Whither Spitzer?

Louise Crawford put the wood to me, at the delightful Brooklyn Blogade hosted yesterday by Joyce Hanson, AKA Bad Girl (we're talking "bad" in the probably now hopelessly archaic hip-hop sense). Anyway, amid all the bonhomie, Louise let me know in no uncertain terms that the volume of my production of late has been a bit less than up to snuff. All I could do was hang my head and nod "Yes."

So, I should certainly find something blogworthy in our (I'm referring to my fellow Empire Staters here) Governor's admission that he's shelled out major coin for some choice nooky. At first, I thought of trying to do something about how this provokes an intra-cerebral civil war between my classic liberal (what consenting men and women do in private, whether out of purely erotic or commercial motivation, is no one else's business, even if one of them happens to be a politician, televangelist or whatever) and Burkean conservative (prostitution is bad because it gives rise to conditions in which persons can be exploited without meaningful consent) sides. But that was going to demand a long essay, and I didn't have the energy or desire.

What I kept hearing was, "How could he be so stupid?" Stupid, I'll agree, but perhaps not in the sense of just failing to realize the risk. The phrase that kept repeating in my mind this afternoon was spoken by Maggie Smith playing the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: "Beyond the ordinary moral code." In the movie (and novel by Muriel Spark from which it was derived), Brodie is a teacher in a fancy girls' school in Scotland during the period just before World War Two, and a vulgar Nietzschean with fascist sympathies. One of her students is so beautiful, intelligent and talented that Brodie is convinced she is a true uberfraulein. In order to nudge this girl towards her rightful (as Brodie sees it) destiny, she connives for her to have an affair with the art teacher, a man in his thirties, married with six children. This all ends, inevitably, in disaster for both the art teacher and the girl. Brodie's excuse, of course, is that the girl was "beyond the ordinary moral code."

There are people who believe this about themselves. Some turn to overt crime: murder, rape, theft. We call them sociopaths. Others hew to more conventional career paths, and are often quite successful. Because this belief is strongly correlated with narcissism, some of them go into show business (of which televangelism is a part) or politics. Spitzer may exemplify the latter.

Alternatively, if we take seriously Spitzer's statement that his actions violate his, and anyone's, sense of right and wrong, we could conclude that there was, in his psyche, some desire for self-destruction.

How to answer the question in my caption for this post? That's a matter of practical politics, not philosophy. I suspect that the pressure from the Democratic Party in a presidential election year will prove irresistible: Spitzer will be out, and soon.

Update: There's an AP story that quotes several psychologists on the question, "Why do smart people do dumb things?" As you might expect, opinions vary, with some of the experts supporting a theory of hubris that is close to what I expressed above.

On the question whether Spitzer should resign, the lead Times editorial harrumphs mightily about it not being, as Spitzer asserted, primarily a "family" matter, but just calls for a more complete and public act of contrition, and does not demand his resignation. Comments on Instaputz (click on the word "Comments" to see them in Haloscan), including some by Brooklyn Heights Blog regulars, are generally taking the perfect-act-of-contrition no-resignation tack.

Second update: Newsweek's Howard Fineman has another theory about what motivated Spitzer. He thinks it may have been an inner conflict over his career as a politician. This brings to my mind a New Yorker cartoon by William Hamilton that depicted a sixtyish, besuited man sitting with several similar gents, all with drinks, in a club lounge, and saying, "Steel, of course, has been my life. But sometimes I wish my life had been a sunny cafe in Provence, with a pretty girl and a bottle of beaujolais."

Whither the Mets?

Celizic: The geriatric, injury-riddled Mets may be lucky to win eighty games this season.

Marchman: The Mets may have no serious competition in the National League. (Unfortunately, two of the most credible contenders, the Phillies and Braves, are in the Mets' division.)

Wake me in September.

Update: Nick asks if this means I expect the Mets to be "standing somewhere in between" come September. Well, let me put it this way: my estimation of the probability that the Mets will be at the top of their division in September is 25%; my estimation of the probability that they will be somewhere in the middle is 55%, and my estimation of the probability that they won't be standing at all is 20%. So, yeah, I guess I do.

The point of my post is kind of like that great Who song, "Won't Get Fooled Again." I don't want to go through the emotional ups and downs of last season, which got resolved into comfort by mid-August, then abruptly plunged into despair at the end of September.

