Riley's Farm Journal

Contending with the Soft Heckle

Thu, 15 May 2008 10:51:00 EST

Although Patrick Henry was credited with a good sense of humor, I can't imagine he had much in common with today's stand-up comics--except in this regard: he probably knew how to handle the low murmur of a 'soft-heckle.' I describe a 'soft-heckle' not as a belligerent drunk shouting challenges from across the room, but someone who insists on whispering or chuckling or conducting business right in the middle of a presentation. I imagine, in Henry's case, his very presence was so galvanizing that it didn't happen a great deal, or perhaps one hard glance from across the room was enough to silence man, beast, or boy. In my case, I've discovered there are distinctly different kinds of audiences.

There is the wildly supportive "rooting" audience, my favorite, and fortunately this represents the majority. There is the room full of attention-deficit children and adults, and there is not much you can do about this sort of crowd except raise the volume and experiment with random, grave silence. The worst audience is a combination of the two, where you have a room full of people who earnestly want to hear the narrative of history and a few chipmunk-urchins who will one day be brain surgeons or statesmen, but who, for now, are spoiling it for everyone else. There's nothing quite like shouting out the words, "there is a just God who presides over the destiny of nations," to hear the grand phrase book-ended by an eleven year old nose-picker earning a steady stream of giggles from one corner of the room. Invariably, the nose picker will not yield to intimidation, and you can't son-of-thunder the lad non-stop. As soon as you turn away, he's picking his nose again, or giving someone a wedgie.

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I will admit--the obligation of filling the seats in the audience is galling to natural-born leaders. The child who has an audience for his antics is precisely the child you want to reach, because although his impolitic behavior is maddening now, he's basically announcing--"heah, you're not Patrick Henry. I'm Patrick Henry. I should be the one up there on stage."

That's the generous interpretation of a soft-heckler. There are less tolerant interpretations, but for now I have to hope that when one of these urchins do reach the stage, they will be fighting for liberty, and not just for laughs.

The Director's Nightmare

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:48:00 EST

There's a saying about historical re-enactors and living historians with respect to film and television projects: they are the producer's dream and the director's nightmare. They come fully equipped with accurate clothing and equipment and, at least in some cases, with their own idiosyncratic opinions and dismissive attitudes about the project itself. Yesterday, a reality television show producer made the mistake of asking a very large Revolutionary War email list to consider participation in a project that aimed to put the descendants of Revolutionary War figures into situations similar to their ancestors.

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The responses ranged from vulgarly abusive to unvarnished condescension, with one correspondent protesting that the poor television producer hadn't been given the benefit of the golden rule. You don't have to like reality television (I don't), to at least acknowledge that the premise for the show had a great deal in common with what re-enactors do every weekend--relive the past. Preposterously, the show's objective--puting the descendents of Revolutionary War heroes into situations similar to their ancestors--was ridiculed as being "silly." (I'm still wondering how someone who reenacts the past can opine, without a spoonful of self-reflection, that when hobby-reenactors relive the past it is noble, but when other people do it, it is "silly.")

Without taking an ounce of credibility away from the many fine living historians who portray the past, with passionate devotion to thread-counts and canteen paint color, there are some living historians who have a degree of self-congratulation and self-excuse that borders on the unstable. If you look closely at the picture on the left, you'll see that a re-enactor, playing the part of a British Redcoat, is sitting in front of metal stacking chairs, of the sort you've seen in school and church for years.

The picture is taken from a larger photo which shows the fellow seated in a frontier-era colonial cabin of some sort. He is wearing authentic looking clothing, but we are to excuse the chairs as being beyond his control. Most reasonable people do, of course. It's very difficult to extract every artifact of the present from the portrayal of the past, but invariably the same reenactors who wear contemporary glasses, improper facial hair, and decidedly non-period body-weight, seem, many times, to be the very first to throw "authenticity" stones. Even the ones who have nearly perfect clothing and equipment and appearance, seem to display an authenticity that only runs as thick as the wool they're wearing. Their language is contemporary and they make no attempt at a first-person impression whatsoever.

What galls me, however, are the snippy-librarian types who, when confronted with an honest inquiry, smile down their nose with gentle eyes of rebuke on the postulate for even asking the question. Let me be blunt: I hate these people. They are usually counterfeit. They can't answer the question and they hide behind a wall of arrogance that does a disservice to both history and their hobby. A few months ago, I asked a question about the price of English broadcloth, in the colonies, in 1770. One correspondent, who specialized in the guild-system, took the opportunity to assume I was over-simplifying the means of production in the 18th century. (I was just asking about the price of English broadcloth. Honest.) I didn't get into it with this tired old bitty, because I've learned from long experience that some of these people have planted their personal flag on some corner of the past and they are guarding it from all comers--for reasons no one can divine but that seem to beg for either therapy or pastoral care. Their people-skills are so deficient as to achieve precisely the opposite of what they would claim as the objective of their hobby: they turn people off to history.

Many years ago we made the decision that we could not build our living history business on the efforts of hobby living historians alone. We do use hobby reenactors, of course, and many of them are great people and fine historians, but we don't depend on them--for reasons made very clear by the experience of that poor television producer.

"Director's Nightmare" is sometimes an understatement.

Summer Public House Plans

Tue, 13 May 2008 13:58:00 EST

Imagine entering the cool, cavernous comfort of a post and beam 18th century country public house. A tavern girl brings out a tray full of a drink called "Haymaker's Switchel." Within a few minutes, cider baked ham and Mt. Vernon pie and a cool salmagundi concoction of farm lettuce and cold meat is brought out. A very grave looking captain of militia enters the tavern and begs to be seated at your table; he removes a wax-sealed letter from the pocket of his frock coat, hands it to one of you, waits for you to read the message, and the abruptly walks out. A may 1770 copy of the New Hampshire Gazette is plastered on the wall next to you, with the description of a run-away bond servant, who looks very much like the server at the next table. A fiddler stops playing for a moment, walks a little sheepishly over to your table, and asks you what was written on the note given to you by the captain of militia. You are debating an answer just as the captain of militia walks back into the room and the fiddler scurries back to his perch.

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The captain looks over at the one server who fits the description of the run away bond servant, and the server literally opens a window and scurries out into the field. A bell rings and the tavern goes silent, while one of the serving maids sings a ballad. The bell rings and all is commotion as the desert is served. Then a bell rings a gain and the run away bond servant comes back in through the window. He is prevailed upon to read a poem for the combined edification of everyone in the public house.

