We planned on 50

including this one.

By my head count, there were 47 1/2. (Olive eats a lot but she just doesn't put it down the way the guys do.) 

I made a couple of things this morning.

Brandied fruit

Beer potato salad

By about 3pm were ready.

Daughter C had made menus.

We weren't quite sure about the weather, so the guys moved the grills up to the porch.

Meanwhile, we put on the finishing touches.

And iced down the beverages.

People started showing up.

And then my camera ran out of battery.

BUT! Everybody & his brother were taking photos. So if you just go look on the WorldWideWeb, I'm sure you will find a photo of yourself (haha) at the Farm.

Unless, of course, you were not here.

Today's the Day!

You should see how clear the sky is right now! I'm taking that as a sign from God.

But just to be on the safe side-- 

because a healthy dose of skepticism is always warranted when dealing with the philosophical-- 

I think we'll serve inside.

(See now why I wanted to wear that cite little yellow dress?)

Cross your fingers for us that we're not hit with what "they" are forecasting for later this afternoon. 

And now... off to

• take the wild duck, wild goose gumbo out of the freezer
• take the North Carolina BBQ                  "      "   "      "
• "        "      cobblers                                         "       "   "     "
• make blackeyed pea hummus
• "          curry dip
• "          broccoli salad II
• "          beer potato salad
• "          brandied fruit

 and hopefully find some time to put fresh flowers on the tables and so forth.

Nothing like a HoooHaaa is there?

(Big Life!)

We may need to do some readjusting

I, for one, am going to readjust what I'd planned to wear the next few days.

At times like these, it's important to consider footwear. 

Let's imagine a blustery day in late April. The tornado sirens sound. You and 30-50 others are in a lecture hall at That School Up North. You must quickly and calmly gather your belongings and move to the first floor of the building. You do not want to be slip sliding down those marble steps in cutesy shiny soled sandals. 

I was really hoping to wear that new little yellow dress today. Ain't gonna happen. 

What's coming up

That's Jesse, out on the boat.

See them?

We had company this weekend. (That's Daughter C spreading straw in the background; Brian worked.)

People worked.

See?

And were rewarded.

See?

This photo surprised me! I had forgotten that Mr. Bow Tie had taken my camera.

See?

This is A Leland's bean-corn-melon-squash garden. Some beans are coming up.

Anyway-- there are 30-50 philosophers about to descend on the Farm. 

I wonder if the economical thing to do is buy a carton of cigs? 

Nothing like a smoke in the fresh air, is there?

I'm thinking Marboro Lights?

Will Wonders Never Cease?!

So we went to a lecture at State this afternoon.

And by "we" I mean all of the usual suspects. 

It was a great lecture!

Mr. Big Food introduced Professor Prinz 

to a standing room only crowd.

Here I must interject logistical detail. Referring to the seating chart (above) you will note that the front row has three seats. I occupied the left-most (as it appears in the photo), figuring that at the Conclusion of his Introduction Mr. Big Food would jump off the stage and occupy the empty seat to my left (right in the photo). 

My figuring was thwarted by these two lovely young women-- who paid close attention throughout the lecture but who came in rather late and proceeded to occupy the two seats to my left leaving Mr. Big Food with no place to sit!

So. Under the radar, I snagged a crappy old chair chair for Mr. Big Food, positioned it properly as a 4th, and at the Conclusion of his Introduction, asked the two young women to slide down. Worked wonderfully. Except I lost my primo photo snapping space. 

As you an clearly see.

It was a good talk!

There was reference to Hume. 

There was a slide of a brain. 

There was some talk of religion and art. That was fun. 

And then there were some questions and a bit of discussion. It was a good talk. Oh! And there were photos of babies and monkeys and apes!!

Who doesn't love babies? and monkeys and apes?

I went outside. Met up with A. Leland. We watched the toddlers as we finished our cigarettes. We figured they couldn't have been walking for more than a month. 