Twiffer: I like roller coasters, too. In baseball, however, I'd rather not have that abrupt plunge at the end. (I know, Red Sox fans became inured to that; however, after two championships in three years, they may be starting to forget.)

Woman wanted for Vampire Weekend.

The opening page of Vampire Weekend's website has the following under "news":

The name of this band is Vampire Weekend. We are specialists in the following styles: "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa","Campus", and "Oxford Comma Riddim."

(Note the use of an Oxford comma in the second sentence.) In other contexts, however, they've called their musical genre "Upper West Side Soweto." Here they are doing "A-Punk":

Watching and listening to these guys, I can't help but think of another group that had phenomenal success beginning about thirty years ago, Talking Heads. (There's a short account of the one time I attended a Talking Heads concert here.)

Let's compare the two groups:

1. Fancy college degrees. Talking Heads: Yes. Vampire Weekend: Yes.

2. Twee lyrics. Talking Heads: Yes. Vampire Weekend: Yes.

3. Architectural references. Talking Heads: Yes. Vampire Weekend: Yes.

4. African pop influence. Talking Heads: Yes. Vampire Weekend: Yes.

5. Punk influence. Talking Heads: Yes. Vampire Weekend: Yes.

6. Foreign-born member. Talking Heads: Yes. Vampire Weekend: Yes.

7. Woman member. Talking Heads: Yes. Vampire Weekend: No.

So, it seems that VW lacks only one element of Talking Heads' formula for mega-success. Guys, you gotta getta gal.

Thanks to Homer Fink of Brooklyn Heights Blog for turning me on to VW.

Update: Homer has referred me to the MySpace page of another group with an Ivy League pedigree, Cambridge-based Chester French. "The Jimmy Choos" is a lively rocker that appeals to my inner shoe fetishist, and "People" sounds remarkably like Wild Honey period Beach Boys.

Second update: Perhaps providing support to Brain Tracer's theory about the psychic qualities of MP3 players, on my way home from my office my iPod played "And She Was" by Talking Heads, then followed it with VW's "Mansard Roof."

Lenci's locks must go! (But it's for a good cause.)

Friend and erstwhile colleague Ed Lenci is known, among many things, for having a fine head of hair. But, come St. Patrick's Day, Ed (who has Hibernian heritage on the distaff side) will repair to Jim Brady's, where a razor will sweep over his scalp, leaving him bald as a cue ball. The purpose of this exercise in aesthetic cruelty is to raise funds to fight something far more cruel: childhood cancer.

Ed and others have responded to the challenge made by St. Baldrick's Foundation, an organization which runs the world's largest volunteer-driven fundraising event for childhood cancer research. So far, its efforts have met with tremendous success: St. Baldrick's raised over $12 million in 2007 and, since its inception in 2000, has raised over $34 million. Its goal is to raise $17 million in 2008. (It has nothing to do with Baldrick in Blackadder.)

To make a donation and support Ed's sacrifice, go to St. Baldrick's website and click DONATE NOW. On the page that pops up, you will see spaces for entering Ed's name under the heading "Search for a Participant or Team." You need only enter "Lenci" in the appropriate box and hit "go." On the page that next pops up, you'll see Ed's photograph and below it the words "Donate now." Click "Donate now" and you will be taken to the page where you can make your donation securely using your Visa, Mastercard, Discover or American Express card. Donations to St. Baldrick's are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

The view from my window this morning.

Of course, "changing to sleet or freezing rain" is the prediction for later today. Too bad.

Where I've been.

I've been making up lots of excuses for not keeping the blog going, lately. My current one is that I recently acquired a new computer, and therefore have spent much of the last week installing software, transferring files, re-establishing lost or forgotten user names and passwords, and starting to learn the vicissitudes of Vista.

Bear with me, friends.

Another blogger has "disappeared".

I posted earlier about Fouad Al-Farhan, a Saudi blogger who was arrested and taken to an undisclosed location where he is being held incommunicado (now for 65 days) without any publicly announced charges against him, apparently for the offense of criticizing government officials. I've now learned that a similar fate befell a young (23) Syrian blogger, Tariq Biasi, who has been in custody for over six months. You can read about his case on the Global Voices Advocacy site. As with Fouad, there's a petition to free Tariq. The link is here. The text of the petition is given in both Arabic and English (scroll down) and, if you follow the link at the bottom that says "sign the petition", you'll find a box where you can add additional comments, if you wish.

