"At least bin Laden lived to see the Royal Wedding..."

Oh, yes... and to hear Obama's marvelous comic routine at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

"Kafka 'Before the Law' has a door and a doorkeeper refusing admittance. Moral: Don't believe doorkeepers."

Says rhhardin in the comments to my post about resisting the doorkeepers.

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”....

Go read it. It's only one paragraph.

Chief Justice Roberts teaches a language lesson: "The noun 'crab' refers variously to a crustacean and a type of apple, while the related adjective 'crabbed' can refer to handwriting that is 'difficult to read'..."

"... 'corny' can mean 'using familiar and stereotyped formulas believed to appeal to the unsophisticated,' which has little to do with 'corn,' ('the seeds of any of the cereal grasses used for food'); and while 'crank' is “a part of an axis bent at right angles,' 'cranky' can mean 'given to fretful fussiness."

And the point is, a corporation may be a "person" within the meaning of the Freedom of Information statute, but that doesn't mean it's gets in on the "personal" privacy referred to elsewhere in the statute.

[I]n ordinary usage, a noun and its adjective form may have meanings as disparate as any two unrelated words. ...

"Person" is a defined term in the statute; “personal” is not. When a statute does not define a term, we typically “give the phrase its ordinary meaning.”... “Personal” ordinarily refers to individuals. We do not usually speak of personal characteristics, personal effects, personal correspondence, personal influence, or personal tragedy as referring to corporations or other artificial entities. This is not to say that corporations do not have correspondence, influence, or tragedies of their own, only that we do not use the word “personal” to describe them.

Certainly, if the chief executive officer of a corporation approached the chief financial officer and said, "I have something personal to tell you," we would not assume the CEO was about to discuss company business. Responding to a request for information, an individual might say, "that’s personal." A company spokesman, when asked for information about the company, would not.

Crisply explained!

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

While he's got the FCC's attention, mention that the "fucking" in "fucking brilliant" is not an adjective.

Ha! He's referring to this FCC opinion:

The complainants allege that the licensees named in their respective complaints aired the “Golden Globe Awards” program, during which the performer Bono uttered the phrase “this is really, really, fucking brilliant,” or “this is fucking great.”...

The word “fucking” may be crude and offensive, but, in the context presented here, did not describe sexual or excretory organs or activities. Rather, the performer used the word “fucking” as an adjective or expletive to emphasize an exclamation. Indeed, in similar circumstances, we have found that offensive language used as an insult rather than as a description of sexual or excretory activity or organs is not within the scope of the Commission’s prohibition of indecent program content.

"Fucking" can be an adjective, as in "You're a fucking crank," "Watch out for the fucking crab," or "I can't believe you're serving fucking corn again," but in the Bono boast, it's a fucking adverb.

"Retire early, unless some interesting project is underway on the computer. Rise at 3am."

It's the New Year's Eve plan of one of our very favorite commenters, rhhardin. He continues:

Chinese folk song I just put up; having recorded it in 1998 off Radio Taiwan.

Maybe somebody knows the recording, I was thinking. YouTube goes everywhere, unless they've banned it.

It's been through four transcodings, as well as being off shortwave in the first place; but the original has a nice bass line. Video is of transcoding 3 from real audio to mp3. Transcoding from mp3 to wmv was still to come.

Beats Rufus Wainwright.

I featured Rufus in the post where rh comments. He continues:

I may set the backyard bird microphone to record the midnight gunshots before bed, though, if the wind is quiet and the grain elevators shut down for a while.

The shots last for about a half hour; and some guy always starts five minutes early. The clocks are not good out here.

Dogs respond.

It's the Ohio way.

We look forward to the gunshots recording, to more information about "At the Faraway Place - Love Song of the Plain" by Zai Na Yao Yuan De Di Fang, and to all the other recordings and photographs that rh might bestow upon us in the coming year, capturing the mystic essence of Ohio.

Obama: "They talk about me like a dog."