No this is not the magical mystery tour, but a new way of running our trophy 18th century public house. After a fair amount of brainstorming and talking to farm friends, we have decided to run the 18th century public house as public-house + improvisational theater + guest game. All characters. All the time. We'll still have Patrick Henry, and music, but you'll be able to walk in anytime, Summer Saturday nights, enjoy a fine meal, and bask in the glow of good music, great food, and unabashed patriotism!

Look for it soon on rileysfarm.com.

Sad Dad

Mon, 12 May 2008 11:35:00 EST

One of the really humbling things about aspiring to tell stories is the incontrovertible reality that most stories, even the ones that cost millions of dollars to make, are certifiably rank. Put them in your DVD player and you can smell them all the way across the house. Steve Carrel, who brings secular humanist business culture delightfully down around his ears in the Office, plays an advice columnist and widower-parent of three girls in the film Dan in Real Life--now out on DVD, and easily one of the most missable rentals of the year.

We are to understand, from the outset, that he is the very picture of devotion--setting out a course for his children every morning by asking about their "plan" for the day, and making all of their lunches, complete with honey-painted smiley faces on the sandwiches themselves. (The honey-smile will never be seen, of course, and this is the metaphor for the thousand acts of fatherly devotion his children will never acknowledge.) His extended family is the picture of New England gentry, complete with a shingled home right on Narraganset bay. They are so gentry, in fact, that even the pig-faced girl across the harbor has grown up to be a dishy plastic surgeon, sporting a convertible. They are so gentry, in summary, they are completely beyond belief. The family scenes look like an Lands End catalogue with bad dialogue and unfelt laughter. The whole situation seems something like The Big Chill on Cheerios. The attempts to give this family a quirky, singular edge reveal themselves as desperate, implausible lunges at a reality the film never achieves. (Dianne Wiest, playing the matriarch of the clan, appears to put something like hiking boots in the laundry dryer every night, fully conscious that Dan is attempting to sleep in the same room, giving us an opportunity to extend a courtesy laugh to Steve Carrel's insomnia.)

Where else can you have gallon buckets full of country-wisdom dashed all over contemporary insanity?

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If these were the film's only flaws, it could be forgiven--like a burp at the dinner table, but the film breaks a primary rule of redemptive story-telling: Dan's three daughters, who are stock brats from the Hollywood brat character catalogue, not only never become ladies, they appear to be left blissfully unrepentant little wretches, cheering on their dad's submission to the romantic, impulsive myth.

When God was banished from right-thinking artistic culture, the only thing left was romance. The puppy-love mysticism of pursuing "the one" is the stock inventory of boring chick-flick after boring chick-flick. In the beginning of the film, Dan sensibly advises one of his vile, disobedient, disrespectful teenage daughters she can't really know if she's in love after three days. By the end of the film, Dan is made to see the wisdom of his daughter, the floozy, on this score, and opts for the French work-out waif, (Juliet Binoche) who is only happy when she's in a new country, new territory, and completely out of her element. (How long would this father of three find love in such a relationship? Inquiring minds want to know.)

Certainly, we can watch stories about stupid people who have stupid ideas, but there is a kind of cognitive dissonance that builds up when we have the sinking feeling that the narrator, the director, and the producer are all equally stupid.

Watching "Dan in Real Life" is something liking taking a really big bite out of the idiot cake and realizing, mid-gulp, that this is going to be really hard to swallow.

The Night Before Mother's Day at the Old Packing Shed

Sun, 11 May 2008 13:24:00 EST

The crowds that celebrate mom are good--no great--guests. Last night it seemed to be "I worked on the Rileys medical night." One fellow, Angela Shaddix's Dad, helped prep Grandma Riley for hip surgery and another restorative-looking guest, with a look of hippocratic serenity, looked very familiar. "Do I know you?" I asked. It turns out he was the ER doctor that stitched up Nicholas' shin a few years ago.

After carving a planting ground from the wilderness, colonial farmers nurtured the young blogs to maturity by editing out any tediousness from the daily farm routine and then pitching the harvest-ready blogs, shamelesly to the public.

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Mike and Susan both gave tributes to our mom, and mom did a little quilting for the guests as well. We had some world-class musicians last night and some fine dancing led by Susan Usher. Not to be left solitary, the crew at Colonial Chesterfield hosted a wedding, complete with Cinderella carriage and a first-class video crew, chronicling the affair with beautiful, high-tech Sony gear. There's the difference between men and women: girls will get weepy at the site of the bride's flowers. Guys will get all choked up looking at the video cameras.

"What's wrong, Jim?"
"Oh. Oh. Nothing. It's just that it's a 20x Optical zoom with three 1 inch CMOS sensors. Just caught me off guard, I guess."

Wedding Pitch: if you want a wedding coordinator who cares as much about your wedding as you do, you can't beat our own Jan Theim. I'm telling you; it's almost as fun watching Jan getting ready for the wedding as the wedding itself. She loves getting people married, so give her a call or send her an email!

Even Geeks and Nerds Love Strar-berries

Sat, 10 May 2008 11:41:00 EST

The kids and I went Mother's Day shopping yesterday afternoon, and this smoothed over an argument Mallory and Nicholas were having over the shades of meaning attached to the words "Geek" and "Nerd." (Nicholas believes nerds are more intellectual and less socially inept than geeks. I can't remember Mallory's half of the discussion but Bill Gates was the near constant reference point for both sides of the question.) I think "Geek" has lost a lot of its circus-freak stigma in the last fifteen years; I believe there may be even beautiful and graceful female tech geeks now.

Jeff Hammond reported to me, with a great deal of excitement, that so far the crop set looks stunning. Even our three year old antique apple trees will be producing about a bushel a piece this year. The senshus have big fat little green apples now and the Delicious apples are so full we may have to do some thinning. Personally, I'm very excited about the taste of the strawberries and their productivity up here in Oak Glen. If we could get about 3-4 acres in Strawberries, and have them arrive in May, and stick around until the blackberries start coming in--we would have a true May-November harvesting cycle here. We dropped by a strawberry stand in Riverside the other day, and it was clear that the strawberries they were selling were not actually grown there on site. They were nice and red, very thick, but they had no flavor. These strawberries, on the other hand, create a flavor-wallop that is much closer to strawberry jam.

