Rhiannon Giddens Performs "Real Old Mountain Dew"

Back in W.N.Y. From W.N.C.

Hard to believe just last night I was sitting with the missus and kiddies in Pack Square Park in Asheville, North Carolina, enjoying Old-time and Bluegrass music and clogging at the Shindig on the Green. Here's how we got there:

My Great Aunt Jane's XC^th surprise birthday party cum family reunion in Martinsburg, West Virginia, was a hoot. One never knows what to expect at a XC^th surprise birthday party, but Great Aunt Jane was just as sharp as I remembered her the last time I saw her a couple of decades ago. "Where's Josh?" she asked when my name was mentioned. "My husband loved you!" He had a sixth-grade education and a library Thomas Jefferson would have been proud of; nerd that I was (and am), we had a lot to talk about.

From there, it was off to Front Royal, Virginia, whose private and overpriced Poe's Southfork Campground served as our base-camp for Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive. Big Meadows Campground was our second of five campgrounds over seven nights. We saw a mama bear and two cubs coming in, and survived a pretty severe thunder storm there, but not without getting wet. You learn a lot about your tent in a thunderstorm. In the morning, we swam and caught salamanders at the nearby Cave Mountain Lake.

After 105 miles on the lovely 5-mile-per-hour Skyline Drive, we immediately took on the 469 miles at 45-miles-per-hour of the even more beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway. What was nice about both these highways was that there was no commercial traffic and no commercial development. Of course, this could not have been brought about without some limited government, I concede. The National Park Service is an appropriate use of limited government if there is one.

We stayed next at the Peaks of Otter, close enough to alow us to descend from the hills to catch the Lynchburg Hillcats play the Wilmington Blue Rocks at Calvin Falwell Field and walk away with four official Carolina League balls. I was happy that a town whose most famous son is Jerry Falwell was able to produce some somewhat rowdy baseball fans.

Julian Price Park Campground was our next home, and Price Lake Canoe & Boat Rental provided us with a morning of familial fun. The Pisgah National Forest was where we would last pitch tent. We did drive the last foggy miles of the Parkway to its terminus among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (ᏣᎳᎩᏱ ᏕᏣᏓᏂᎸᎩ), but returned close to our campground to enjoy the butt-bruising Sliding Rock, a natural water-slide, on a tip given to us by some Floridian cyclists.

The next day we swam in Lake Lure, where Dirty Dancing (1987) was filmed, beneath Chimney Rock Park, where The Last of the Mohicans (1992), though set in my home state, was filmed. That night, we went to Canton, North Carolina, for her weekly Pickin' in the Park get-together, with music and clogging, including the wonderful J. Creek Cloggers, whom we would see again the following night.

Our last day had come. The aforementioned Shindig on the Green was to start at 7:00 PM. We forewent the Biltmore Estate for the Vance Birthplace in Weaverville, North Carolina. (Thanks, Spokane Orations; now time to read Richard M. Weaver.) There, we stumbled upon a "Civil War" music and fashion reenactment, in which a local asked a question prefaced by "During the War of Northern Aggression..."

We ended the trip on the highest note possible, with the high, lonely sounds of Old-time and Bluegrass music at the Shindig on the Green. I left feeling pretty envious, envious of fellow Americans who have their own cultural traditions to preserve and cherish. Up here, culture only seems to come around on Saint Patrick's Day, Saint Joseph's Day, or Śmigus-Dyngus. Ain't diversity great?

"Shenandoah Valley Breakdown" Performed by Tony Trischka, Mike Marshall, Bryan Sutton, Darol Anger & Missy Raines

After my Great Aunt Jane's XC^th surprise birthday party cum family reunion in Martinsburg, West Virginia tomorrow, the Shenandoah National Park is where you'll be able to find us over the next days. Reviews of some of the roads we plan to drive — Virginia’s Skyline Drive: One of the Loveliest Roads in America, James River Plantations: Explore Historic Mansions in Virginia, Blue Ridge Parkway.