Balder -- a red ship on a gray day.

It was a gray, gloomy morning Thursday when I was on my run through the Empire - Fulton Ferry State Park in DUMBO and saw, with my peripheral vision, something big and reddish-orange overtaking me off to my right. It was Balder, a self-unloading bulk cargo ship (in that respect an oceangoing version of the Great Lakes ships like Calumet that were the subject of an earlier post) belonging to the Norwegian Torvald-Klaveness shipping group, named for the Norse God of "light, joy, purity, beauty, innocence, and reconciliation", but flying the flag of the Marshall Islands and, according to this article, trading mostly among the east coast of the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean and South America. Below is a closer view of Balder's stern, showing the elaborate conveyor equipment used to handle cargoes like gypsum, salt and sand.

Lenten stuff 2

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden

-T.S. Eliot, from "Ash Wednesday"

An old friend, a lapsed Roman Catholic, used to call Ash Wednesday "All Loons' Day". Today, as last year, I've chosen to bear the mark of the loon, though I'm still beset by the same doubts as when I posted a year ago. This year I approached the liturgy of the ashes with some urgency. Ash Wednesday (and, indeed, the whole succeeding forty day Lenten season) is for Christians what Yom Kippur is for Jews: a time for atonement, and atonement is what I felt I needed, in spades. (I won't burden you with why.)

As I've noted recently, I have great difficulty with the notion of "faith" as it is commonly understood in a Christian context; that is, as a willingness to suspend skepticism with regard to propositions that are not amenable to empirical testing. This may simply be a manifestation of a strong anti-authoritarian streak.

While riding the subway to my office, I remembered that T.S. Eliot had written a poem titled "Ash Wednesday". I found it through a web search, and realized that it expressed, as exemplified in the lines quoted above, one aspect of Christianity that I endorse without hesitation: its embrace of paradox. Why this appeals to me is something I'll have to save for a later post.

Santana to Mets?

Although Twiffer congratulated me on the deal a couple of days ago, given the Mets' recent history I've been reluctant to post anything until the ink has dried on the pact. My caution seems to be in order; indeed, even if the contract gets signed, I should probably wait until Gomez, Humber, Mulvey and Guerra have passed their physicals. As any Mets fan knows, so many things can go wrong.

Update: As the article linked above now shows, contract terms were finalized before the extended deadline. So now I need only fret about the outcome of physicals. Or whether Santana will slip and break his pitching arm between now and the start of the season. Or whatever.

Here is Tim Marchman's analysis of the value of the deal to the Mets. Of course, I find the Billy Wagner quote scary.

Jensen Interceptor

Never as well-known as the Aston-Martin, and lacking a James Bond connection (although it did serve Simon Templar in The Saint), the Jensen was nevertheless a strikingly handsome and agile British (for a time it was built in Scotland) grand touring car. The Interceptor was powered by a Chrysler V-8, and some models featured an early adaptation of four-wheel drive to GT use.

Hello, anybody!

If you ain't got a shackle or a chain.

- John Stewart

Yeah, I've been going through another of those periods of blogger's block, where I keep coming up with ideas for posts, then mentally killing them. Anyway, I'll be back with something, soon. I've been chewing over this piece by Keifus. Then, I have some old, unfinished business with Archaeopteryx: not a disagreement, I might add, more like a midrash. Of late, I've also found inspiration from Publius, of Obsidian Wings.

Anyway, bear with me, and rattle my cage, if you please. I may post some place-holders along the way, but I'll have some substance for you before too long.

Three Cunard Queens in New York

On Sunday, January 13, all three of Cunard's great cruise ships: Queen Elizabeth 2, on one of her last voyages before going into retirement as a floating hotel in Dubai; Queen Mary 2; and Queen Victoria, on her maiden voyage, all entered New York harbor.


Above is Mary, docked at Pier 17, Brooklyn, located in the Red Hook neighborhood. This shot was taken at about 7:15 a.m. from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.

That afternoon, I took the subway to West 59th Street in Manhattan, and walked over to the Cruise Ship Terminal, where QE2 and Victoria were docked.



Here's the bow of QE2, with the funnel and upper superstructure of Victoria looming over the pier to the south.


QE2 was bunkering at the time of my visit. This view shows the clean, "shipshape" lines of her superstructure (in contrast to those of newer ships like Victoria). It's hard for me to believe this ship has completed forty years of service, including being pressed into duty as a troopship during the brief but bloody Falklands War. Note the shadow of Victoria on QE2's superstructure.