Here is a geek-confession on my part. I suffer from a version of procrastination that is fueled by tech-obsession. Perhaps someone else out there suffers a similar condition. I don't know if it has a name, so I'll describe the symptoms: Theoretically, a novel could be scratched onto a cave wall using a charcoal-blackened stick from the fire, but in the era of fluid-gel pens and ample paper, you really have no excuse. I was the among the first "technology heat-seekers," however, to start using word processors--even before they came to reside on personal computers. Olivetti made an electronic typewriter that let you correct the line you were working on, before it was committed to paper. I put off writing short stories until that was out of the crate. I put off writing, again, when I heard a new PC based word processor was on the horizon, then again when the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) was soon to be made available on CD ROM. I put off making a film until the brand new "DV" video technology was out, and then I put it off again until I could test the "film-like" glow of the new HD technology.

Here's a secret for you. Not many people vote in these "blogger choice awards." Sixty votes will get you into the top ten. If this blog reached the top ten, it might reduce our advertising budget and maybe reduce the price of u-pick apples. (Or it might actually increase them.) Either way, if you like the farm journal even a little bit, do the logical thing: cast your vote for it as the "Best Blog of All Time." Vote Today!

I suppose there might be a wood-worker out there who is putting off that 18th century cherry-wood writing desk until a new joinery machine comes out, or a would-be Cajun cook putting off a new creation until a new set of cast iron skillets comes in, or even a surfer putting off the ultimate wave until (forget it; I don't know surf technology well enough to theorize...) I remember walking through CompUSA one night, and coming to the conclusion, "heah, I've got everything I need not only to publish a novel but make a full length feature movie!"

Well the tools are fun, to be certain, but the work itself is the thing, young man.

Get to work everyone. It's good for the soul!

The Real Presence of Strawberries

Fri, 09 May 2008 14:50:00 EST

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The Real Presence of Evil

Fri, 09 May 2008 12:34:00 EST

A few things can be learned from the existence of a person like Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The first is that thinking people should never elect anyone whose eyes are set so close to each other. The second is that a rational world will not allow Jihadists to own nuclear weapons. The third is that "moderate" Muslims aren't much use to the free world: they get killed if they try to change the basic tenets of their faith. (No policy, in other words, should be based on the notion of strengthening the position of the moderates; with Muslim nations you either support the most rational dictator, set two sects against each other, or declare the homestead act and impose benign imperialism; not much else seems to work.)

The fourth, and most important thing we can learn from this despot is very simple: evil exists. Here's the latest proof of the devil, right from a "modern" head of state: According to the French news agency AFP, Ahmadinejad called the state of Israel a "stinking corpse," and then he went on, predictably, to call for its annihilation.

I'm not sure anyone really knows what we're going to do about Iran, but there is one thing that Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, and Iraq should teach us. We can't conduct wars that are "value-free," that are simply aimed at tactics, and "insurgencies," and "terrorism." Wars are not "surgical." They are not to be characterized by "measured response." A real war is about good and evil. Why send soldiers to die, if you aren't going to change the blatantly evil traditions that make the subject nation ungovernable in the first place? Can you imagine FDR giving a rallying speech to the Allied Forces by saying, "..and by the way, we know fascism is an ideology of peace?" This ridiculous "Mr. Rogers Disease" is a gross disservice to our armed forces.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the secular elites of today's government and media cringe at the notion of defining a moral reality that describes the combatants in today's conflicts as "good" and "bad." They like to point to poverty, to accept in the name of "tolerance" ethnic and religious traditions they would never accept in their own country, and they fail to realize that the enemies false pretensions of righteousness has to be countered with the real thing. When we were attacked on September 11, we were all, as a nation, anxious to implore the help of God, but we were very hesitant to admit our own sins, and a far more religious generation--the founding fathers--did both. They called for regular days of "fasting, prayer, humiliation and repentance." Even FDR prayed for the success of American arms during World War II.

In those wars, we defined an evil, an implacable enemy. We took the measure of our souls and we rushed to the side of truth. We didn't mince words. We were sure of our cause.

...and we won.

Special Bonus Material

Thu, 08 May 2008 11:55:00 EST

A few years ago, a friend and I wanted to produce a DVD called "Gush," which would consist of a 30 second short film, followed by two hours of bonus material chalk full of everyone in the production heaping outlandish praise on each other.

When we watch these long "Making of" productions, don't we really hope one of the actors will just blurt out--

"Look. To tell you the truth, this represents a real low point for me--one of my worst films. I wish I could just erase my performance, frankly."

Or...

"I don't think there was even a story here, really. I'm not sure anyone knew what they were doing on this thing. I'm glad it's over."

Almost invariably, the movies that do have a lot to brag about, don't really do any "DVD Bonus Material" bragging. You finish the film. You want to know about all these people who made it, and--sure enough--all you can find is "scene selection" and nothing, nothing about the craftsmen who told this great story.

I like to hate Hollywood, for its politics, its superficiality, and its coarsening of our culture, but I also have to admire something Hollywood professionals do for each other very well. They build each other up, they make themselves mythic, at least for public consumption. There is perhaps nothing quite so fragile as a performer's ego, (or perhaps nothing quite so resilient, depending on your perspective), and I imagine this is a tool of the trade: psyching each other up, believing something can be done--against all odds to the contrary. A warm appreciation for an actor's work, probably also helps set the stage for negotiating the next movie as well.

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Of course there are exceptions. They say Oliver Stone reduces grown men to tears on the set, but look at the psychotic drivel he produces. Most of the people in tinsel town, if DVD Bonus material is any guide, absolutely varnish each other with praise non-stop. Yes, sometimes, it looks ridiculously misdirected, but we're watching them after all; they have risen to the top of their profession, and saying a kind word probably has more than a little bit to do with it.

We could all learn at least that from the bonus material.

Soooooo-eeeeeeeee....

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:13:00 EST

Mary and I took in Applebee's last night and we saw another rather large Oak Glen clan of celebrants. I talked up billboards and raspberries with the patriarch, while I was wearing a blue and white crown made for me by the restaurant baloon artist. ("Kids eat free on Tuesday nights.")