We'll probably visit Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and catch a game by the Lynchburg Hillcats or the Johnson City Cardinals and check out the Asheville Music Scene at the planned terminus of our trip. Upon my return I must watch Shenandoah (1965), recommended by two of this blog's readers here — Top Five Westerns.

Best Baseball Book

The Pittsford Community Library lent me Dan Barry's Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, and Baseball's Longest Game, about an absurd yet sublime International League game between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox, played from Holy Saturday until Easter in near-freezing conditions, with 19 of 1700 fans remaining till the bitter end. The author intersperses the story of an incredibly boring game with the lives of the fans, players, and cities represented. A truly American book.

Happy About a Hoppy I.P.A.

The Matt Brewing Company out of Utica, New York was craft before craft was cool, and, back in the Gay Nineties, or actually a full century later, the first craft beer I remember buying. Two decades and thousands of bottles of beer later, I regret to say that I have been disappointed by their brews after my return to Burned-Over District. That disappointment ends today, with Saranac High Peaks Series Imperial IPA! While not quite up there with last night's even more locally-brewed Rohrbach Railroad Street IPA, it's far better than the standard Saranac India Pale Ale, which always send me back to the the old local stand-by my transplanted Mississippian grandmother preferred, Genesee Cream Ale.

Mailbag

A long-term friend of this blog(ger) sends along an article on a particularly stingy nation — Israel is biggest importer of philanthropy, but exports? Not so good. He also sends along this topical ditty:

Let's kiss under the ancient trees
And whisper secrets in the breeze,
silently sitting by the bay
Just you and me (and NSA).

The Devil Makes Three Perform "All Hail," "Do Wrong Right," and "Johnson Family"

Lock Up Your Daughters!

The Great Satan is on the prowl — Pentagon to Begin Training Women for Combat Roles by 2015.

Old Right and Hard Left Agree

The American Conservative's W. James Antle III, CounterPunch's Arno J. Mayer, and Chronicles Magazine's Thomas Fleming on the folly of interventionism in Syria, respectively — Fighting Terrorism by Arming Terrorists, America: Its Own Worst Enemy, and USA Against America: Arming Jihad.

Reactionary Foreign Policy

A conservative blog for peace posts the above.

Crypto-Jews in Colorado?

The Smithsonian's Scott S. Warren reports that a "gene linked to a virulent form of breast cancer found mainly in Jewish women is discovered in Hispanic Catholics" — The 'Secret Jews' of San Luis Valley.

Hotter Than a Scottish Bonnet?

The Smithsonian's Mary Roach takes on "the Naga King Chili (a.k.a. Bhut Jolokia), often ranked the world’s hottest" — The Gut-Wrenching Science Behind the World’s Hottest Peppers.

Ut Unum Sint

"No one who is theologically responsible can celebrate the division of Christians from one another" — Catholics, Lutherans prepare for Reformation anniversary.

The Sacrifice

Due to some time constraints, the boy and I went to Raul's Barber Shop rather than the opening game of the Batavia Muckdogs at Dwyer Stadium to see some Class A Short Season New York–Penn League action.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Perform "I Want To Sing That Rock And Roll," "Make Me Down A Pallet On Your Floor," "Elvis Presley Blues," "Look At Miss Ohio," "Red Clay Halo," "My First Lover," "Revelator," "By The Mark," "The Way It Will Be," "Caleb Meyer," "I'll Fly Away" & "The Weight" (with Old Crow Medicine Show)

I've seen bits of this great show, but never the whole thing. Enjoy.

Has Edward Snowden Told Us Anything New?

Seven years ago, during the Bush regime we learned that "has been collecting information on every phone call made in this country" — Government Monitoring About 200 Million Americans' Calls. Why is anyone surprise by what Edward Snowden has revealed?

From cryptogon.com we learn that his revelations are simply part of a "program, which has been known for years, [that] copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis" — PRISM Is Just Part Of A Much Larger, Scarier Government Surveillance Program. From the same source, we learn of Naomi Wolf's growing suspicions — My creeping concern that the NSA leaker is not who he purports to be ...

