

As we blogged recently, SpongeBob happens to be in the asexual phase of his poriferan lifecycle. Homosexuals need not apply. But beyond all the silliness, Robin Williams gets the big picture right, and it's nothing new.

You know what? Our favorite movie ever -- at the time, 1966, just before we became the heroine, center stage, of our own love story -- was the French masterpiece "A Man and a Woman," so honest and true compared to most of the other stuff out there at the time (we'd probably hate it today, although, who knows?).  At this point in life, "Moonstruck" is our number one fave romantic movie. It says so much more -- about every stage of life -- with much less frontal nudity.

Hollywood -- with its larger-than-life excesses alternating between full frontal nudity and pelvic thrusting between shameless consenting adults, and separate beds and airborne kisses between modest married adults -- is just like us, only more so. It's the American dream writ large. You can't live with it, and you can't live without it. As the grandfather in "Moonstruck" tells a confused Danny Aiello's Johnny Cammareri when he realizes his fiancée -- Cher's Loretta Castorini -- is going to marry his brother and not him, "Come. Have some champagne. You're a member of the family now." Or, better yet, as Loretta Castorini tells Nicholas Cage's Ronnie Cammareri, with a slap, "Snap out of it!"

Drawing in the round

Treasures from the attic putsch.  A robust pencil drawing of the duck casserole from our student days in the late seventies (old, huh?) at the Art Institute under the boot of Norman Baer, an illustrator in the Howard Pyle tradition.

You weren't just drawing when you took a Norman Baer drawing class.  You were drawing "in the round."  You were sculpting in 3-D with a pencil on the flat page.  Or else.  Not bad, huh?  We love the "thinking" expressed by the fainter lines cutting away everything that didn't look like a duck casserole before we pinned down the darker, telling lines that the learned hand sensed would express the in and out of the flow of space around the object. YAH!

Here's the little guy today, spared from the normal shattering process of being a ceramic object in a working kitchen.

A zillion or so martini glasses have gone the way of all breakables in our 24/7 kitchen, but the sweet little duck casserole -- a gift from JuJu perhaps 30 or more years ago -- survives to this day. Probably it's 'cause we use it not for serving food but for hiding the extra set of house keys. It just sits there looking pretty year after year.

Clearing out the cobwebs

The view at the top of the attic stairs. Acrylic painting of a Back Bay apartment by Art Institute of Boston alumna Maureen O'Connor (Class of 1984), a keeper.  Blue item at lower left is milk crate, headed for the dumpster.

An attic date with Tuck this morning to give thumbs up or thumbs down to the accumulated stuff of a lifetime.  It wasn't that hard. Most of the keepers were photos and notebooks and artwork.  Everything else was pretty easy to let go, especially the old National Geographics.

Tuck had scouted out the Chelsea Public Library, Senior Center and even the Old Soldiers Home Library, but there's no market out there for old National Geo's.

Back down from the attic on the second floor, we caught this Renaissance-like frames-within-frames shot from the living room through the front hall and bedroom on to the back stairwell.

Talk about beauty in unexpected places.

A fellowship of honor, however defined

Detail of Social Network Diagram for the Alibi Club. Note Prescott Bush lower right.

"Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in a different way," says the "subversive" Robin Williams prep-school prof character, jumping swashbucklingly up onto his desk at the head of the class in "Dead Poets Society," which just happens to be on TCM as we write:

Can you believe we never got around to seeing it till now? How suggestive of the prepping rites of passage GHWB and GWB must have gone through in their formative years. GW's cheerleading at Phillips Andover and then Skull and Bones at Yale come to mind.

In fact, how suggestive of the rites of passage of every young man, whatever his circumstances.  The unorthodox bonding rituals of Hell's Angels, not to mention the deadly rituals of adolescent jihadi recruits -- as blogged here -- are different only in the particulars, the point being that adolescents of whatever stripe seek validation through membership in a fellowship of honor, however defined. This movie is so beautiful in every way that -- what's new? -- it's bringing tears to our eyes.  Can't remember . . . Does it end in suicide for one of the young men? Probably. That's how good the movie is, that you know without knowing where it's headed (probably read about it years ago, but the film itself tells you through its narrative drive).

Yes. Puck (above) in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was his finest moment. Dad doesn't approve -- any son of his should be a banker or businessman -- so the young aspiring actor shoots himself in the head while seated at Papa's well-appointed desk.  Can you say Passion of the Christ?  A little melodrama here and there never hurts.