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The pergola pillars arrived yesterday. Mario and the crew are chipping down to sawdust some rather large piles of brush that came off the hillside terraces. Is there anything more optimistic really than a goood compost operation? I'm not a recycling nut, but I have enough farmer in me to relish the site of horse dung, leaf mulch and sage chips, mouldering down to rich black loamy rose food. We wasted so much corn bread and half-eaten apples on the school tours, over the years, that I arranged for a few piglets this season, just to turn the scrap into summertime farmhouse bacon. Some very kindly souls are scandalized by this, but the essence of keeping your meat intake in proportion is to raise your own animals. It helps you appreciate their sacrifice, and it reduces your family's intake of feed-lot growth-glue. The other thing good about raising animals for food is that it keeps things, "real." The cumulative effect of a bunch of limp-wristed animators turning "Brother Bear" into a kindly furry friend, is to create a congress of citizens who see animals as equal players on the policy stage. With the exception of dogs and horses, there isn't a lot of compassion in the animal kingdom. It's a remorseless, neck-biting jungle out there--particularly among the chickens.

Walk like a man, my son: Eat the little critters in good conscience--with lots of butter and garlic.

Cultivating a Benign Addiction

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:28:00 EST

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May and January seem to be doing a little dance up here, half warm, half cold every other day. The fruit "set" looks great so far, with lots of little apples formed on all the trees, and our peach tree chalk-full of small fruit-to-be.

Mallory is trying to talk me into a better lens for her Canon SLR and we are debating the virtues of 300mm or 400mm rigs. Mallory says 400mm is an absurdly long lens, and, fortunately, they are very expensive, so that settles that. Gar Travis, our favorite farm photographer, uses a very long lens to get really candid, short depth-of-field shots, and since we can't have Gar all the time, we need to become journeymen of the lens.

As usual, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what prompts a family to get in their car and drive to Oak Glen. We know they are quite willing to learn history, with us, on a weekday and bask in the glory of a farm spring and the pageantry of 18th century America. We know they will schedule a Saturday in the fall, and that pumpkin and cider lore--the harvest-itch--is something that needs scratching, in most people, about once a year. We know that when Christmas time rolls around, we can beat the corporate restaurant scene hands down, because people want to bundle up and feel the glow of candlight--as opposed to the utterly practical Halogen glare of the strip mall.

If most of you could walk the farm on a late Spring early evening, you could see the "benign addiction" it creates in those of us who live and work here. We are still struggling to find sustainable ways of spreading that addiction, since truth be told, Oak Glen road is not exactly a "walk-in" river most of the year. Most marketing plans, up here, will fail if they depend on the shop-and-eat retail urge, and the country, by itself, is seen, by consumers, as "free." No one really wants to pay for a hiking trail, even though it costs money to insure, monitor, and maintain. This year, we went to $20 for a gallon of u-press cider and although we still sold a lot, some people actually thought it should be more like $4 a gallon for pressing "cider seconds."

The point is that people are unavoidably irritated by high commodity prices, even if there is a solid reason for those prices. We resent the price of theater popcorn, but the high price is reducing the price of the entertainment--and the formula for the proper food-vs-flick balance is probably worked out by Stanford MBAs who know what the market will bear. (We've had several people tell us our lunch and dinner and dinner show prices are far too low.)

The point is that, at the end of a beautiful day in the country, the following conversation would be absurd:

"We hope you've enjoyed Riley's Farm and the blossom-draped sunset."
"Oh, yes, we did, it was stunning."
"Now will you buy one of our strawberries for $50?"
"$50 for a single strawberry?"
"Oh, but you get to PICK the strawberry."

Between the movie and the popcorn, in other words, I think people have less resentment at the price of the narrative vapor than they do the real-life popcorn.

We want to be entertained, educated, enlightened. That's what people will pay for.

Harvest Longing, What are we Fighting For?

Mon, 05 May 2008 19:35:00 EST

Harvest Longing

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We earned our first non-family vote for this blog. (Thanks!) I can almost feel celebrity-status approaching! I'm fairly sure a mere 20 votes would put me among the top 50 contenders. So...um...

We are going out of our way this year to keep you all crop-savvy. We have updated our calendar to include the approximate beginning and ending dates of each crop and I have written something of my best guess as to the size of the harvest this year. As I have only one-twelfth the intellect of the scientific titans who are predicting man-made global climate change, I can't really say how big the harvest will be, so you will have to keep watching. (If you were to call nearly anyone in the carbon offset crowd, they could predict the crop very easily, in return for a donation, or inclusion in your family charitable trust.)

Our new billboard on the I-10 freeway is going to look like this:

You ought to sign up your little band of adventurers quickly! I dont' know how Jan is going to be able to stay ahead of the phone calls.

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Tell Me What We're Fighting For, Again?

The London Newspapers tell this story of an Iraqi Girl who fell in love with a British soldier stationed in Iraq. Her father, a devout Muslim, killed her for it and was then let go after two hours of incarceration. According to Sgt Ali Jabbar "Not much can be done when we have an honour killing. You are in a Muslim society."

This would be something like our soldiers occupying conquered fascist Germany and learning of a former S.S. father turning his daughter over to a still-functioning Gestapo for dating a Jewish-American soldier. Would we stand still for, "not much can be done about this; you are in a fascist society?"

If we don't mean to civilize the liberated peoples of Iraq, if we aren't willing to enshrine liberty and justice at the center of their new government, we shouldn't be there. If we are too girlish to admit that the cultural traditions of Islam need to be condemned by thinking people, we shouldn't be wasting the lives of our soldiers.

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Stories are harder to build than Ocean Liners

Sun, 04 May 2008 12:40:00 EST

Breanna in Hawaii tells Mallory "more pictures on the farm journal," and no less a personage than a professor of medicine at a major American university writes that my essay, Americans Made Here,

"..brought tears to my eyes. Thank you for this inspiring statement about who we are and what we stand for. We have been to dances at the farm and enjoyed every minute.."

We had a good "Hawk's Head" pre-pre-pre-production meeting yesterday and we hammered out some issues with the script. If three men were looking at a pile of lumber and plans for a three-masted schooner, they would face an easier task than attempting to define the contours of an episodic drama. Stories are more difficult to build than ships. (If you doubt me, think of the number of times a ship has careened off the dry dock and sunk straight to the bottom--immediately. That just doesn't happen, but it happens with movies and short stories all the time.)