This "leak" could be simply a way of prepping the public for an even more dystopian future, since, as my alma mater's Michael S. Rozeff notes, "there is not a rock hard super-majority that is against the surveillance state" — The Machinery of Oppression.

Whatever the case, local letter-to-the-editor Robert Begy nails it — Big Brother prophecies seen in living color:

What was once a dystopia accessible only by those donning hats of tin foil can now be found on Google Earth or by E-ZPass. Beliefs once made of nervous laughter and silent cynicism are now facts of life. Yes, Winston was right. The government is watching and we are engaged in perpetual war. Sweet home Oceania.

But fear not. President Obama has decreed that all is well, for those charged with the safekeeping of what remains of our privacy will act with “professionalism.” We can only hope for a different professionalism than was recently displayed by the IRS.

But really, what of it? We have already ceded our privacy to (S)uckerburg’s anti-social media, a spoiled Apple and phone contracts so convoluted Steve Hawking has a geek squad on speed dial. What remains is the merger of customer service departments — joining Verizon and the U.S. government. What could possibly go wrong?

But, as prophetic as Orwell may have been, even he could not have foreseen that Big Brother would turn out to be, you know, a real brother.

Another Self-Hating American Catholic Convert

I, too, drank this same kool-aid soon after my conversion to the True Faith a decade ago — ‘Immigrants are more fertile,’ says Jeb Bush. "Immigrants are more fertile, they love families, they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population," etc., etc., blah, blah, blah.

I have serious doubts about those middle two points from personal experience, but the first and last are at least true, supporting his subsequent claim: "Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity." Maybe so, but at whose expense? What about the jobless who are here?

"Cast down your bucket where you are," said immigration-restrictionist Booker T. Washington. Could the lack of intact families among poor black and white Americans have anything to do with the fact that fathers have no way to support their families, that they're being undercut by the importation of a cheap and exploitable labor force?

But American will not do these jobs! No, Americans will do these jobs, they will just ask for a decent wage. I myself worked in both agriculture and construction as summer jobs, alongside guys who were paid more and did the work full-time. No longer, probably, since the immigrants Mr. Bush lauds will work these jobs for far cheaper wages, being used to a much lower standard of living.

Higher up the pay-scale, in high-tech, H-1B visa-holders are held in indentured servitude by their employers, putting fellow American graduates in the STEM fields, who might get uppity and freely seek better jobs, at a disadvantage.

So what if many of these immigrants come from a nominally Catholic part of the world? Is it un-Catholic to look after your own? Tom Piatak, as he is wont to do, calls it like it is — Electing A New People.

Chris Thile and Michael Daves Perform "Sleep With One Eye Open," "Rabbit In The Log," "Bury Me Beneath The Willow," "Billy In The Lowground," "It Takes One To Know One," & "Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms"

Rochester Real Beer Week

"Beer is proof that German monks loved us and wanted us to be happy, or something like that," begins Rebecca Rafferty's report — Rochester Real Beer Week 2013. "Nothing says summer like sipping on a cold, crisp beer on a hot sunny day," begins Anne Ritz's — Rochester Real Beer Week.

Pope Francis vs. the Gay Lobby

Sandro Magister reports that "Francis wants to purify [the curia] from corruption and from the 'gay lobby'" — Bergoglio, the "Black Pope" Dressed in White. Spake the Vicar of Christ, "In the curia there are holy people, truly, there are holy people. But there also exists a current of corruption, it exists, it is true... There is talk of a 'gay lobby,' and it is true, it is there. We must study what we can do."

Nickel Slots Coming to Town?

News of a "deal [a] could bolster the Senecas’ long-eyed plans to eventually build a casino in the Rochester area" — Senecas, N.Y. reach gambling accord. I'm not one for either race-based preferences or gambling, but I make an exception on both counts for Indian Gaming.