Above is a view of Victoria. To my eye, the design of her superstructure, with the decks cantilevered outward like an inverted wedding cake, is not as pleasing as that of QE2. Improvements in hull design and more effective stabilization have allowed naval architects to design ships that look more and more like landlocked resort hotels. This has been a boon for the ships' owners, who can accommodate more passengers and provide more commodious public spaces in their vessels.

Note the small, twin-hulled boat just below Victoria's bow.

Here the boat, evidently used by crew members to inspect Victoria's waterline, is being hauled up by crane, to be stowed inside the ship's hull.
Finally, below is a view of Victoria's bow, with QE2's funnel in the background.

That evening, the ships left their docks and gathered near the mouth of the Hudson, just north of the Statue of Liberty, where they remained during a fireworks display before departing on their voyages. Unfortunately, lacking a tripod, I was unable to get any good photographs of this event, which I watched from the roof of my building.


This Dutch Site has animated views of QE2 and Victoria arriving at their piers, and also still photos of the fireworks. To see the latter, click on the word vertrek near the bottom of the page, then click on volgende to advance from one photo to the next.

Farewell to "The Third Bridge"

Two mornings ago, while on my customary early run through Brooklyn Bridge Park in DUMBO, I paused to take a photo of part of Osman Akan's "The Third Bridge" illuminated by the rising sun. "Third Bridge", which was installed last October, was due to be taken down today.

Johnny Podres, 1932-2008

"Millennium," yes; "pandemonium"!
Roy Campanella leaps high. Dodgerdom

crowned, had Johnny Podres on the mound.

- Marianne Moore, "Hometown Piece for Messrs Alston and Reese"

I've told before how and why the Brooklyn Dodgers became my first love in baseball, and that 1955 was my first remembered and defining World Series. So it's with particular sorrow that I read that Johnny Podres, winner of game seven of that Series, and of the Dodgers' first championship, and that over the hated Yankees, died today at seventy-five.

I'm glad, however, to see that Johnny's fellow pitcher from the '55 team, Don Newcombe, still lives, along with teammate Tommy Lasorda and former Dodger GM Buzzie Bavasi.

Update: Arch, in a comment on my parallel post in WikiFray, says Bob Gibson is for him what Podres was for me. I couldn't find a poem about Gibson, but I did find another blog with a link to an MP3 of my favorite baseball writer, Roger Angell, talking about Gibson. Anyway, Arch, I've got to admit: Gibson was simply the greatest pitcher of his era, and probably one of the five or so best of all time. Oh, yeah, and as I've said before, if I had to pick a team purely on aesthetics, the Cards would be my choice.

"Free Fouad" update: please sign the petition.

An earlier post called attention to the plight of Fouad Al-Farhan, a Saudi citizen and blogger who, just over a month ago, was arrested and is being held in an undisclosed location without any publicly announced charge against him. His only offense, apparently, was criticizing some government officials. This action appears to run counter to King Abdullah's own declared intent to allow greater freedom of speech and the press.

Ahmed Al-Omran, publisher of the excellent English language blog Saudi Jeans, has linked to his blog a petition to free Fouad. The link to the petition is here. Please follow the link and consider adding your name to mine and to the almost 900 (as of the time I write this) people who have signed and submitted it. Note that you may edit the words of the letter to suit your own taste or convictions (wimp that I am, I changed "demand" in the first line to "respectfully request", noting that it was addressed to high Saudi and U.S. officials).

Get to know Andrew Olmsted.

I recently did, if only by reading his words, and that's as much, unfortunately, as I ever will. He's dead. He was a blogger, like me, until a sniper's bullet found him a few days ago. A major in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, he had prepared a final message, which he entrusted to a friend to post to his blog in the event of his death. It's here, and I offer it without further comment on my part, which would be superfluous.

Well, OK, I will add this to the many good things being said about him: he was a Yankee fan who converted to the Red Sox. And, as he noted concerning the brevity of his life: "few of us are destined to make more than a tiny dent in history's Green Monster."

He suggested that the reader of his final post "put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984)"; so, for you, Andy, here's Joan Jett:



Kudos to Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings for being the caretaker and publisher of Andy's final post.