"That's not in my prepared remarks." Uh, okay. You just threw that in, then. But why?

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

The Mickey Mouse microphone is mocking Obama's ears too.

Ha. And Meade is saying to me — out loud, in the flesh:

I'd like Obama to say exactly who said what and when. Be more specific!

Also I said: Poor Obama, he got so used to people treating him like he was so wonderful, and Meade said: "They treated him like a god, then they treated him like a dog." The old god/dog flip!

Time passes slowly ....

That video is from one of our longtime favorite commenters, rhhardin, who says:

Approaching Turkey in the Straw diagnosed and awaited, video from Monday bike commute.

The business model is doubtful, with the kids safely indoors in modern times.

That's from last night's "café" post — the one with the orange flower — where another favorite commenter, Lem, transports us into a long car ride with his wonderful father:

Anyway.. I had a good time driving my dad.. for about seven hours.. he drove the rest.

I caught a sign in PA that said "where is the birth certificate?"..

We both happen to see it and when I finally did a half hearted ha ha (because I didn't get it right away) my father asked me what do you think?

..he eventually told me about what he calls the "American Concupiscence of Obama".

and of course he told me ther is a price to pay for that kind of thing.

He told me that "codicia" (lust) is not only a material, nor only a sexual mater the way people like to pretend.

The conversation was, I think, in Spanish.

He said that [like] any object of desire that is able to overcome fears, it is a (for lack of a better explanation) godlike.

According to my father.. the seemingly "impossibility" of Obama becoming president played right into his theme of "hope and change".. So that when it did happened (he became president) people assigned to it a divine like experience/intervention.. and now with the spill he is (unlike Bush) "uniquely qualified" to stop it.. or everything they believed is in jeopardy.

I wish I could put it to you all in the poetic way my father does.

When he spoke.. it was as if I already knew it.. It felt good.

For people to blame themselves for the spill is a stretch.. it is the only thing keeping Obamas hopes alive.

If people blame Obama.. in their minds (says my father) they might as well blame themselves.. specially if they voted for him (i said) ... and my father said after a pause that seemed jarring dislocated.. my father voted for Obama.

I didn't react to that.. (thank God) It would have been disrespectful to him.. the fact that he told me it was not so as to give me an opportunity to call it into question. I think it it was more to brace waht he had been telling me about.. "The American Concupiscence of Obama" had been real enough to carry him away like a Hoover Dam Relief.

Concupiscence.

I wish Lem could capture that poetry on video. I picture Lem's father as a YouTube wise man.

Some commenters told me that the flower photograph looks like a painting. I've been a painter in my time, and the truth is: It doesn't look like a painting at all. I said:

The reason this flower looks like a painting is because it lacks something that — ironically — I would put in if I were doing a painting of it. There are no black/gray shadowy areas demarcating the depths of the folds. It's just more orange. It's not what the brain thinks will be there, but it's what the camera sees.

You could look at that photograph and paint without thinking so much and thereby produce a painting that looks like a photograph. Artists have done that, creating the illusion that some photographs look like paintings. But it is, most assuredly, the other way around.





Time passes slowly up here in the daylight
We stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right
Like the [orange] rose of [late spring] that blooms in the day
Time passes slowly and fades away...

"There are surprisingly few hours in the middle of the night, if you get up at say 1am and start working on something."

Said rhhardin, in the comments to the last post, the one about stopping at the welcome center in Pennsylvania.

It's a sound observation, and it got me thinking about insomnia and whether it's worse in the winter when the nights are longer. If you're not going to sleep at all, don't you think it's easier in the summer when the night is over quickly?

"It's a prize for weakening America."

Says rhhardin.

It's Friday night, in the Once-in-a-Lifetime Bistro...

... and, beyond question, life is worth living.

(Video clip by our exquisitely brilliant commenter, rhhardin.)

"Khalid Sheik Mohammed stood before U.S. intelligence officers in a makeshift lecture hall, leading what they called 'terrorist tutorials.'"