Visits to rileysfarm.com are up by 83%, comparing April 2007 to April 2008, which I hope have something to do with our freeway billboards, since they cost a pretty-penny, though not as much as you might think. People are also spending 25% more time on the site than they did last year. I may have to revise my spreadsheet a bit on the value of an audience, since--silly me--I made the assumption of thinking Google would pass on revenue, in a reasonable proportion, to the sites that actually generated the traffic, but that was an assumption so naive as to be measured in half-pennies on the dollar. Ahem.

The farm is ABSOLUTELY GOREGOUS these days. You should make plans to come see it this week.

Scientific Idiots

Sat, 03 May 2008 13:41:00 EST

So far, no one has voted for this blog. Not one single person. Not even my mom. Not even my wife. Not even my daughter, Mallory. Not even...

Still pondering Ben Stein and Expelled..

Darwin wrote:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

Somehow, the good writers at Scientific American concluded, having corrected Stein for not including Darwin's full quote, that:

Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil.

But Darwin's text is far from "explicit" in its mixed message. Either we are "ignorant" or we are "not ignorant" for allowing our worst "animals" to breed. Darwin certainly seems to be more than a bit grumpy about the social "instincts" we have acquired in contradiction to the clean-working, though brutal practices of the "savages." (And while we're at it, I would love to hear Scientific American's definition of "evil." Somehow it is fine for scientists to resort to metaphysics in defense of their icons, but it is not permissible for people of faith to use "evil" in cautioning policy makers against the effects of unrestrained scientific inquiry.)

And Scientific American itself fails to quote some of Darwin's succeeding doozies:

"In every country in which a large standing army is kept up, the finest young men are taken by the conscription or are enlisted. They are thus exposed to early death during war, are often tempted into vice, and are prevented from marrying during the prime of life. On the other hand the shorter and feebler men, with poor constitutions, are left at home, and consequently have a much better chance of marrying and propagating their kind."

"..the inheritance of property by itself is very far from an evil; for without the accumulation of capital the arts could not progress; and it is chiefly through their power that the civilized races have extended, and are now everywhere extending their range, so as to take the place of the lower races..."

"..Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: 'The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy,..' "

I'm beginning to believe that the naming of the Darwin awards works on more than one level: people who do really stupid things, and people who formulate social policy on the basis of this Victorian quack.

I know it's a theme with me, but we would all do well to keep scientists in their place, wearing lab coats and improving the insulating qualities of building materials. Just because someone chronicles the wing span of cormorants, doesn't entitle them to have much of an opinion on the dignity of mankind, and if a professional fraternity of scientific high priests are so afraid of intelligence as to close ranks against honest inquiry, it's time for thinking people--not evolved animals--to clean house.

The Value of an Audience

Fri, 02 May 2008 11:58:00 EST

So far, no one has voted for this blog. Not one single person. Not even my mom. Not even my wife. Not even my daughter, Mallory. Not even...

I had a long talk with some media people yesterday who are interested in "The Hawk's Head," and while our conversation was mostly about lighting and sound crews, and the value of a "name" performer, one of the issues we discussed was the economics of distributing a show over the internet.

When you watch, say, NBC's "The Office" on the web, they pause the show every five or six minutes and you watch a commercial, just the way you would if you were watching the broadcast version. (There's usually only one commercial too, which says something interesting about the attention span of the internet audience? Hmmm.)

At any rate, the American way is to get people watching. Anyone who can get people to watch. to listen, or even discuss, in reasonably large numbers can keep potatoes on the table. The current runner up in The Blogger's Choice awards makes the claim that she now makes a living for her family off of her blog. I believe the Drudge report has something like 24,000,000 views a day, so you can imagine what the banner ad revenue is for a site like that. You can even make a living with a little niche audience. A few years back, when the History Channel was filming "Tales of the Gun" here, some of the production company told us even that show's 1% rating made for very sizeable ad revenues. One percent of the audience, in some contexts, is a mega-hit.

Some people lament this basic commercial reality, but it's usually the types who are completely disconnected from the reality of commerce, the ones who have not yet come come to the epiphany that we are all, on some level, selling something. Junk mail has never really bothered me. It gives me more options. Low cost entertainment, subsidized by advertisement, is not really a bad deal. I don't even mind the notion of pay-per-view; that's essentially what even public television is: you usually pay up when you feel guilty enough after the fund drives have reminded you that Antique Roadshow is not free.

The point is that we are now in the Wild West days of internet television where the rules are being re-written for how content is distributed. You don't have to please the MBAs at the big networks, (or even the big cable networks), who make bland choices based on market surveys and end up producing most of the nonsense you see on television. You can actually just put a show out there and see if it finds an audience.

Here's a little table I was working on based on company's purchase of Google Ads:

Impressions	Cost	Clicks	Cost Per Impression	Cost Per Click
14,399,468	$45,989	36,293	$0.00319	$1.27
Adwords Impressions per one hour Show	180	Assumes a web screen with the show running and 3 Google Ads changing every minute of the show.�� (I'm not sure if this is actually done)
Visitors Per Day	3,000	�	�	�
Impressions Per Day	540,000	�	�	�
Revenue Per Month:	$51,739.09	�	�	�

�

I welcome rebuke, (sort of), so those of you who studied marketing and finance in college, let me know where I go astray. There are billions of people in the world. Is it really possible to make a living just by getting the attention of 3,000 souls per day?

Strawberries, Summer Day Camp

Thu, 01 May 2008 15:15:00 EST

�

I picked a fresh strawberry this morning, and it was not, actually the first of the season. Last year's plantings are coming in strong with the warmer May days and we expect to open up the Colonial Chesterfield patch to the public by the end of the month. We are also dedicated to getting all of our u-pick fruit on the calendar, so that you can plan your trip around your favorite fruit.

We are also opening up the grounds for an exciting Summer Day camp, so if you are a Yucaipa/Calimesa/Cherry Valley/Beaumont parent looking for a fun, safe, learning environment for your child, call Jan for the direct scoop at 909-797-7534 ext. 201, or visit our Summer Day Camp pages.

I performed Patrick Henry for the Calimesa Chamber of Commerce yesterday, and there were so many dignitaries in the audience I felt very much the only country bumpkin in the room. I am not ashamed to admit my age--48 years--but for some reason, whenever I get up in front of an audience, I still feel like Myrna Guyman's nine year old piano student, playing "The Happy Farmer" for an audience of PTA parents. There's another thing about an audience that some of you probably understand, if you've done any amount of public speaking: There are angels in any audience. There are people who smile, nod their heads, encourage you and seem to be rooting for each one of your syllables. A few years ago, I gave the Henry speech to a service club audience that was largely supportive, but there was one old crone who dismissivly mouthed the words "give me liberty or give me death," right before I shouted them. She might has well have shot me with a crossbow.