Will wonders never cease?

Secure the Perimeter!

Wait! What? Where are you headed?

This is a pretty amazing story! Missy was outside and I realized she was barking which is something she hardly ever does unless... 

"Oh! Marica! That's just not true. I don't need my Dear Friend Rocky to tell me when to bark! I bark at the birds all of the time."

"RUFF!!"

"My apologies, Missy. You do bark at the birds. And today a turtle that was far far away."

"rufffffff"

"You seem surprised."

"Well, as I said, you don't usually bark at much besides birds."

"RRrrruuuufffff ruff!"

"You find that amusing, my Friend? May I remind you that you bark at just about everything. You even bark at Mr. Big Food when he incites you."

"Okay. Okay. How did you know the turtle was way down there by the fence, Missy?"

"Oh my goodness! Couldn't you smell it? It was abominable."

"Wonder if that's the way the males and females find each other?"

"Ruff."

"So you smelled it. Why! I'm impressed, Missy!"

"Thank you. I was just, however, following my instincts."

"Ruff ruff."

"You know, we should talk about that one day-- what we've learned about our instincts."

"We must have a crappy book, sorry-- an old book-- or two about instincts we could read together at reading time."

"Some William James?"

"Lovely! And there's that brand new volume of Henry!!"

"Ruff."

"By the way-- I might have forgotten to mention-- but things are about to get hectic."

"oh. Ha. Um... Excuse me, Marica. I must have been nodding off. We did have a big weekend. "

"Indeed we did. Goodnight, Missy. Goodnight, Rocky."

Good vs. Bad

What we most need to know about any man is surely this: whether he is good or bad. To be sure, we seldom put the question so crudely. Indeed we often affect a scorn for mere goodness, persuading ourselves that we are more concerned with a man's breeding, his intellectual vigor, his artistic skill or his practical efficiency, but in the end we admit, implicitly or explicitly, that we are more deeply interested in his honesty, his courage and his justice-- in a word, in his goodness-- than in his intellectual or creative endowment, his upbringing, or his possessions. All this amounts to saying that the most significant way of grouping human beings is as good or bad.

Mary Whiton Calkins, 

The Good Man and the Good: An Introduction to Ethics, 1918.

"The basic cause is mental"

The neglect of relevant distinctions, when these are important for clear thinking or adequate statement, is ambiguity.

R.W. Sellars, The Essentials of Logic (The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917)

And what causes ambiguity? "The basic cause is mental" whatever that means. 

Only he who is willing o take the trouble to distinguish things and ideas which are ordinarily grouped roughly together, can escape the pitfall of ambiguity.

 Don't say I didn't warn you!

(How sad is it that I already have a tag, "logic?")

Philosophers & Paywalls

My little weekly county newspaper has gone behind a paywall. This cracks me up. 

$26 per year. SUBSCRIBE NOW! DON'T MISS A THING!

As a subscriber to the print version I have automatic access-- just as soon as Swishu gets my request and emails me a passwords. I'm waiting. 

Now on to the philosophers.

There's a fellow who writes a column in my little weekly newspaper-- or maybe his thoughts are just letters to the editor. I don't know. He writes about freedom and taxes and the civil war and his dislike for Lincoln and Big Government. He almost always references "the great political philosopher, Lysander Spooner." Not being a philosopher, I am not acquainted with Spooner's work-- heck, I didn't even recognize his name the first time I saw it in one of this fellow's column. So I asked a couple of philosophers who Lysander Spooner was. Neither Mr. Big Food nor A. Leland knew. I believe they both responded, "Who?"

Not knowing who Spooner is did not keep me awake at night. But the fellow has a column this week about taxation and slavery in which he cites Spooner at length. Looks like today is the day we are going to get to the bottom of the Spooner issue. So I checked the definitive philosophy resource, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Volumes 1-8. Nothing. Encyclopedia Americana. World Book Encyclopedia. Webster's Biographies. Still nothing. Two more history of philosophy reference books. Zip. So that infallible source, Wikipedia:

Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, political philosopher, Deist, Unitarian abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, legal theorist, and entrepreneur of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the U.S. Post Office with his American Letter Mail Company, which was forced out of business by the United States government.