The Washington Post tells us just how much KSM told, as a result of the use of "harsh interrogation techniques":

In 2005 and 2006, the bearded, pudgy man who calls himself the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks discussed a wide variety of subjects, including Greek philosophy and al-Qaeda dogma. In one instance, he scolded a listener for poor note-taking and his inability to recall details of an earlier lecture.

The captive terrorist took advantage of the opportunity to act like the kind of teacher who lords his power over you.

Speaking in English, Mohammed "seemed to relish the opportunity, sometimes for hours on end, to discuss the inner workings of al-Qaeda and the group's plans, ideology and operatives," said one of two sources who described the sessions, speaking on the condition of anonymity because much information about detainee confinement remains classified. "He'd even use a chalkboard at times."

Does this perhaps mean that KSM was the kind of guy whose vanity and urge to dominate made him vulnerable to manipulation by non-harsh techniques? Or was it necessary to humiliate him in order to generate an overwhelming hunger to be admired by his captors? (I don't mean to suggest that I know the answers to these questions. I am simply asking them.) The CIA report does call him "an accomplished resistor," who offered little before "he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding."

Mohammed provided the CIA with an autobiographical statement, describing a rebellious childhood, his decision to join the Muslim Brotherhood as a teenager, and his time in the United States as a student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, from where he graduated in 1986 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

"KSM's limited and negative experience in the United States -- which included a brief jail stay because of unpaid bills -- almost certainly helped propel him on his path to becoming a terrorist," according to the intelligence summary. "He stated that his contact with Americans, while minimal, confirmed his view that the United States was a debauched and racist country."

Here's a question for Andrew Sullivan, who flaunts his morality but nevertheless thinks it's okay to toss around the expression "Ann Althouse's pro-torture blog": What do you think made KSM view the US as debauched? I doubt if it was our support of harsh interrogation techniques — whether you use the word "torture" for that or not. I assume it was — in part — the liberty and equality — incomplete though it may be — that women and gay people experience. He wanted to mass-murder us because of that. I'm predicting that Sullivan's answer to my question will be to call me "pro-torture" for asking — that is, not to answer. He's an accomplished resistor resister.

Mohammed provided $1,000 to Ramzi Yousef, a nephew, to help him carry out the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. In 1994, he worked in the Philippines with Yousef, now serving a life sentence at the federal "supermax" prison in Colorado, on a failed plot to down 12 U.S. commercial aircraft over the Pacific.

Mohammed told interrogators it was in the Philippines that he first considered using planes as missiles to strike the United States. He took the idea to Osama bin Laden, who "at first demurred but changed his mind in late 1999," according to the summary.

Mohammed described plans to strike targets in Saudi Arabia, East Asia and the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, including using a network of Pakistanis "to target gas stations, railroad tracks, and the Brooklyn bridge in New York." Cross-referencing material from different detainees, and leveraging information from one to extract more detail from another, the CIA and FBI went on to round up operatives both in the United States and abroad.

"Detainees in mid-2003 helped us build a list of 70 individuals -- many of who we had never heard of before -- that al-Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations," according to the CIA summary.

"[R]ound up operatives both in the United States and abroad... build a list of 70 individuals..." That doesn't say that 70 individuals were rounded up, only that 70 were on the list.

Mohammed told interrogators that after the Sept. 11 attacks, his "overriding priority" was to strike the United States, but that he "realized that a follow-on attack would be difficult because of security measures." Most of the plots, as a result, were "opportunistic and limited," according to the summary....

Mohammed was an unparalleled source in deciphering al-Qaeda's strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, the summary said, including describing in "considerable detail the traits and profiles" that al-Qaeda sought in Western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the United States.

Without KSM's cooperation, what would have happened? Do those who think he shouldn't have been broken truly vividly picture a second 9/11 level attack, then a third, then a fourth, then a fifth, and so on? I understand wanting to say that morality is absolute and these techniques debase us, undermine who we are (or who we are supposed to be), and should therefore never be used. But where would the people of this country would be if those additional attacks had occurred? I don't think they'd even listen to the kind of criticisms of the techniques that we are hearing now, in our comfortable world where the CIA did what it did to KSM. What then?