Race Suicide

That's what they would have called this a century ago — Whites’ deaths outnumber births for first time. In the article we read that "the natural decrease in whites suggests that aging whites will increasingly come to rely on the younger, mainly minority population to underwrite social programs that will sustain them." Maybe they should have relied on their own kids, instead of spending their kids's inheritance (and their country's), as I have read on boomer bumper-stickers.

Paul Mealor's Ubi Caritas et Amor Sung by the Tenebræ Choir, Directed by Nigel Short

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exsultemus, et in ipso jucundemur.
Timeamus, et amemus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Where charity and love are, God is there.
Christ's love has gathered us into one.
Let us rejoice and be pleased in Him.
Let us fear, and let us love the living God.
And may we love each other with a sincere heart.
Where charity and love are, God is there.

Shedding Light on Unenlightened Claptrap About the Enlightment

Professor Kenneth Minogue dismantles a book whose "basic take on the Enlightenment is locked into secularist legendry—as if intellectual progress only began when philosophers questioned religious authority" — When the Lamps Went On. Writes the reviewer:

Our Western civilization is indeed remarkable, but the reason is that, well before the 18th century, it had been the only culture in the world exploring the possibilities of free inquiry and intellectual rigor. The complex beginnings of what makes the West different go back to medieval times and indeed in some respects back to Greece, Rome and Christianity itself. The individualists who transformed our world appeared all over Europe, rather fitfully in medieval times but from the 16th century onward with increasing confidence. As Montesquieu observed, European monarchies were quite different from both the Roman republic and the despotisms prevalent elsewhere.

(Elaborating later on this last point, the reviewer notes that "authority is (as Hobbes argued) the self-generated moral basis of modern states, replacing the virtue of republics and the caprice of despotisms.")

The book's author, says Prof. Minogue, "thinks that it is the enlightened who have taught us to behave altruistically toward distant people we have never meet" and "admits that caritas is a Christian virtue but then solemnly explains to us that Christians merely practiced it so as to increase their credit with God." Counters the reviewer:

Whether it is the truth about reality or not, Christianity has been central to creating a gentle and decent (and philosophically lively) civilization of such power that our problem is accommodating the people who want to join it. "Go thou and sin no more" is way ahead of beheading or stoning sinners and probably ahead of counseling or psychotropic medication as well.

The reviewer, after noting that the author's "cosmopolitanism is frightfully open to the customs of others (as long as they are not Christians) but low on allegiances," wisely concludes:

One benefit of Christianity was that it construed politics as a rather perilous activity carried on by imperfect people within some larger story about God and creation. The first figure who broke out of these confinements (apart from the monstrous Robespierre) was Napoleon. As we now know all too well, masterful radicals come in shapes more horrible than his, but the fashion for ideological enthusiasms to improve our world keeps on generating surprises. The thing about light is that it casts shadows.

Lisa Hannigan Performs "Knots"

Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham Want Your Sons and Daughters to Die For These People

Freedom fighters fighting for freedom from "blasphemy" — Teenager, 15, Executed By Islamist Rebels in Syria. The boy "reportedly refused to give a customer coffee" and "was arrested by Islamist rebel fighters for insulting the Prophet Mohammed, beaten and then executed in front of his family."

Hard Left and Old Right Agree

CounterPunch's Christopher Pyle and Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo respectively — Edward Snowden: Profile in Courage and Edward Snowden, American Hero.

The Pope Is a Fool

A holy fool, like his namesake, as these articles suggest — I did not want to be pope, says Francis and Francis and the perils of an improv pope. In the latter article we read that he "compared overly grim Christians to 'pickled peppers.'"

Steve Earle Performs "Waitin' On The Sky," "Every Part Of Me," & "This City"

Agreed that "what's most appealing about him is the wide-eyed, unmistakable fearlessness with which he goes about his life these days," as evidenced by his vocal opposition to the Iraq War and WalMart.