Update: Hilzoy has posted this on Obsidian Wings:

A member of Andy Olmsted's family has just written me to say that if people want to do something in honor of him, they can send donations to a fund that has been set up for the four children of CPT Thomas Casey, who served under Andy and was killed while trying to help him. The address is here:

Capt. Thomas Casey Children's fund
P.O. Box 1306
Chester, CA 96020

Thanks so much.

College football wrap-up: Tigers truimphant.

A thoroughly bizarre season, which started with a huge upset, and saw my alma mater rise briefly to glory in the AP and USA Today polls before falling to 23rd and then getting pounded by Oregon in the Sun Bowl, has come to what for me is a somewhat satisfactory conclusion with the Bayou Bengals' (for whom I've long had a soft spot) convincing victory over Ohio State, a team I've despised since the days of the loathsome Woody Hayes.

New York gets it again, and again ...

A month or so ago I was walking through a subway station when I saw a poster advertising the movie I Am Legend, showing Will Smith leading a German Shepherd along the Manhattan abutment of a ruined Brooklyn Bridge. Its center span is missing, and its main cables droop from the towers into the water. On the Brooklyn side, near where I live, the buildings (including, perhaps significantly, the tower housing the headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses) look intact, but lifeless. Above Will's head, under a gloomy, sepia-toned sky, are the words: "The last man on earth is not alone."

A few days ago, again in the subway, I saw a poster for a movie with the bucolic title Cloverfield; however, the scene on the poster was far from idyllic. It showed a decapitated Statue of Liberty, torch arm still aloft, and, beyond it, fires raging in lower Manhattan in the vicinity of my office.

Legend, it seems, is about a plague; a human-generated plague caused by a mutant measles virus made to combat cancer. Cloverfield is just a good old monster movie, though, no doubt, with more sophisticated special effects than say, the first New-York-gets-trashed movie I can remember seeing, the 1953 release The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, in which a gigantic amphibious dinosaur-like creature, Rhedosaurus, freed from arctic ice by a U.S. H-bomb test somehow conducted with the compliance of the Canadian government (oh, for those halcyon days when Louis St. Laurent was Ike's favorite golfing buddy), makes its way southward to its ancient hunting grounds, now inconveniently occupied by The World's Greatest City. In this respect, Beast prefigures the original 1954 Godzilla, also put into action by a nuke test, in which the creature trashes Tokyo (a 1998 remake had Godzilla attacking New York, thereby bringing things full circle).

I generally avoid movies that feature the destruction of, or even major damage to, the city I live in and love. I did make an exception for The Day After Tomorrow, but only because a friend plays a part in it. I had thought to make a list of such movies. For me, an especially gruesome example is Fail-Safe (1964), in which POTUS orders the thermonuclear vaporization of New York in order to convince the surviving members of the Soviet chain of command that we are sincere in saying that our obliteration of Moscow was just a mistake caused by a communications fiasco.

Anyway, I quickly realized such a list would be unmanageably long and probably still way short of complete. So, I invite you to submit your favorite examples. If you want to submit movies in which other prominent cities get laid waste, feel free. If anyone can confirm or deny the existence of a movie called The Creature That Devoured Cleveland, I'll be grateful. A quick Google search left the question unanswered.

Update: Somehow (probably because it was in the December 26 Times, which was part of a pile of papers waiting for us when we got back from Massena and which were gone through quickly), I missed Sewell Chan's piece on this very subject, in which he includes a list of movies in which New York is obliterated.

Some Stan Rogers for Dawn Coyote.

Dawn replied to my New Year's shout-outs, noting that my post on lake ships made her think of the song "The Mary Ellen Carter", as performed by Stan Rogers.


Here's Stan again, singing "Make and Break Harbour," from his first album, Fogarty's Cove, with a montage of fishing scenes:


Finally, here's a CBC piece showing the icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier sailing in arctic waters, to the accompaniment of Stan's song, "Northwest Passage":

Cold day at Port Henry.

Taken from a window on Amtrak's Adirondack on December 22, this shot shows the Port Henry, New York railroad station, originally built by the Delaware & Hudson, now part of Canadian Pacific. Beyond the station is an Alco diesel locomotive, ore jenny and caboose of the Lake Champlain & Moriah, a short line that hauled iron ore from nearby mines to a dock at Port Henry where it was loaded on barges for transport to distant steel mills. (For a detailed description of the mining industry in the Moriah region in the late 19th century, see this 1873 article from the New York Times.) I've featured this loco and cars on the blog before, in photos taken during the summer.

