When you're ten, the best way to your boy's heart may be through his baby brother. (Hannah, Carter, and Rochelle; L to R)
Or maybe not.

As this reveals, Miz Scarlett is over her pique at the disruption in services last month, and has resumed her regular devotions. It also reveals I am (finally) following the good example of other bloggers and posting kitteh pictures while my own mind is blank: enjoy!

We Must Remember This

Lately I don't seem to care to read anything but History, likely in part to be a sign of a stubborn perversity of character, for I am an American, and it has long been observed, by ourselves and others, that Americans are more interested in what comes next than in how we got here in the first place. History, after all, is bunk.

At first we literally had no recorded past--no institutions, no traditions--except those we brought as European immigrants; it was in freeing ourselves from the oppressive weight of that past that we transformed a mixed body of captives, immigrants, and despised survivors into something that had never been known before--a New Order of the Ages: Americans. Moreover, this successful rebellion against the past promised an ever richer and brighter future; the untapped wealth of the new continent, technological innovation, and the genius of a free people combined to insure that, no matter how much the present was better than the past, the future would be better still. The Neo-Conservative insistence that they make history rather than subject themselves to it exemplifies a rich vein deep at the core of being American.

My generation felt a widespread suspicion of this assumption of Progress, though it was not the first to feel it threatened; the "Lost Generation" of post-WWI intellectual modernists, those who got through the Great Depression--other generations of Americans had gravely considered if "progress" could, or should continue, only to emerge with the triumph of the Grand Alliance over the Axis Powers in WWII and the New Deal repairs to Capitalism , which continued for two more decades until questions re-emerged about inclusion into the brighter world--minorities, women, the poor; what we have come to call "identity politics"--and the wisdom of including unwilling peasants around the world at the point of our guns.

In my Sophomore year of high school--1961--the U S moved from being a Creditor to a Debtor nation, a condition which has persisted and accelerated. Also in that year, the U S began to apply its new strategic doctrine of "Flexible Response", as opposed to the "Massive Retaliation" of the Fifties under Eisenhower, to Southeast Asia: opposing what was seen as Soviet expansion in the Post-Colonial world with ground troops rather than atomic bombs. And in Albany. a county seat town in SW Georgia, local Black people were demanding the rights of U S citizens.

It has, at best, not been Progress, but more the opposite, ever since; the size of the U S foreign debt is perhaps the single most salient economic fact of our lifetime, it is still heresy to ask if the U S must continue to spend hundreds of billions to police an increasingly resentful world, often through the most brutal and unpopular of local, Westernized surrogates. There has been some advancement towards a more inclusive society, but even here, failure is pervasive. There has been no victory--no triumph over evil--since these questions were raised nearly fifty years ago. Instead, we has been presented, since at least 1980, with repeated policy errors compounded by the need, popular and elite, to deny that these facts exist.

Obama's election is widely hailed as a sign that these trends may finally be reversed, and that we may, for he first time in decades, be part of the solution rather than the problem. Maybe, but I do not see Obama nor the associates he has chosen so far, to be leading the way, especially in foreign policy; at best, he may provide an opening for us to point the way we want to go, which I believe he will then follow, but he is far too shrewd a politician to stick his neck out that far ahead. The more significant question is whether or not we have become so degraded by our experience in this new world so as to prefer willful ignorance. If not, we may indeed take a step towards being a city, if not that example for all others of Winthrop's sermon aboard the Arabella, one ready to take its place among others.

Home Sweet Home

The furniture has been here for nearly a month, so it's been long enough to acquire a more lived-in look. From the top, the Dining area (I am not responsible for the "chandelier") looking towards the entrance (on the left), the Living area from the dining table towards the fireplace, and the living area from the entrance with the kitchen and a bath in the background. Reminder: close the door on interior shots.

Just in Time

I went to the Phoenix airport last Tuesday afternoon for my flight home. Regrettably, I neglected to observe one of the Prime Rulez for U S domestic flights: Nevah Accept a Connection Through Chicago between December 1st and April 1st, so I went back to Nimsey's (Daughter: short for "Lil Nimrod") for another night and another try, which brought me to the airport parking lot in Hartford at about 1:00 AM Thursday, with the cheerful holiday greeting from the shuttle driver "We gotta Big Storm comin' in tomorrow night, and another Sunday." After a half-hour of ice chopping, I was on the road with the basics running through my head: get Scarlett, go to pharmacy, re-stock larder. I finished about ten minutes before the first flakes fell in earnest; the above shot is from the front window Saturday morning.