Yesterday's audience was mostly angels, so thank you Calimesa men and women of commerce!

Riding Lessons

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:38:00 EST

Riding Lessons

All right, so I never will be an express rider, but I thought a few of you might enjoy my version of Paul Revere attending riding school.

Yes, I know my heels are not far down enough in the stirrups and I have bad rein tension, but Jennifer Gentry-Oster has me working hard three days a week.

Little known fact: learning how to ride English first, makes you a better western rider.

Accidental Perfection

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:39:00 EST

We took the kids and friends to see Ben Stein's Expelled last night. Even if you have no interest in the intelligent design vs. evolution debate, Ben Stein has crafted a hilarious visual essay in this film, which features his inquisitive and irreverent self, walking from ivy hall to ivy hall,wearing his portly dark business suit and white sneakers--confounding the "learned", along the way, just by asking questions.

There's a useful way of categorizing scientists. You can break them down into two general categories: those who observe and those who don't. The scientists who truly "observe" watch the way cancer cells replicate; they study the efficiency of different kinds of fuel; they chronicle earthquakes and test their observations against the probability of chance. They have something to watch, in real time, and something to study, right before their very eyes. We have respect for these scientists, and their engineer colleagues, because they contribute to the betterment of our lives. They make for more comfortable homes, better health care, faster computers. Generally, the more brilliant they are, the more humble they are in face of the complexity and grandeur of the universe.

There's another sort of scientist who trades on the success of his colleagues, and borrows their credibility without paying for it. They have nothing to observe in real time, or what they do observe is too complex to attract the interest of their more disciplined colleagues. They can't predict tomorrow's weather, but they are happy to predict long term global temperature change. They can't witness the birth of the universe, but they have no shortage of opinions handed down with an ecclesiastical pride that would make the high priests of Ramses proud. Finally, they can't witness the migration of ape to man, but they are willing to treat anyone who doesn't agree with them as nothing better than sub-humans. The ones who have the least to actually observe are the ones who tend to be the most arrogant about their conclusions.

Enter Ben Stein with a brilliant, and troubling, illustration of the link between Darwin and the eugenics madness of Adolph Hitler, and you have explosive material beneath the comedy. The simple fact is that when a scientist denies the obvious signs of intelligent design in the universe, and attributes everything to beneficial accident, he inherits the wind. He effectively declares Jefferson a superstitious mystic for writing "..we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." Most of the theoretical evolutionists interviewed by Stein were proud, defiant, self-contratulating atheists, and their most strident defense seemed to be the excess and superstition of organized religion over the centuries.

But that isn't science. Evolutionary theorists who won't allow other scientists to explore other explanations, and who do so by pretending someone is advocating an Inquisition, aren't really scientists.

They are just the new high priests.

Of Pergolas and Arbors and Such..

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:40:00 EST

The pedestals and columns are about to be constructed on our side-of-the-public house pergola grape arbor. As near as we can tell, pergolas were quite popular in 18th century Italy, but we had trouble finding specific examples of arbors and pergolas we thought would fit into our period, so we studied the dimensions of the "classical vocabulary" and Jeff Hammond came up with the version above. We think it will be neat for weddings, and outdoor evening dining, as well as for sitting and taking in Wilshire Peak.

The big debate. Plant vining roses or grapes?

Critical Stakes

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:06:00 EST

Have you ever had that sensation, five minutes into a movie, that even if you give the film another two hours, it just isn't going to work?

This weekend I watched the first two episodes of the Lonesome Dove prequel--Comanche Moon. I also watched a Coen Brothers film, No Country for Old Men. The Coen flick is brutal and unsparing but it's a good example of a narrative that conveys, early on, that the story-tellers intend to tell you something very weighty. You may not agree with the themes, or the methods, but there is no doubt that what follows will be, at the very least, dramatic and credible.

In one sense a major Hollywood film shares this necessity with a joke or an anecdote. The listener has to have the sense that his time isn't being wasted. That may sound so obvious as to be dull, but the surprising truth is that most Hollywood productions don't make this basic delivery. It's not merely a matter of establishing a problem early on in the story; it's a matter of establishing a problem that has credibility and currency.

Comanche Moon, on the surface, has a lot going for it--a well-loved franchise (the Lonesome Dove stories), big stars (Val Kilmer), a beloved Western mythology (The Texas Rangers), and a budget that appears to have allowed for non-CGI battle scenes and the building of an entire Texas town. The problems of frontier Texas seem monumental enough: angry Comanches, angry and torture-happy horse-thieves, a merciless, dusty wilderness to tame, and the fickle hearts of beautiful women to win. There is no shortage of basic story-telling stuff here.

But it just doesn't work.

Val Kilmer makes his first appearance looking something like Bozo on a bronco. He is an incredibly gifted actor, but it's difficult to act your way out into the open, when you have a P.T. Barnum sombrero and a big-foot hairdo to balance. The idea, (I think) was to add wit and distinction to the folkloric ranger-captains of the old west, but you only get to be a clown after you shoot a few bad guys, or at least after you've convinced the audience that you could shoot a few bad guys. This band of Texas Rangers is traversing dangerous Comanche territory, but you get the sense they are just dusty cow-pokes who have reached the very end of their colorful cow-poke story inventory. Nothing seems to matter to them. The performances seem theoretical, unfelt, as though Larry McMurty's dialogue were passing out over their lips even as they were wondering what the catering truck would bring onto the set that day.

There are also some basic credibility issues. Comanche can't look like they are counting Weight Watcher points. When the innocent native peoples are betrayed, and herded, Braveheart-style into a tent for their slaughter, it seems more than a bit strange to start shooting even as one of the Yankee-betrayers is inside the tent with them. (Did they think we wouldn't notice?) As usual, the faith of the era and the moral clarity of the time, seems to be buried in a sea of smart-and-sassy agnosticism. Am I the only one who thinks it's hard to imagine the wife of the town's prominent Ranger captain would stand out on her porch and tempt in the farm hands, doing a Lady Godiva impression?