ADDED: Andrew Sullivan's post, linked above, says: "A commenter on Ann Althouse's pro-torture blog reminds readers what the Washington Post chose to omit from its story - KSM's debriefing from the Red Cross." And then he's got a quote that is in the Washington Post story! Maybe next time, Andrew, read the source material before you trash it. And don't just rely on the random Althouse blog commenter!

The science narrator who once voiced awe at astronomical size now sounds rather silly.

In last night's Sunset Tavern, rhhardin wrote:

The science narrator genre, made popular in the late 60s.

"There are over 100 billion galaxies in the universe. Simply saying that number doesn't mean much to us because it doesn't provide any context. Our brains have no way to accurately put that in any meaningful perspective."

The quote is from this:



RH goes on:

100 billion is a twentieth of the 2009 Obama deficit.

It's doesn't seem so big now, astronomers.

Needed, a government narrator genre replacing the universe with the deficit.

The Hubble telescope looks at pork.

This magazine cover freaked me out.

Each element of it freaked me out more than the next. There's the big debate about whether it's okay for you not to get your child vaccinated because of the way other people's children are taking responsibility for keeping diseases out of the way of your precious bundle of purity. There are those bento box lunches. Breast milk and Mongolia. "How touch can help you and your child with anger."

And then there's that cover baby with the giant forehead. Photoshopped? But why? To convey braininess? Braininess in a baby who is looking to you for answers... questioning you... do you know enough about vaccination dangers, elite food packaging, breast milk in those distant places where people must be so wise and pure, and touch, come on, touch me — how?! — touch me or I might become enraged in ways that you — you with your tiny brain — cannot possibly imagine.

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

Each element of it freaked me out more than the next.

That's a favorite, up there with "fills a much needed gap."

LOL. You got me there.

And Chip Ahoy says he's freaked out too:

What do men want?

I keep thinking about this fascinating comment, written by rhhardin in last Friday's post "Women are unhappier than ever":

[Women are unhappy] from doing stuff women are not interested in, encouraged by the idea that women ought obsess on the same stuff as men, as if what was satisfying ought to be the same across the sexes.

Unhappiness is aided by a tendency to find stuff for men to fix, whose survival value is testing of potential mates for reliability and fondness. Finding stuff for men to do requires finding something that's wrong.

In a perfect world, that's followed by showing the man who was out on the quest that you're satisfied with him, which makes him happy.

This story is told over and over in Get Smart, wildly popular with males in the 60s.

I think being in touch with feelings is really just looking for stuff that needs fixing, the initial move in the dialog.

To help you think about that:

"People who routinely pay off their credit card balances have been enjoying the equivalent of a free ride..."

You need to see it that way, so you'll understand why you should pay interest from the time you pay for something with a credit card. I'm one of those people that pay the entire balance every month to avoid paying any interest, and being told I've been taking a free ride all these years does not soften me up to pay my supposed fair share to support the credit card system. I just won't use the card if that's the deal. I'll switch to a debit card or pay cash.

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

The reason not to ever use a debit card is that in case of fraudulent charges, you're the one out the money, so help is hard to find.

With a credit card, they're the ones out the money because you simply don't pay the contested charges, and everybody is really motivated to help you clear the thing up.

Don't give up that protection easily.

I'm instantly convinced not to use a debit card!

AND: I'm instantly unconvinced as John Lynch said:

I protect my debit card by simply not keeping much money in the account its drawn from. If I'm making more than a trivial purchase, I transfer the money from another checking account, which costs nothing at my bank. So, if someone gets my number it's no big deal because all they can steal is lunch money. There's no overdraft allowed on that account, either.

And TMink said:

I was recently charged $810 on my debit card to the WalMart in Seneca, South Carolina. This occured while I was home in Nashville. Seems I was part of the Heartland Compromise.