Classic lake boats: a dying breed.

In a couple of earlier posts (here and here), I've written about, and posted photos of, the unique ships (called, I've now learned, "boats" by true Great Lakes sailors) built for bulk cargo (usually grain or ore) transport on the Great Lakes. Yesterday, thanks to Tom Turner of NYCMaritime, I received a link to this story by Jim Nichols, in the Grand Rapids Press, about the scrapping of Calumet (photo above, by Dick Lund, from Dick's Great Lakes Ship Photos & More), a particularly handsome classic laker (i.e. one with the wheelhouse and crew quarters at the bow). She was launched in 1929 as the Myron C. Taylor, of the U.S. Steel Corporation fleet, and traded under that name and ownership for most of her life, before being sold and assuming her present and final name a few years ago. With her passing, the fleet of classic lakers continues to diminish; soon, all will be gone except for a few that may be preserved as museum pieces.

I forwarded a copy of the Calumet article to Mark Crawford, who told me he had served some years ago as a crewman on lakers. He replied, sending me a photo of the William B. Schiller (see below), also of the U.S. Steel fleet, on which he had sailed.


Schiller was a particularly fine example of the classic laker type, long and lean, with trim lines and a tall stack, and sporting a bowspirt. According to the records of American Shipbuilding (a company later purchased by George Steinbrenner), she was delivered to her owners in 1910, and went to the breakers in 1978. Sixty eight years of service is remarkable for a ship, though Calumet managed seventy eight.

Of his days as a Lakes seaman, Mark wrote:

I started out working as a deckhand and after a few months was promoted to watchman, the easiest job imaginable -- my work consisted of measuring any water collecting in the empty ballast tanks when the boat was cargoless, providing relief for the wheelsman, making coffee for the pilot house crew, and swabbing the forecastle deck. The rest of the time I would spend reading. My watches were from 4PM to 8PM and 4AM to 8AM, so I got to see almost every daybreak and sunset. I read a massive number of books at the time.

Mark's decision to leave this contemplative life (though one not without danger: he was a Lakes crewman near the time of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald with all hands) meant that the Lakes' loss would be the art world's gain.

Free Fouad!

In Saudi Arabia, it seems, blogging about political prisoners can land you in jail. See the New York Times story here.

Update: As the linked "Free Fouad" site now shows, an NGO called the Committee to Protect Journalists has sent a strong letter to King Abdullah, in care of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., referring to the Saudi government's expressed commitment to greater press freedom, and urging the immediate release of Fouad Al-Farhan.

New Year's shout-outs.

It's time to look back and acknowledge, with thanks, the folks who have encouraged and supported this blog over the past year.

First, enormous thanks, hugs and kisses to Martha and Liz, my wife and daughter, respectively, for their patience with my time-consuming and too-often distracting hobby. (As I've noted in a previous post, David Carr, of the New York Times, had this observation about having a blog: "[T]hink of it as a large yellow Labrador: friendly, fun, not all that bright, but constantly demanding your attention." Liz would much rather I had a Lab.)

Next, kudos to Homer Fink of Brooklyn Heights Blog, and Dawn Coyote of WikiFray, which provide me with alternative fora in which to serve up my half-baked ideas, as well as very productive links to this blog. Dawn, thanks for picking up the ball and running with it when Ender put it on the ground. Homer, I promise to have a column for you, real soon.

Louise Crawford, unofficial Jewish mother of the Brooklyn blogosphere, has been a great supporter of S-AB, giving encouraging commentary and making productive links again and again and again. Special thanks for including a mention of S-AB in this year's Park Slope 100, even though I'm not a Sloper.

Rundeep gets a special mention for having posted one of the nicest things ever written about S-AB, and about yours truly.

Allan Tremmel is a high school and college friend I'd lost contact with until he discovered S-AB, and I heard from him for the first time in at least twenty years. Since then, we've corresponded by e-mail, mostly about my having ended up where he started out (Brooklyn), but also about our old common interest, astronomy. In addition, he's put me in touch with other high school friends. A happy, healthy and prosperous 2008 to you and yours, Al.

Old Fray friends Twiffer and Persephone have been faithful readers, and Twiff has posted frequent and incisive comments (but, face it, T., you'll never get me to like the DH rule). This year, though, they especially distinguished themselves by bringing Li'l Macduff to life.

