Over the years I have been collecting bits and piece of witty snarks and insightful comments in a file I called “Wit and Wisdom”. I pulled it up last week and found that I had a little over one page of items, meaning I had lost the original. But wait! There were two files by that name, one with a different suffix, and it turned out to be 31 pages. I remember sitting at our dining room table in Bozeman when I first decided I needed a way to save stuff, and putting these gems onto my laptop. That it survived all these years, perhaps twenty or more, is no tribute to my competency, but rather to good luck, nothing more.

I’ve gone over those 31 pages now, and found quite a few items that I am going to repeat here, a few at a time. There’s a lot in there that I would not now take trouble to record, notably Edward Abbey, whose every written word (except some of his fiction, which I found over-the-top) I have read. I also made it a point to read everything written by George Orwell, but he does not turn up very often in this file. I suspect that is because somewhere I have a separate file for him.

Continue reading “Orgies are vile …” →

I came upon the following lines from an obscure source, quoting Horace, among the many legends of ancient literature whom I have not read.

“Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.”

The line  translates to “Mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be born.” This phrase comes from Horace’s Satires (Book 1, Satire 8) and is often interpreted as a commentary on the disparity between expectations and outcomes. I am plagiarizing that last line starting with “This phrase…”.

Continue reading “The Christmas letter …” →

One of the many atrocities that played out against us during Covid was the trashing of the Bill of Rights. Specifically, the following amendments were jettisoned:

First Amendment: Prohibition of the free exercise of religion. Churches were shut down.
First Amendment: Abridgement of freedom of speech. Facebook, YouTube, and even tiny Websites like NextDoor all forbade any criticism of the CDC or questioning of the existence of the virus.
First Amendment: Abridgement of freedom of the press, but don’t go there. It’s been a dead letter for ages.
First Amendment: The right of the people peaceably to assemble. Sports stadiums were shut down, along with indoor gathering spaces like concert halls and museums. Large gatherings were forbidden, along with even small family gatherings.
Ninth Amendment: Freedom to travel.

Continue reading “Life before and after the 14th Amendment” →

I started out reading a book called We Have Never Been Woke, by Musa Al-Gharbia, and finally, on page 50, I thought “I can’t do this.” I cannot finish the book. It is well-written by a new PhD who is also an intellectual, and I am reminded that I am neither of those things, and that I’ve never been curious about people who claim to be “woke.” I think it is all self-aggrandized posturing, large-scale virtue signaling. It’s made its way on to campuses, but then most campuses have long ceased to serve intelligent function, that is, producing critical thinkers who are hard-working  and serious adult humans. Instead (most) colleges offer a new kind of dumbed down.

Worse yet, Climate Alarmists have saturated campuses and schools, so that our graduating classes at all levels don’t know shit about climate and don’t know they don’t know shit. It is large-scale Dunning-Kruger. We’re in a new dark age. It’s quite a predicament.

Continue reading “On being woke, the Great Awokening” →

Yesterday I had gotten no further than the title of this post when I came upon Kevin Starr’s delightful post on wokism. “I thought I can sit back now, he’s covered an important topic”, being “woke” versus “awake”. Here in the land of the free there is very little awakism going on. That’s always been the case.

Over a decade ago I was a fan of the NPR radio show Car Talk and its hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi. Tommy sadly died of Alzheimer’s in 2012, and NPR reverted to reruns, and then relegated the show to podcasts only. It is still thriving even as the boys talk about cars of the 90s and before. The reason: Tommy and Ray were nice, honest, and funny. As Doug Berman, the show’s founder noted on Tommy’s death, they were “diamonds in the rough.” I lived in Billings at a time when Yellowstone Public Radio would host quarterly fund-raising drives, and I would contribute, but only tagging my money to Car Talk. Then and now I wanted nothing to do with NPR’s woke news and public affairs broadcasts, smug and humorless.

Continue reading “Hugh Jass” →

We are sitting in our hotel room in Venice, and head for the airport at checkout time, 11AM, which is 3AM in Denver. Tonight when we arrive in Denver, it will be 10:30 there, but in our heads 2:30 in the morning. I have always had a harder time traveling west than east,  so getting back on Colorado time will take some effort. 

Sitting in our hotel room waiting to go to the airport, not wanting to get there too early, is tedious. It’s like watching election returns, which I have not done in years. They don’t have the final numbers, but need to keep you glued so you watch the commercials. So you just sit and watch. 

Continue reading “Waiting to catch a plane … like watching election returns?” →