Isn't that interesting? 

I skimmed the whole thing and went looking again (because you should always always check more than one source on matters relating to individualism, anarchy, philosophy, Deists, etc.). 

I searched for Spooner and for American Letter Company in Encyclopedia of American History, The Oxford History of The American People, The Great Republic: A History of the American People, The Growth of the American Republic, Bennett's The American Patriot's Almanac, AND six other history books, AND both Anniversaries and Holidays: A Calendar of Days and How to Observe Them. Nothing.

And yet, there's this at the Wikipedia entry:

Spooner's influence extends to the wide range of topics he addressed during his lifetime. He is remembered today primarily for his abolitionist activities and for his challenge to the Post Office monopoly, which had a lasting influence of significantly reducing postal rates.[34] Spooner's writings contributed to the development of both left-libertarian and right-libertarian political theory in the United States, and were often reprinted in early libertarian journals such as the Rampart Journal[35] and Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought.[36] His writings were also a major influence on Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard and libertarian law professor and legal theorist Randy Barnett.

In January 2004, Laissez Faire Books established the Lysander Spooner Award for advancing the literature of liberty. ...

In 2010, LAVA created the Lysander Spooner (Book of the Year) Award, which has been awarded annually since 2011.[38] The LAVA Awards are held annually to honor excellence in books relating to the principles of liberty, with the Lysander Spooner Award being the grand prize award.

Spooner's The Unconstitutionality of Slavery was cited in the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down the federal district's ban on handguns. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, quotes Spooner as saying the right to bear arms was necessary for those who wanted to take a stand against slavery.[39] It was also cited by Justice Clarence Thomas in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. Chicago the following year.[40]

[my emphases]

You would think I could find something about him in my Library. But I cannot.

A Lunchtime Trip

from Starkvegas, Mississippi to Oxford, not-Mississippi via Poland, Berlin and South Africa

We begin our little journey with the recent announcement that Donald "Field" Brown, a Mississippi State student double majoring in English and Philosophy, has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship! The Rhodes Scholarship was established at the behest of Cecil Rhodes.

That name sounds familiar.

Cecil Rhodes: Man and Empire-Maker. Princess Catherine Radziwill. Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York. 1918.

Sure enough, there it is right on the shelf behind my desk/lunch table-- British rule of South Africa, which would explain where ol' Cecil got his money. Mining.

So who is this Princess? My minimal skimming of the book suggests she's not the most objective author, but what do I know? It's lunchtime and I am not predisposed to go wandering about searching for biographical information, so I turn to that infallible source, Wikipedia:

Princess Catherine Radziwiłł (30 March 1858 – 12 May 1941) was a Polish princess from the Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic Radziwiłł family. She was born as Countess Ekaterina Adamovna Rzewuska. She married Prince Wilhelm Radziwiłł at age 15 and moved to Berlin to live with his family.

And then it gets interesting:

She stalked the English-born South African politician Cecil Rhodes and asked him to marry her, but he refused. She then got revenge by forging his name on a promissory note. She was convicted of forging Rhodes' signature and spent time in a South African jail for her crimes.

Enough about the miner & the Princess. Back to Oxford-- not-Mississippi, the Oxford across the pond-- where Field will be studying.

Brown, the son of Willie and Cynthia Brown, said he is particularly interested in studying post-World War II African-American literature. He said both English and philosophy are related to his love of studying ideas.

"English is the narrative form; literature deals with everyday people and how they relate to ideas," Brown said. "Philosophy is the systematic study of ideas, and the two go together."

Brown said that, while the promise of continuing his studies at Oxford is thrilling, the reality of gaining the fellowship is life changing.