My bank refunded the $810 quickly and kindly.

The Air Force 1 flight over NYC can't possibly have been made for the purpose of taking that photograph.

Perhaps others are already saying this, and I'm just pointing out the obvious. But here goes.

The official story is: Botched photo op, now fully compensated for by the resignation of Louis Caldera (the director of the White House Military Office):

Caldera submitted his resignation yesterday and to no surprise, it was promptly accepted. The White House wants the memory of this fiasco to fade — and fast....

The White House review of the incident shows that Caldera was informed of the mission but missed numerous chances to stop it from happening, failed to alert senior White House officials about it, nor did he even recognize that the public might have a reaction to seeing a jumbo jet tailed by military aircraft swooping down on the city.

But look at the picture. Why would people going to all this trouble and expense to get a photograph that looked so awful?



Thanks to my commenters on last night's post for forcing me to think about this. First was rhhardin said:

It's not easy to take pictures when you're steering a fighter with your knees.

Presumably, the picture was taken from the cockpit of one of the F16s that flew alongside Air Force 1. Here's what the cockpit looks like. There's no passenger seat. There's no room for a professional photographer. How does it make any sense to do a big photo shoot without a professional photographer?

Peter V. Bella said:

It took this long? Guy should have been fired the next day.

Maybe it took so long because the story is more complicated.

JAL said:

Yeah. If they truly wanted to "update" the photos for PR purposes (??) why not do it *right*. Shooting out of a fighter plane window (while piloting said plane at only 1000' over a densely populated area) and including either a shadow or a portion of the fighter plane (lower right corner) in the picture is $328,000+ worth of amateur photography.

They didn't get our money's worth.

So - who all was IN the big plane?

Maybe the pilot took a photograph, but that can't have been the purpose of the flight. So JAL has the right question: Who was in Air Force 1?

Palladian said:

That's a poorly composed photograph. Positioning Liberty Island below the plane in that manner makes it look like the plane is a shitting bird and that the island is the pile of shit. Also the color is murky and excepting the Statue of Liberty, the scenery is a depressingly industrial swath of New Jersey. And the garbage barges or whatever they are in the harbor don't add any majesty to the photograph. The supergenius Obama kidz couldn't remove those with their mad Photoshop skillz? And what is the white streak in the upper right of the photograph, near the nose of the plane? It looks like reflection from shooting through a window.

This is what we got for $357,012? Classic.

That's a great description of what a crappy photograph it is, but instead of exclaiming over how stupid they were to take such a bad photograph, I think we need to advance to the assumption that the flight cannot have been for photography purposes.

rhhardin said:

In defense of the incompetents, they're not allowed to photoshop anything.

Some military rule?

Charles said:

rhhardin: That photo was photoshopped. It has the distinctive tags "JFIF", "Ducky", and "Adobe" in the header.

They apparently used Photoshop to remove the EXIF information from the file, lest we see that the photo was taken as a souvenir by the pilot with his $150 point-and-shoot.

I don't understand all that tech talk, but I think I want to say: Aha!

Yes, I know. I've moved into conspiracy theory territory. It's not my thing, normally. But this is just staring me in the face, and I feel required to say what I see. The pieces don't fit. I want to know more. The Caldera resignation does not turn the page. Who was in Air Force 1?

(By the way, what are the 9/11 Truthers doing with this story?)

ADDED: An emailer with some experience writes:

A few facts that may be useful:

(1) The F-16 family of aircraft does in fact have two seater trainer versions (however, I haven't a seen a photograph of the F-16s accompanying the 747 that has sufficient clarity to determine if either is a trainer version.

(2) No F-16 pilot can "steer with his knees" as the aircraft is controlled by a sidestick controller that operates via a fly-by-wire system.

(3) The F-16 can be flown on autopilot.

(4) Pilots of large, expensive to operate and maintain military aircraft gain necessary flying hours by piloting smaller, cheaper aircraft such as T-38 trainers.