Like the Robin Williams character in "Dead Poets Society," our favorite bloggers are forever jumping up on their keyboards and asking us to look at what we think we know in a different way. Jack of TigerHawk returns from a business trip to DC with an intriguing challenge:

The same friend pointed out a little brick building at 1806 Eye Street. It is unmarked, and it is listed in the National Register of Historical Places. It's the "Alibi Club," and it is the most exclusive club in the entire world. At any given time it has only around 25 members (according to my friend), including the current and former Presidents of the United States, Justices of the Supreme Court, and "real" Cabinet Secretaries (Defense, Treasury, State and so forth, but presumably not the various weeny welfare state cabinet departments that have popped up in the last fifty years). Supposedly, Bush 41 used it a lot for delicate meetings that had to be away from prying eyes. In any case, it leaves few tracks in cyberspace -- Google "Alibi Club" and you get only hints of the place.

"Few tracks in cyberspace"?  We'll see about that. We googled our way to the Social Network Diagram for the Alibi Club (above) and stumbled upon a telling detail from GW's grandfather, Sen. Prescott Bush's 1959 acceptance speech as the Alfalfa Club's presidential nominee:

I recall here the immortal words of Granville Rice, when he wrote:

The rules of life apply the same
To any sport you choose
It matters not how you play the game,
So long as you never lose.

Oscar Wilde couldn't have said it better, a perfect inversion of the usual "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." Something we read just yesterday was comparing "nuanced" European elites' emphasis on style vs. GW's focus on results. Wish we could find it. The point is that -- as the great Vince Lombardi said -- Winning isn't everything.  It's the only thing.

Terri Schiavo

No, no.  She wishes she were dead.  Can't you see?

To keep showing the videos of Terri Schiavo in her allegedly brain-dead state is obscene. Bloggers on both sides of the divide claim to speak for her, but we cannot know where she lives now or what she feels.  We can know for sure only the unspeakable pain of her loving and ever hopeful parents.  We wouldn't deign to guess the motives or feelings of her husband. It is none of our business.

Our understanding is that these difficult last rites are usually worked out quietly among doctors, patients and families, unnoticed by the lawyers, within hospital walls.  Something like that happened with us when we finally let our beloved mother go.

When the lawyers swoop in, things get ugly.  Or is it when things get ugly, the lawyers swoop in?  Either way, it is unseemly for such intimate sorrow to be held up to the TV camera's eye and presented every fifteen minutes as just one more item among equals, together with the Michael Jackson jury, Scott Peterson's trial, the latest Amber Alert -- and, oh, yes, the latest suicide bombings in the Middle East. For shame. The media -- and the self-righteous bloggers -- should back off and let this precious woman live or die out of the limelight.

Come over, come over, Jeff rover, Jeff rover

"I voted for John Kerry, though reluctantly, I voted for Bill Clinton, eagerly, I am dying to vote for Hillary Clinton. I opposed the Bush tax cuts. I am against school vouchers. I am for universal health care," writes Jeff Jarvis -- our candidate for patron saint of the blogosphere -- reminding us of the seemingly unbridgeable gap between his and our own worldviews.  He appears to embrace the long discredited government-can-solve-all-ills philosophy of the left, while we look to individual initiative and Adam Smith's invisible hand to help us be all that we can be. Yet we hold Jeff Jarvis in high esteem as an honest and earnest seeker of wisdom and truth, even as loudmouth bloggers of the left who should be his fellow travelers are viciously trashing him. A disillusioned Jeff writes:

The obnoxious self-inflicted orthodoxy of some on the left is hurting the cause and the party and any chance of getting elected again.

Today over at Kos, Armando calls me a "right-wing media gadfly." Commenters then pile on, as is their sport, and say that because New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has been hanging around me, he must be right-wing, too. What liberal media, indeed. And then my bete taupe, Eric Alterman, uses his column in The Nation to call me "a self-styled evangelist for right-wing bloggers." And when I say that we're all journalists now thanks to the Internet, he says: "That, of course, is nonsense. Journalists aspire to standards of fairness, accuracy and research that are not generally observed by Jarvis's pajama-clad army." These are standards not generally observed by Alterman in his spreading of innuendo not backed by the slightest reporting or fact.

Well, yes, Jeff.  Maybe it's time to reconsider. These folk of the left who are personally attacking one of their own finest voices so unfairly are no doubt suffering the defensive throes of recognizing they are on the wrong side of history.  Come over, come over, Jeff rover, Jeff rover.  You acknowledged you were mugged by 9/11.  Maybe it's time to take the next step over to the other side. We welcome you with open arms.

Animal spirits

Blog totems* SpongeBob (left) and Tiny ward off evil spirits, making the world safe for blogging.

*Totem. A venerated emblem or symbol. An animal, plant or natural object serving among certain tribal or traditional peoples as the emblem of a clan or family and sometimes revered as its founder, ancestor or guardian.

Update:  Friday Ark's afloat over at Modulator.