"So many great minds have walked the halls of Oxford, including tons of writers and a lot of important thinkers who have shaped the western world," Brown said.

Brown said he plans to pursue masters of studies degrees in both American literature and modern English literature. Specifically, he is interested in trans-Atlantic interactions within literature, particularly how McCarthyism scare tactics of the 1950s and the Cold War affected which books were promoted.

Plato Wrote an Allegory | Who Knew That?

I confess that I almost never think about Plato. Aristotle, sure. But Plato? 

Plato's rough draft was titled, "The Allegory of the Shadow-Box."

--Mr. Big Food

I wonder what Plato's allegory would look like?

--Daughter C

"The City Mouse and the Country Mouse" is an allegory for my life for more than a few years now.

--Dr. Mike

The spiritual tone of Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Less Taken" reminds me of a cold and dreary day, which itself is an allegory.

--Nick

The prosecutor convinced the jury of the defendant's guilt with an allegory describing the pain and suffering he had committed.

--Chris

References to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" have become trite... but then again references to Plato of any sort have become trite.

--A. Leland

I spent my morning reading about "Pilgrim's Progress," an allegory by John Bunyan.

--Marica

Reflecting on these sentences, I bet dollars to donuts this is the one & only blog on the whole entire World Wide Web that has Plato, Bunyan, Frost, and the classic, The City Mouse & The Country Mouse in the same post.

This Week 8/25-31: Philosophers Rule!

Philosopher Confucius born 552 B.C. 

Saint Saint Augustine born A.D. 354; "Christian thinker"

Philosopher and inspiration to America's Founding Fathers John Locke born 1632

Chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier born 1743; father of "modern" chemistry

Poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe born 1749; "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hagel born 1770; Continental philosopher.

American writer and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes born 1809; a "Fireside Poet"

Physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz born 1821; a very busy German

Author Count Lyof Nikolaievitch Tolstoi (Tolstoy) born 1828; "All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
~~

And in other news of this week from bygone years, in 1920 the Nineteenth Amendment was proclaimed in effect.

Article XIX

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Here a couple of tidbits regarding suffrage. 

Women in Wyoming were enfranchised in 1869. Also before the amendment, in Colorado (1893), Utah and Idaho (1896), and Washington (1910).  

The first women to serve in Congress was Miss Jeannette Rankin  from Montana. She was elected to the House in 1916. 

It took nearly forty years to pass this amendment. It was first proposed by a Senator from California, at Susan B. Anthony's request, in 1878.

References:

Robert I. Fitzhenry, ed. The Harper Book of Quotations 3rd Edition. Harper Perennial. 1993. 

Mary Emogene Hazeltine. Anniversaries and Holidays: A Calendar of Days and How to Observe Them. American Library Association, Chicago. 1928.
Mary E. Hazeltine. Judith K. Sollenberger, ed. Anniversaries and Holidays: A Calendar of Days and How to Observe Them Second Edition, Completely Revised. American Library Association, Chicago. 1965.

Thomas James Norton. The Constitution of the United States: Its Sources and Its Application. The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York. 1943.  

Forthcoming! No. Really. This Time I'm Not Kidding. | For Friends & Family

It's a miracle. It only took seven years.

Engineering the Next Revolution in Neuroscience: The New Science of Experiment Planning (2013-- I'm not kidding!-- Oxford University Press)

(If you're so inclined, you can pre-order your copy here. Only $37.95 for the paperback.)

Mr. Big Food and I are just diddling around inside this Saturday afternoon while it's warm outside. As we both looked to see what Alcino said about The Book on his website, we recalled with great nostalgia the last seven years.

On a lovely evening in April, 2005, at a Mt. Adams pub with a balcony overlooking Cincinnati and the Ohio River, Alcino, Mr. Big Food and I were sitting on three- and four-legged chairs enjoying a beer, talking neuroscience and philosophy.