Other than bringing a camera with an almost dead battery, not bringing my cellphone charger,
and the above, the trip went smoothly. I must figure out how to get some of the better pictures from Nimsey's e-mail to my photo file, as we depended on her camera, but I did get a couple before the battery died.

The big news was Carter Wonderbaby (shown) learning to crawl Sunday afternoon, which he repeated half-heartedly for Mommy's videocam, and refused to do for Daddy for the next day or so, perferring to sneak in practice while Daddy wasn't looking. For the experienced, he was at the rocking back and forth on hands and knees stage, and the raised on hands and push off straight-legged with feet stage, which he often enjoyed, but which produced no forward motion, which eventually annoyed him on occasion.

I have been recovering over Lamb and a Lobster, Shrimp, and Whitefish Gratin with Leeks and Carrots; I shall have to ask Paul and Jane to allow me to join the Mutual Workout Encouragement Society and Camp Meeting soon. And get myself to church Wednesday night.

A Blessed End of Advent and Joyous Christmas to all y'all from Miz Scarlett (also shown) and me.

Announcement

For those who may not have quite given up hope that I may blog, however unlikely that may be beginning to seem, it won't be this week; I leave for a week in Arizona tomorrow. Yes, I will bring my camera, but not my laptop.

Spare Thou Those

This was in response to a book review Paul posted a link to at his place: Byzigenous Buddhapalian. Bacevitch is Andrew J Bacevitch. The Limits of Power: the End of American Exceptionalism, which was recently published and is apparently getting some attention.

Bacevitch, as quoted in the link and on Rachel Maddow's show Friday, says nothing that is inconsistent with the conventional wisdom of the History of U S Foreign Relations over the past forty years.

The more interesting question to me is why anything Bacevitch is saying should be news to anyone who claims to be informed about the subject, whether scholar, pundit, or public official. The short answer is, of course, "sin", or, as he points out more specifically: the arrogance, greed, and self-righteousness which permeates, but is not limited to, all these groups.

A friend of mine joked during the '96 elections that the trouble with Republicans was they didn't really believe sin as an experiential fact. Another very astute friend, when I asked him what he was currently reading in the Summer of '06, replied *Immoral Man and Moral Society* I take some comfort in reading the President-Elect has been influenced by his reading of Reinhold Niebuhr. None of this should be taken to claim Niebuhr as an infallible guide; to do so would be oxymoronic, intrinisically contradictory to his point. He was, for example, far too ready to belittle or ignore the U S role in the formation of the Cold War.

He does, however, keep an important insight before us, which may be especially useful as we attempt to discover thirty years of Republican sin in detail and to do what we can to make amends; it is always too late to control the outcome, but it is always time to repent and make the effort.

"Spare Thou those who confess their faults." eh?

Election Day in Connecticut

One of the first things I did after moving last month was to go to Town Hall and register to vote in my new location. Later, I looked up the voting location on a map; it's a middle school in a part of town I ordinarily wouldn't go.

Late this morning, armed with the paper I got when I registered, I went looking and found the site with very little trouble ( passed the side street it was on, but looked and noticed the name as I passed, so I doubled back). I found a parking place close to the entrance and, though there was a steady trickle of people making their way to the entrance, there was no line outside, only a man with an Obama sign and a woman with a McCain sign standing in the proper place, quietly chatting with each other.

There wasn't a line inside either, and the registration paper saved me an extra step, as my ID (driver's license) still has my old address. One side, a paper ballot, and it was done within a minute or two.

I joined the sign carriers to chat for a few minutes, and joked about how congenial they seemed. They both said something like "Hey; we're all in this together."; it seemed courteous not to point out that was a Democratic point this year. Both were friends and veterans of many an election. I did remark that the lack of a line might be attributed to the fact that both campaigns make the same assumption about the way Connecticut's going; I don't suppose there are lines in Utah either.

In all, a low key and steady event: the way "Nutmeggers" like to think of themselves.