It would seem critically important--and painfully obvious--that characters in a story need to care very much about their lives.

If they don't care, neither do we.

Round-hand, The Politics of Sugar

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:02:00 EST

A small, steady crowd yesterday for Adventures in the Old World yesterday. I worked not very diligently on practicing the 18th century script of the day, Round Hand, which looks something like the sample on the right, taken from George Bickham's mid 1700s Penmanship Made Easy, or Young Clerk's Assistant, (Available from Dover Books) The lower case "r's" are particularly pernicious; you have to keep the quill from falling to the base line, or they look like "n's." When you study Round Hand, you can definitely see where John Hancock, with a little invention of his own, learned his uppercase "J." Sometimes the past seems impossibly far away, but sometimes, buried in a book like this one, with ink all over your hands, you can feel fairly close to at least some part of their routine of life. I'm certain some young clerk, somewhere, shared my frustration at upper case "D."

I started in on a book yesterday called The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763-1776, by Arthur Meier Schlesinger, (1939). Schlesinger concluded that for most of the early 18th century, the trade laws, though clearly favoring the mother country, were not particularly burdensome because:

a) British manufactured goods were cheaper and better than the alternative and
b) they were only loosely enforced.

Boston and Newport, RI brought in large quantities of West Indian molasses for the production of rum. Some of this molasses came from the British West Indies, but a great deal of it came from Spanish and French plantations in the Caribbean. In 1733, parliament protected British planters in the West Indies by placing heavy import duties on sugar coming from outside the empire. One writer, in the London Public Ledger called the duty merely an effort to keep the pampered sugar-barons of London rolling through the streets in their "guilded equipages." As Schlessinger observed, this special protection came "at the expense of two million American subjects."

The law was so burdensome, in fact, that everyone ignored it. The cash and credit accounts created by the Rum and Sugar trade were so great, (New England farmers were able to sell lumber and grain, in return for Caribbean sugar) that when British Men of War and revenue cutters arrived in the New World to begin enforcing the law, John Hancock and his fellow merchant-shippers despaired that trade had crawled down to nothing. John Adams later even observed that molasses deserved a very prominent role in the story of our revolution.

There are a number of lessons we can learn from this folly. The first is that no law should be established for the mere protection of political cronies, and no law should be approved that is so widely unpopular it has virtually no chance of enforcement. The market, the free market, has always worked better than those who try to regulate it. There is no doubt that some regulation is necessary, but regulation that is merely intended to protect one class of citizen against another only makes the commodities more expensive for everyone.

The third lesson is that a statute on the books that is not enforced creates utter contempt for the law. The clear pattern in our own age is to lard up the civil and criminal code with more text than can be read, much less taught the public, or enforced. This gives every petty tyrant in the civil service an arsenal of clubs to be used indiscriminately, for anyone he dislikes, or anyone the rest of the herd wants to gang up on. In New England's colonial culture, the failure to enforce the law mixed in "honorable" with "dishonorable" smugglers, and made it difficult to defend those parts of the Navigation Acts that were meant to protect the entire realm.

There is perhaps a fourth lesson that should never be forgotten: yes, men will sometimes fight on the basis of pure principle, but if you take away their livings, and snatch the food out of their children's mouths, merely to protect the drinking buddies that got you elected, you are going to have a real fight on your hands.

Farm News, Shady Beauty, Marriage Advice

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:18:00 EST

Well, the farm is nothing short of stunning in its cultivated horticultural splendor this week--with the old terraces cleared off and planted with over 600 new Apple trees, the strawberries plumping up, the orchard beds cut down to a neat green trim, and brother Mike walking the Percherons three nights a week, as part of his getting-in-shape routine.

The pergola grape arbor is coming along well, which we plan to use as a place to sit down for a slice of pie in a pleasant, grape-and-rose-grotto style setting. There are few things quite so fine as the marriage of architecture to shade: the neat streets of South Pasadena with their tree-canopied lanes, the grape arbors of Corfu, the Bouganvillea-brilliant early-evening crimsons of the Spanish Courtyard at the Mission Inn in Riverside. A place in the shade and good conversation. Isn't that what we all want? (I'm easy: a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich and cold hard cider would be a nice addition)

I finished the one hour pilot screen play of "The Hawk's Head" this week, first draft, which gives us something to film, soon. Sales continue to surge ahead of last year for our education programs, and I advise all men and women of commerce to look recession-talk right in the eye, and say, "get thee behind me, Satan; we're making hay." I don't get down the hill much, but I had to buy gas yesterday and it was nearly $4 a gallon. A total stranger lamented the price out loud to me, and I said, "thank our good friends the Saudis, and tell your congressman we need to start drilling -- HERE. Oh, and tell the schools to start teaching economics along with environmentalism." (Never invite a Riley to give an opinion; you'll get one.)

Mary and I celebrated twenty years of marriage this week. I attribute our success, after the Almighty of course, to knowing, from the outset, that it was absolutely for keeps. I can't believe the number of people who go into marriage without a deeply felt hatred for that bane of our culture, and that sapper of our economic strength--divorce. The other thing that is absolutely critical in marriage is a sense of being best friends. I remember dating a girl, before meeting Mary, and coming to the realization, half-way through our third date, that this woman had talked about shoe-shopping for the better part of thirty minutes. (I remember thinking, "you have to be really good looking in order to be this boring.") Mary never bores me. We laugh and gossip about the same things. The other thing that makes marriage work--and this will be completely politically incorrect--is that men have to lead in their own homes. Mary and I may disagree, but I make the major decisions. I remember going to a church couples retreat years ago, and the guest "family relations" pastor spent about two hours lecturing men on their obligations to serve their wives and not once--not once--asking the women in the audience to obey their husbands. I leaned over to Mary and whispered, loudly, "this guy may be a former marine, but he's a loser--and I wager his wife doesn't respect him."

..Seriously though. I remember attending a wedding where the joke of the entire affair was repeated in the receptions toasts. The groom was told, over and over, to let the bride, in this case, just have her way.

They were divorced within a year.

The Death of Certainty

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:02:00 EST

A pattern is emerging in my reading of then-versus-now.

When a series of 1770 colonial newspaper thefts are discovered, the publisher of the paper, (not an anonymous email poster) calls the perpetrators "mean, low-lived fellows," whose "souls" were not "large enough to be at the trifling expense of a News Paper."

