11.24.2022 – O Lord, we thank Thee

O Lord, we thank Thee
and grant that we may feast in
paradise with Thee

A Thanksgiving Prayer … to be read in unison:

“O Lord, we thank Thee for this food,
For every blessing, every good.
For earthly sustenance and love
Bestowed on us from heaven above.
Be present at our table, Lord.
Be here and everywhere adored.
Thy children bless and grant that we
May feast in paradise with Thee.”

By Garrison Keillor.

Mr. Keillor recommends have the prayer on a poster on the wall as that printing the prayer on cards would … would feel like a school assignment. Instead, I just look up at the wall and start singing (to the tune of the doxology), and everyone else in the family chimes in.

Although you must all resume toting the barge and lifting the bale tomorrow, it’s inspiring to hear 15 people find harmony around the Thanksgiving table. And it sets a tone. No crying in the cranberries. Lighten up. It could, as we say, be worse.

11.9.2022 – civic value of

civic value of
ideological
diversity schools

On August 13, 2020, the great Sarah Vowell wrote an the opinion piece titled: Joe Biden and the Great Leaders of 2020 Are Part of a Club, and sub headed, They’re the graduates of public universities, and they’ve stepped into the void of presidential leadership.

Ms. Vowell wrote:

The inherent civic value of public universities in this quarreling country of strangers is ideological diversity.

For instance, like my Republican senator Steve Daines, I graduated from Montana State University, and I think it speaks well of the healthy variety of political views that are represented on that campus that I very much hope he will have a lot more time to ski next year.

Public universities are one of two major American institutions, the other being the U.S. military, where large quantities of random adults are thrown together and made to coexist for years on end:

the budget-minded,

the lightly parented,

the formerly incarcerated,

the downsized,

the underestimated,

veterans,

refugees,

late bloomers,

single moms,

divorced dads,

Bible thumpers,

empty nesters,

your swankier hicks,

Mormons who didn’t get into Brigham Young University

and a hodgepodge of souls who are working toward what is incidentally at the heart of every election:

a fair chance at a decent life.

University.

Uni.

Union.

A more perfect Union.

E Pluribus Unum.

One out of many.

One out of many hoping for a fair chance at a decent life.

The inherent civic value of public universities in this quarreling country of strangers is ideological diversity.

I couldn’t agree more.

10.26.2022 – sound of time ticking

sound of time ticking
Mr. Lincoln’s pocket watch
echoes across ages

It has been 10 years since the movie Lincoln came out.

I am not sure what made me think of it but, if you remember, they made a big deal about trying to get ‘sounds’ that Lincoln heard.

They went so far as to search out Mr. Lincoln’s watches and found that two were available in museums that experts agreed were part of Mr. Lincoln’s daily routine.

One watch was in the Smithsonian and the other was in the care of the Kentucky Historical Society.

The Kentucky people allowed sound technicians to wind the watch and record the ticking.

The ticking is heard in the movie for about 3 seconds.

Like I said, I got to thinking and after thinking about it, I got to work.

I messed around and downloaded a video file of the movie.

I found the scene and removed the audio.

I tried to clean out any other sounds from the background music.

There is an occasional loud clock tick-tock but I let that stay as I learned it was recorded from a clock that had been in the White House with the Lincolns.

But the tic-tic-ticking is there.

The 3 seconds of the sound of time that echoes across ages.

I then copied the clip over and over until I had 70 seconds of ticking.

It was kind of creepy.

It was kind of cool.

Hear it for yourself by clicking here.

10.20.2022 – refused to believe

refused to believe
prejudice trample knowledge
and benevolence

Adapted from the recent article, Samuel Adams in Smithsonian, Oct 1, 2023.

The article states: Adams banked on the sage deliberations of a band of ambitious farmers reasoning their way toward rebellion.

That was how democracy worked.

He dreaded disunity.

“Neither religion nor liberty can long subsist in the tumult of altercation, and amidst the noise and violence of faction,” he warned.

He refused to believe that prejudice and private interest would ultimately trample knowledge and benevolence.

Self-government was in his view inseparable from governing the self; it demanded a certain asceticism.

He wrote anthem after anthem to the qualities he believed essential to a republic — austerity, integrity, selfless public service — qualities that would become more military than civilian.

The contest was never for Adams less than a spiritual struggle.

It is impossible with him to determine where piety ended and politics began; the watermark of Puritanism shines through everything he wrote.

Faith was there from the start, as was the scrappy, iconoclastic spirit, as were the daring, disruptive excursions beyond the law.

10.18.2022 – A 4 year old could

A 4 year old could
understand wonkiness go
find a 4 year old

Adapted from the Marx Brother’s Movie Duck Soup.

In the movie, the Treasury Secretary presents his departmental report saying, “I hope you’ll find it clear.

Grouch, in the role of President of Freedonia, Rufus T. Firefly, accepts the report and responds, “Clear? Why a four year old child could understand this report.”

Groucho hands the report to Zeppo playing the usual role of secretary to Groucho and in a lower voice says, “Find me a four year child. I can’t make head or tail of it.”

I just finished reading the article, NYT/Siena Poll Is Latest to Show Republican Gains.

The article asks, “Is four points the real margin nationally? That’s a good question.”

The writer of the article, Mr. Nate Cohen, then tries to answer the question.

His response seems to focus on the wonderful polling/statistical concept known as WONKINESS.

(I present a representative section of the article with buzzwords in bold for artistic license.)

Mr. Cohen writes:

Is four points the real margin? (Wonkiness 4/10)

Our poll may show Republicans ahead, 49-45, and yet it may not be accurate to say they lead by four points. In fact, they actually lead by three points.

This is a polling custom that has always left me a little cold. The case for rounding is straightforward: Reporting results to the decimal point conveys a false sense of precision. After a decade of high-profile polling misfires, “precision” is most certainly not the sense pollsters want to try to convey right now. And in this case, reporting to the one-thousandth of a point would obviously be ridiculous. We didn’t even contact a thousand people; how could we offer a result to the one-thousandth?

But there’s a trade-off. Characterizing this poll as a four-point Republican lead doesn’t merely offer a false sense of precision — it’s just false. That’s not something I can gloss over.

Sometimes, the difference is enough to affect the way people interpret the poll. We’ve reported one party in the “lead” by one percentage point when, in fact, the figures are essentially even. These differences don’t actually mean much, of course, but no one — not even those of us well versed in statistics and survey methodology — can escape perceiving a difference between R+1 and Even.

I am reminded of the old Saturday Night Live sketch of Chevy Chase playing Gerald R. Ford.

When he gets an question about economic numbers, Chase (as Ford) looks at the screen and says quietly, “I was told there would be no math.”