The Lumineers Perform "Ho Hey," "Big Parade," "I Ain't Nobody's Problem," "Flapper Girl," & "Slow it Down"

In glorious black and white, interspersed with interviews. The play tonight next door in Canandaigua, New York.

I Am the Alpha and the Beta

"How does one do obligatory beta things in the course of a relationship in an alpha way?" asks a reader of Chateau Heartiste, who answers with two posts, reminding us that "that 'aloof game' is not all there is to inspiring a woman’s love and fidelity through all four weeks of the month" — Bringing Balance To The Masculine Force — and that "striking an optimal balance between your alpha and beta behaviors" is the "ideal way for a man to direct a long-term relationship so that it’s maximally rewarding and minimally punishing" — Relationship Game: The Day-To-Day Alpha.

What Is Sexual Assault?

Steve Sailer looks at that question in this post — The Epidemic of Rape in the Military. An excerpt:

The media isn't in a hurry to provide examples of what's just over the line and is therefore "sexual assault" and what is just under the line and is therefore not "sexual assault."

Here's the Army's FAQ on the subject, but it's not all that illuminating, either. It's bereft of concrete examples of what is and isn't "sexual assault." The Army defines "sexual assault" as "intentional sexual contact," but no examples are given. Is, say, a pat on the butt sexual assault? Is playing footsie sexual assault?

This murkiness is not unique to this latest sex scandal. It's not a bug, it's a feature when lawyers enlist the media in helping them target a deep-pocketed institution.

In lawyer-driven sex-scandals, it's not uncommon for crisp sounding abstractions to mask a lot of murkiness. For example, in the endless, and highly lucrative, Catholic priest scandals, picture in your head a representative example of a sexual act perpetrated by a Catholic priest. My guess is that the most likely example that comes to mind is Gerry Sandusky in the shower with the 10 year old boy.

And yet, Gerry Sandusky wasn't at all a priest, he was the retired linebacker coach at Linebacker U., Penn State. But, the Sandusky example comes readily to mind in relation to the priest scandals because we've been told over and over and over exactly what Sandusky did. Why? Because it's so horrifying.

In contrast, the media (and the plaintiff's attorneys who package much of what appeared in the media) were seldom in as much of a hurry to tells us about exactly what all those Catholic priests tended to be doing over the years. When you look into what actually happened, it seldom turns out to be all that Sandusky-like: instead, creepy and disgusting, but seldom brutal.

After all, the priests in these scandals were seldom America's most famous linebacker coach. Instead, they tended to be gentle, gay, lonely alcoholics who had taken a personal interest in some youth (youths, not children, typically past puberty -- the priests were far more often gay than pedophiliac), a personal interest that went too far.

The Lumineers Perform "Big Parade"

Local critic Jeff Spevak, whom this blogger has come to respect immensely, on a great band that will appear locally tomorrow — Band defies 'electronic-oriented' world. "I was struck by 'Big Parade,'" Mr. Spevak writes, "whose cavalcade of characters pass by in a small-town, yet epic, manner. A presidential candidate in a black armored car, a Catholic priest 'torn between love and Jesus' and boxers, 'violent men who dance the blood ballet.'

Left Hook, Right Jab

CounterPunch's JohnV. Walsh reports on a meeting of folks "determined to trespass beyond the bounds set by partisan gatekeepers on both sides" — Join Libertarians & Leftists for Panel at Left Forum. "Their aim is to continue discussion of an antiwar movement 'with American characteristics.'" Cool! More:

The discussion will be in the proud tradition of the Anti-imperialist League which opposed the war in the Philippines over 100 years ago and which counted among its members Mark Twain, a man deeply sympathetic with revolutionary change, and Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in America at the time.

The discussion will take account of the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the Ron Paul libertarian movement, which has been steely in opposing Empire and war. It will take into account the enthusiasm of youth for the Ron Paul endeavor. And it will be a step to prevent Right and Left from being divided on questions of war, Empire and civil liberties, then conquered, by the imperial elite in Washington and on Wall Street.