(5) No military aircraft leaves the ground, anywhere, without those high up on the chain of command knowing about it and authorizing it. This would be so for Air Force One unless the Obama administration allows the aircraft to be treated like a privately owned light aircraft hangered in Uncle Fred's barn.

That being understood, here are reasons why the F-16 is a particularly awful photography platform:

(1) The cockpit in even the trainer version is very tight, with both pilots tightly strapped into seats that recline sharply to assist in dealing with high G forces. This makes manipulating cameras of sufficient quality (required for good photos) and size difficult at best.

(2) The canopy of the F-16 is essentially a one piece, continually curved plexiglas bubble, introducing distortion, light flares, and all manner of other problems into the photography equation. No competent photographer would try to shoot through this kind of medium under these conditions unless they had no choice.

(3) Fighter aircraft, at the low speeds apparent in this situation, are barely above stall speed and subject to significant buffeting. They are not stable photographic platforms. This is true of any light aircraft, particularly when compared with much larger aircraft.

(4) The released photograph is indeed poor in quality in every facet of photography, particularly when one considers framing, background and composition. It looks like the kind of thing a fighter jock might shoot, one handed, with a little digital camera that would fit in a flight suit pocket.

I'm surprised that no one had demanded a list of the crews of all involved aircraft, and the opportunity to interview them absent White House minders. It would also be interesting to learn who the official "photographer" for this mission was and to find out why they were apparently flying in a very poor platform and what kind of training they had (was this person actually a military photographer? Was there, in fact, a qualified photographer on hand?) and equipment they used. One suspects that the story of this mission would be quite different if we could speak with those involved.

AND: Here's what official Air Force photographs actually look like.

"Sasha undid the object and put it solemnly on the table."

"It was a not very tall candelabra of old bronze and artistic workmanship. It consisted of a group: on the pedestal stood two female figures in the costume of Eve and in attitudes for the description of which I have neither the courage nor the fitting temperament. The figures were smiling coquettishly and altogether looked as though, had it not been for the necessity of supporting the candlestick, they would have skipped off the pedestal and have indulged in an orgy such as is improper for the reader even to imagine."

I took a little walk today and listened to the short story "A Work of Art" -- which you can read here -- on Miette's bedtime story podcast. I was thoroughly amused by the old Chekhov story and replayed the last minute of it as I was passing by the empty gardens of University Heights.

I discovered Miette's podcast after rhhardin very aptly recommended Theodore Roethke's essay "Last Class" in a comment to the post on that NYT Magazine piece about whether it's good for a serious writer to be a creative writing professor. Rh linked to the first page of the essay (story?), and I thought it was phenomenal:

I'm tired of the I-love-me bitches always trying to keep somebody off balance; Park Avenue cuties who, denied dogs, keep wolfcubs named Errol Flynn, or bats and toads with names like Hoagy; all the cutesy, tricksy trivia and paraphernalia with which the stupid and sterile rich try to convince themselves they aren't really dead.

That's a teacher telling his students what he thinks of them!

Looking for the rest of the pages, I hit upon Miette's podcast of it. Sampling it and finding Miette's voice quite charming, I decided to take it out for a walk... over to Barrique's Wine Cave, where I didn't drink wine but had a latte and did the NY crossword in the back of the NYT Magazine.

"They became a Wurlitzer for Barack Obama..."

Big Tent Democrat on why the netroots don't get respect.

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin said:

Obama needs the talent to play the Wurlitzer for the turn of phrase to work.

I'd go with iPod.

Obama played the nutroots like an iPod.

Bissage said:

I want respect.

So I’m not going to post a stupid joke about an enormous organ.

Too obvious.

"What a narrow ridge of normality we all inhabit, with the abysses of mania and depression yawning to either side."

Oliver Sacks on mania.

IN THE COMMENTS: rhhardin says:

"Yawning'' is boredom.

Ha ha. Makes me think of Seinfeld:

George: I dunno, Jerry something's missing. There's a void, Jerry, there's a void...