Other Fray folk who have been S-AB supporters include august, Grant Miller Media, Keifus, John McG (who gets special thanks for giving me my first "Digg"), Archaeopteryx, Hipparchia (who gets special thanks for "tagging" me for the Pharyngula mutating genre meme), TenaciousK (who I am delighted to see has resurfaced and with whom I share my March 19 birthday), catnapping, The Dread Pundit Bluto, topazz (who, alas, appears to have ended her blog), and (though he'll no doubt deny it) Schadenfreude.

No discussion of Fray friends would be complete without mentioning the return of Moira Redmond. Moira, I promise I'll be back for at least an occasional Fray post in the near future.

Other Brooklyn bloggers rating special mention for their support are The Changeling of Bed-Stuy Blog, EJ of BK 11201, Brooklyn Beat of Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn, Xris of Flatbush Gardener, Bob Guskind of Gowanus Lounge, Rob Lenihan of Luna Park Gazette, Miss Heather of newyorkshitty, and Gary of runs brooklyn/brooklyn runs who, even though he's moved away and stopped adding to his excellent blog, still visits SA-B regularly from his new home in Iowa.

Other bloggers who have been supportive include Heights neighbor TS, who is one of two contributors to Instaputz; Brain Tracer, who believes in the psychic power of MP3 players (a topic on which I may post ere long); Joe Martini, of Give 'n' Go; Mother Jones, R.N., of Nurse Ratched's Place; N. Pepperell, of Rough Theory; rhea, of The Boomer Chronicles; El Cabrero, of The Goat Rope; whoever does Going Like Sixty; and, of course, the always faithful Sometimes Saintly Nick.

Resolutions? You want resolutions? I think Chaylene may have the right idea (though, as expected, El Cabrero has more considered thoughts on the matter).

Sampling the Sam Adams Brewmaster's Collection

Two days ago I bought a twelve pack of the Samuel Adams "Brewmaster's Collection", in which you get a couple of bottles of the flagship Boston Lager, along with two each of five specialty brews (this collection is obviously a seasonal one, consisting entirely of dark, full-bodied brews thought especially suitable for cold weather consumption). Today I tried one of each of the five heavyweights, with these results:

Honey Porter: Typical rich porter flavor, with, as advertised, a hint of honey. This had spent several hours in the fridge, and might have been better served just slightly chilled.

Black Lager: Rich but bland; might also have benefited from less refrigeration.

Scotch Ale: According to the label, this is made with peat-roasted barley like that used to make Scotch Whisky. The smoky flavor comes through, but the hops are a bit strident.

Irish Red: Great hop/barley balance; a well-crafted ale.

Brown Ale: Fascinating counterplay of caramel and citrus. My favorite of the lot.

Christmas eve thoughts of a wanna-believer.

Two Sundays ago, at a festive mass of lessons and carols, the Grace Church choir sang this:

Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took,
As clerkës finden written
In their book.
Nor had one apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Then had never Our Lady
A-been heaven's queen.
Blessed be the time
That apple taken was.
Therefore we may singen
Deo gratias!

This wasn't the first time I'd heard this Chaucerian-era song, but it was the first that I'd focused on its meaning: that Original Sin, the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, was an occasion for thanks to God, because it allowed for Mary to become queen of heaven. In other words, no Fall, no need for redemption, and consequently no need for Mary to give birth to God's son so that he might, by sacrifice on the cross, atone for humanity's sins.

So, what if Eve hadn't fallen for the serpent's persuasion? One of the punishments inflicted by God for her and Adam's transgression is, "Dust you are, and to dust you shall return." Were the primordial couple thus to be immortal so long as they refrained from this defiance of divine authority? Another punishment, inflicted on Eve, was painful childbirth. Does this mean that, absent the Fall, she would have been the beneficiary of a divine epidural? Or does it mean that the original intent was for her never to have children; indeed, for her to be Adam's helpmate, but not his bedmate? According to Genesis, after the Fall, they first were embarrassed by their nakedness before each other. This introduces a notion of sexual tension that hadn't existed before. Somehow, we seem to equate "original sin" with sex, but Genesis avers that it was the acquisition of knowledge; specifically, the knowledge of good and evil.

Later in Genesis, though, we get an explicit equation of knowledge with sex, in the statement, "Lot knew his wife." From this we get the nudge-and-a-wink expression, "know in the Biblical sense." "Carnal knowledge" is in fact an archaic legal euphemism for sexual intercourse (and also the title of a 1971 movie, starring Ann-Margret, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen and Jack Nicholson; written by Jules Feiffer and directed by Mike Nichols).