"Care Tactics"

Leave it to "hard left" CounterPunch's Chase Madar to dissect POTUS's SOSOTUS pick — Samantha Power and the Weaponization of Human Rights. "For Samantha Power, the United States can by its very nature only be a force for virtue abroad. In this sense, the outlook of Obama’s human-rights advocate is no different from Donald Rumsfeld’s."

A Police State

I appear to live in one; Lew Rockwell reports on "a new edict from the famously corrupt NY Senate" — 4 Years in a Cage for 'Annoying' a Cop. It is now "a felony to harass, annoy, or threaten a police officer while on duty" — Senate Passes Bill Making the Harassment of a Police Officer a Crime.

The bill, we learn was sponsored by Senator Joseph A. Griffo (R-C-I, Rome). With all due respect to liberty-minded thinkers like Andrew Napolitano and Thomas DiLorenzo, methinks sometimes that this state has too many for eyeties its own good. Common law and Roman law may each have their merits, but the former is our tradition.

Lexical Cartography

This is fun — 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other. I'm a good fit to the place I live in, even though I carry a few different features from 60 miles to the west where I was raised, and even one or two (like "tennis shoes" I learned as a toddler, rather than the local "sneakers") from the 400 miles further west whence I was born.

Dave Rawlings & Gillian Welch Perform "Method Acting" & "Cortez The Killer"

Top Five Westerns

The LewRockwell.com Blog posts The Art of Manliness's list — The 17 Best Westerns? — and this response — 23 Favorite Westerns.

My shorter list:

5. True Grit (2010) — The Coen brothers in each of their movies have captured something uniquely American, and what is more quintessentially American than the Western? They nailed it with this one.

4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) — Director Sergio Leone said that star Clint Eastwood "had only two facial expressions: one with the hat and one without it." Seems that's all that's needed in a Western.

3. Unforgiven (1992) — The film in which Clint Eastwood proved that he will be remembered centuries later as a director, not an actor. Moral ambiguity at its most ambiguous.

2. High Noon (1952) — "Watching 'High Noon' again the other day, I wondered how postwar British culture ever found the strength to continue breathing," begins Brit Clive James in an article I just read a few hours ago — Whither the Hatchet Job? It's that good.

1. The Searchers (1956) — Speaking earlier of moral ambiguity, John Wayne gives one hell of a performance as a man bent by hatred and the desire of revenge but ultimately on a just mission. Life is not simple, and neither are good Westerns.

Some more:

Honorable mention: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) — No shootouts, just a condemnation of mob mentality at a lynching. Too preachy perhaps, but pretty suspenseful.

Two sci-fi movies I loved as a kid that owe a lot to the Western, on set in Oz the other on Io: Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) and Outland (1981).

Two great movies set a century earlier than the Western when the area I live in was the frontier: The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Black Robe (1991).

W.B. Givens Performs "The Desert" & "Me, Andrew Marvel"

Bummed Boomers

Vox Populi on "an alarming trend among baby boomers, whose suicide rates shot up precipitously between 1999 and 2010" — Boomer Suicide. While his tone is far harsher than need be, the fellow GenXer makes a valid point:

Why? The journalist obviously is not an American of Generation X. The generation that has had to put up with the vagaries of the Baby Boomers for literally its entire existence knows very well why they are killing themselves at an unusually high rate. It is because Baby Boomers are disproportionately inclined to be narcissistic, selfish, short-sighted, superficial bastards who don't give a damn about anything except themselves, and they are psychologically incapable of grasping the basic concepts of mortality or graceful old age.

America Is Sparta

The Lew Rockwell.com Blog posts this utterly unsurprising news item — Victims of sex assaults in military are mostly men. One is reminded of the fact that "prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008, likely making the United States the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women" — Raise the Crime Rate.

Cale Tyson Performs "Thorn In My Side" & "Is The Flame Burning Low?"