Jerry: A deep, yawning chasm...

Things not said while serving as a docent in Frank Lloyd Wright's Dr. Maurice and Mrs. Margaret Greenberg House.

I was too tired last night to write very much about the Frank Lloyd Wright tour. Now, I'm up too early. (How does anyone sleep past 5 this time of year with all the birds chirping?) I'm looking at that picture I took of the Greenberg House again and thinking it looks rather ugly! Perhaps it's meant to be seen from a distance, tucked into the landscape. It was supposed to be made of stone, but Wright changed to brick to lower the cost, and that takes something away from it.

The house makes more sense from the inside, which has a huge living/dining room with two levels of big windows that stretch across a long wall and around half of 2 side walls. These look out into the middle of the trees and — if you stand at the raised floor level — the tree tops. There are terraces at the 2 sides, connected by a walkway that goes in front of the long wall of windows.



You don't see the bottom third of the forest because the house projects out over the large boulder that Wright made the starting point of his design. The site is beautiful, but it was rejected by other builders because of the big rock. I was serving as a docent explaining things to visitors on the 2008 "Wright & Like" architectural tour, and at some point in the second hour of describing the design, I thought of the Bible verse, "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone" (or "cornerstone"). I was talking to a woman and something — I forget what — that she said made the verse spring to mind. In another situation, this could become a conversation, but it was rather obvious that quoting the Bible in this context was inappropriate. Docents are bound by the principle of the separation of church and architecture, are we not? I was not tempted by the seductions of free associating on the spot about Wright and Jesus. I can always go home and blog.

So here's the passage, Matthew 21:42:

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:

"'The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes'?"

This is the part I remembered. Looking it up this morning, I see it continues in a darker tone:

"Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

Write your own short story where the docent in the Maurice Greenberg house is talking with a woman, impulsively quotes a Bible verse, and everything subsequently goes to hell.

IN THE COMMENTS: First, there's Ruth Anne:

Hmmm....you're up early and quoting scripture on a Sunday. Perhaps you're being nudged to go somewhere?

Then, there's this thread that begins with rhhardin:

He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.

This was before paper and scissors.

And later added:

"Do you know that according to Aristotle a person who dies crushed by a column does not die a tragic death? And yet here is that nontragic death hanging over you."

here

Which prompted UWS guy to say:

Of course, a newspaper writer, were he to be crushed by a column, would have died an ironic death.

Also, I clicked the comment section to read short stories...so man-up ye wordsmiths!

Yes! Man-up ye wordsmiths!

Or — per Ruth Anne — God-up!

The day before the Wisconsin primary.

Will anyone be out and subject to influencing here in Madison on President's Day, in the snow?

If you are, you can go see Michelle Obama at the Overture Center at 3:15 p.m and Hillary Clinton herself at Monona Terrace at 8:30 p.m. The Clinton event is an entire "Solutions for America" rally, scheduled to begin at 6:30 and run until 10:00 p.m. I'm thinking that's a little late (and long) for the target audience of older, working people on a week night.

Will I show up for either event? Have I, in my entire life, ever gone to a political rally or to hear a politician speak? I can only think of one time: I walked through a Kerry rally that took place on the street here in 2004, mainly to get photographs for the blog (blogs!), but committing to sitting through a big speech in an auditorium doesn't appeal to me. It's hardly a way to learn anything you don't already know about the candidate. One might go to demonstrate support for the candidate. Michelle and Hillary Clinton need you as a visual props for the cameras. Or maybe you get a thrill from being in the same room with a big star. Or you want to feel a part of a surgingly emotional crowd.

That is, you have to care in a certain way to show up for a big indoor rally. Fortunately, you don't at all need to have that feeling to vote.

IN THE COMMENTS: Oh, why can't they get over it!

rhhardin said...
Ha! I read it as "Monica Terrace."...

Bissage said...
"Solutions for America" . . . is one of those the solution that removes fabric stains?...