The connection between knowledge and sex is one to which I've alluded before here, and one that's been troubling my mind of late in connection with my fraught relationship with Christianity. I am ever mindful of the tension between belief and intellectuality, and of my resistance to accepting, in the words of the Holy Father (for me, an Episcopalian, a persuasive but not infallible authority), propositions that are not empirically falsifiable. My aversion to "faith" in the sense of unjustified belief, which carries with it as a corollary the spurning of those strands of inquiry which might cast doubt on such belief, is grounded on a visceral resistance to the circumscription of the pursuit of knowledge.

I refer to myself as a "wanna-believer" because I do wish I could believe, not in a Bible-as-literal-truth sense, but at least in a sense that could impart more meaningful content to the liturgy that I practice. With that, I wish you all a merry Christmas.

12/25 update: Did Ted Burke write this poem as an answer to my post? I'd like to think so. Even if, as seems more likely, he didn't, I still like it (as George Plimpton so mellifluously said in that Dry Dock Savings Bank ad in the 1970s) eNORmously.

Yes, I'm still alive.

I've survived my first attempt to teach a continuing legal education seminar to a class of other lawyers (got to be a tough audience); even got some applause at the end. The topic? Oh, yeah: "Ethical issues and the use of the internet." Any questions?

Meanwhile, my wife, the archivist, has given me the schedule for the lectures in the spring 2008 session of the Richardson History of Psychiatry Research Seminar at the Weill Cornell Medical College. They all look very interesting. For those of you in the New York area, these lectures are at 2:00 p.m. on the day indcated, in the Baker Tower Conference Room F-1200, 525 East 68th Street.

January 2, Bradley Collins, Ph.D., Parsons School of Design, "Dysfunctional Holy Families: Loss, Rage and Desire in Renaissance Images of the Virgin and Child."

February 6, Dana Rovang, Doctoral Candidate, University of Chicago, "Habeas Corpus: or, why John Haslam will never get his due."

February 20, Sabine Arnaud, Ph.D., Texas A&M, "An imaginary and fantastick sickness? The narrativization of hysteria in eighteenth century French and English medicine."

March 5, Rev. Curtis Hart, M.Div., Weill Cornell Medical College, "William James' 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' Revisited." (No mention of whether nitrous oxide will be provided.)

March 19 (my 62nd birthday!), Siovahn A. Walker, Doctoral Candidate, Stanford University, "Heaven and Hell as Places in the Mind: Three Twelfth Century Witnesses."

April 2, Sander Gilman, Ph.D., Emory University, "Jews and Alcohol: Genetic and Social Explanations for Jewish Immunity to Alcoholism." (This brings to mind a quip by Al Coblenz, erstwhile part owner of the late, great Lion's Head: "We get an interesting clientele: Jewish drunks, Italian intellectuals and Irish lovers.")

April 16, Barbara F. Leavy, Ph.D., Cornell Weill Medical College, "Did Laius Kill Oedipus? The Continuing Debate."

May 21, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ph.D., Princeton University, "A Brief History of Common Sense." (It would have to be.)

More Bothy Band.

While I'm sure that my earlier post was enough to convince you of their greatness, here they are, circa 1977, doing one of those amazing, I-dare-you-to-sit-still tunes, this one called "Drunken Landlady":

And this is Michael O'Domhnaill singing "Tiocfaidh an Samhradh" ("Summer is Coming"), accompanied by Kevin Burke on fiddle and Donal Lunny on guitar. From the comments on YouTube, I get the sad news that Michael has died. Enjoy his voice, which lives on.

Update: More about Michael here.

First snowfall of the season.

From the foot of Montague Street, looking westward to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, the harbor and lower Manhattan.


From the Promenade, looking eastward along Montague Street.

Check out Brain Tracings

Every once in a while I find a blog I think rates special mention as well as a place on my blogroll. The latest is Brain Tracings (Saw This and Thought of....), the creation of an American woman living in London. Her blog is quirky and eclectic, and replete with the sort of off-the-wall connect-the-dots kind of observations I love. Besides, we have similar tastes in music.

Oh, yeah. She did me the honor of putting S-AB on her blogroll before I ever saw Brain Tracings. Trust me, though, this isn't just an instance of, "You scratch my back...."