"Burke Was Liberal Because He Was Conservative"

Thus spake Russell Kirk of the subject of this article by the Financial Times' John McDermott — Burke & Sons. "Edmund Burke’s admirers make the case for his greatness – but can he be claimed as the father of conservatism?"

So asks the author, drawing attention to "Burke’s 'five great political battles': for more equal treatment of Irish Catholics; against British oppression in the American colonies; for parliamentary restraints on monarchical power; against brutal exploitation by the East India Company; and, of course, against the ideas and actors of the French Revolution." The author notes that "his were thoroughly liberal causes," and "all have in common the desire to resist the imposition of arbitrary power by a sovereign (or the mob) on individuals."

"Polar Bear Hunting" Locally

Turns out that "the game a group of teenagers in Syracuse allegedly played that resulted in the violent, random death of a 51-year-old man-- has been a national phenomenon for at least a decade," according to local reporter Sara Patterson — 'Knockout Game' killing in Syracuse similar to other cases of random violence across country.

"Don’t you just love the mainstream media, how effortlessly they omit and contort stories that don’t fit their prefab worldview?" writes local blogger Matt Forney, filling some of the important details — Murdering Black Mobs Come to Syracuse, Local Media and City Officials Run Interference for Them. "Whenever a news story fails to mention the race of the perp, it’s because they’re either black or Latino" (unless, of course, the victim is black and the alleged perp is a "White Hispanic").

Some reports on this trend, starting with this latest incident, from Colin Flaherty, who "has done more reporting than any other journalist on what appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse" — Knockout Game victim's eye kicked out of socket, 'Knockout Games' a hit with black mobs, Black Mobs' Knockout Game Raising Alarms. (Colin Flaherty's work has won the admiration of Thomas Sowell, as this blogger noted here, with a post quoting the title of the former's book — "White Girl Bleed A Lot".)

Time for the "Imagine if the Races Were Reversed" thought experiment. Time also, I suppose, for John Derbyshire's The Talk: Nonblack Version. The victim in Syracuse seems to have ignored the Derb's sage advice to his children: "Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods."

The last time I ignored this advice, I was 19 and liberal, and decided it would be a good idea to ride my bike to Doctor Bird's, then a record shop, in the East Side neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. The Rastafarian owner, a wise businessman, saved his customer, me, from gang of shiftless "youths" who git within six inches of my face. Riding home, I was sent off with a hail of thrown rocks. Needless to say, no one ever had "The Talk" with me. I have had it with my non-American wife, and will with my kids when their old enough to venture forth on their own.

Arvo Pärt's Fratres for Cello and Harp Performed by the Arpège Duo

We Can Now Eat Off Our Recently Liberated Hardwood Floors

Because we finished them with a non-toxic food-grade substance — Shellac. How cool is that? Cooler still is the fact that the stuff is made from the "resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand." Bugs! Cool! Looks and smells good, too. Also, it's easy to take off (with just some alcohol), so the refinishing touches we have to do should be relatively painless. Cheaper than other synthetic options as well.

Some helpful resources, should you consider doing the same — How to Refinish Hardwood Floors, How to Apply Shellac Finishes to Wood Floors, Choosing And Applying a Traditional Shellac Finish. Gotta love them Internets! What can't you learn?

Arvo Pärt's Vater Unser Sung by Escolania de Montserrat's Lluís Travesset

A Legacy of Russian America

From Ninilchik, Alaska comes this — Russian language's most isolated dialect found in Alaska.

Cops

Vox Populi posts video of "lawless police are going to be learning some very hard lessons if they don't get themselves under control" — No, you're not "exempt", cop. Rightly says Vox, "In the USA, the police are the enemy of the people. They are the bad guys and the servants of evil. They are not your grandfather's keeper of the peace, they are lawless enforcers."

"The police are above the law, a law unto themselves, in totalitarian societies," writes Jack Douglas, quoted on the LewRockwell.com Blog posting a video about a man facing 75 years in prison for filming lawless enforcers without their consent — Police.