When the British parliament lays an illegal tax on British North America, the little town of Exeter New Hampshire, in the officially stated will of the town, doesn't pull any punches in calling the customs officials: "...miscreants, who devour the fruits of our honest industry.."

In the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, the patriot Joseph Warren warned those responsible for quartering troops in Boston that although they had escaped earthly justice, they should nevertheless "...be prepared to stand at the bar of an omniscient Judge!"

When Justices of the Peace in 1820s New Hampshire were taught the form of a complaint against treason, they were reminded of one "John Burr," who had no "fear of God in his heart," but was "seduced by the instigation of the Devil.."

Wrong doers, in other words, were "mean," "low-lived," "small-souled," "mis-creants," who were "seduced by the Devil" and who conducted their lives as though they would never stand before an eternal "omniscient Judge!"

A few months ago, I was reminded, via Court TV, of the gruesome case of the Carr Brothers, who committed such brutally hateful acts of violence, rape, and assault that they make the British occupiers of 1770 look like Marsha, Jan, and Cindy Brady. Our prisons, to make things worse, are full of brutal reptiles like this, who are enjoying state meals while the expensive apparatus of value-free justice grinds on, and although there are small bursts of outrage here and there, like campfires across a wide prairie, the bonfires of justice remain unlit, and the gallows are never hammered together. "Low-lived" scum have become, simply, "perpetrators." No major American newspaper, and certainly no legal proceeding, would ever dare to say that villains like the Carr Brothers were acting on an impulse that most Americans, still, find far more plausible than the tepid ruminations of social scientists, and that is, that these jackals were "seduced by the instigation of the Devil." When one recent Islamo-fascist attack took place in England, and it was discovered that nearly all the terrorists were well to do medical professionals, it's difficult to believe that crime is the mere result of mismanaged food-stamp programs.

In the argument over how much Christianity affected the formation of the American republic, the topic is blurred by an academic elite who see Christians in history as merely televangelists in tricorns. The temptation is paint the founders with the sort of anemic, seeker-friendly psycho-spiritual blather of a Robert Schuller, but the Christianity of the past, in America was pastoral. The image is that of a shepherd, protecting and feeding the flock--and killing the wolves.

The Cool Old Books Department

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:47:00 EST

I've owned the book laying around on the right for some time, but I wanted to check out oaths in the early republic, and I picked up my very antique copy of a book called "New-Hampshire Justice of the Peace," by William M. Richardson. As you can see, this was one was owned, in 1837, by someone in the Young family.

This book is special to me, for two reasons: one, GoogleBooks hasn't caught up with it yet, (no full text version), and two, it is an incredible insight into the profoundly Judeo-Christian world view of Early Federal America.

To wit:

In matters of Treason, the following is the form of a complaint:

David Carr, of Colebrook, in said county, gentleman, complains and gives the said justice to understand, that John Burr, of said Colebrook, husbandman, a citizen of the State of New-Hampshire, owing allegiance to said State, not regarding the duty of his allegiance, nor having the fear of God in his heart, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil...

Under "Rules of Evidence" (page 153), the author describes who is capable of giving evidence and who is not:

4. Atheists, and such infidels as profess not any religion that can bind their consciences to speak the truth are excluded from being witnesses. But whoever believes in the existence of a God, the avenger of falsehood, may be admitted as a witness.

Chapter XIV, "Profanation of the Sabbath"

Complains I.K., of Raymond, in said county, yeoman, and gives the said justice to understand, that E.F...., laborer, on the thirteenth day of July, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-three,... being the first day of the week commonly called the Lord's day, at said Raymond, with force and arms, worked at his business and kept about his work of secular calling, to wit...the said work and business not being any work of necessity or mercy; all which is against the peace and dignity of the State, and contrary to the form of the statue in such case made and provided. Wherefore your complainant prays, that the said E.F. may be held to answer to this complaint, and that justice may be done in the premises..

You can disagree all you want about the wisdom of rooting law in the ancient Judeo-Christian texts, but it would be difficult to argue that early America was not profoundly oriented towards the Biblical standard. A correspondent at Williamsburg recently wrote that the conviction rate in Virginia courts was not very high, because the courts depended on the standard of two witnesses to prove a crime. Well, of course, that's a Biblical standard--and that has been replaced by expensive, and trial-delaying, techno evidence (finger prints, DNA, lie-detector tests) and a decidedly difficult burden for the accused--that of not being able to face his/her accuser.

It might just be me, but I'm not sure we should be proud of all our innovations.

Potato Cash

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:35:00 EST

The following transaction never took place, (I'm fairly certain), and I submit it to you lawyers in the crowd, particularly those lawyers familiar with 18th century jurisprudence, for your ruling as tavern-keeper-justice of the peace:

The Great Potato Transaction
Edward Pierce v. Captain Smith

Edward Pierce sought to purchase 6 Yards of English broadcloth so as to have a new suit made by way of trading 2 ¼ bushels of potatoes for the wool.* Captain Smith sent his wife, with the wool to Edward Pierce’s farm and was met by Pierce’s bond servants, Hogan and Doyle, on the road leading to the farmhouse. Mrs. Smith is extremely near-sighted and mistakes Hogan for Mr. Pierce, turns over the wool, and asks Doyle, thinking it Pierce, to bring the 2 ¼ bushels of potatoes to the Smith Farm. Mr. Doyle responds that the eating potatoes are burried under two feet of hard, frozen ground, but that some fine planting potatoes can be had in the root cellar, and wouldn’t an enterprising farm like the Smith’s prefer the planting potatoes, in return for what Mr. Doyle observes is very rough-sewn English broadcloth indeed? Mrs. Smith agrees.

Neither of their masters are very happy, and are not privy to the full details of the exchange. Captain Smith has 3 ¼ bushels of whiskered potatoes to plant, as opposed to eat, and Edward Pierce has a horse blanket to be made into a gentleman-farmer’s suit of clothing. Suit is brought by Edward Pierce.

Edward Pierce does not want to admit why he was not privy to the transaction, because, he was, in fact, asleep—at noon—and does not want to own to his napping. There is an uneasy, back-story stand-off between Captain and Mrs. Smith, as she maintains she was never told whether her husband wanted planting or eating potatoes.

When you are writing a screenplay, uh, rooted, in the past, a thousand questions of truth attach themselves to every moment of imagined dialogue. At one point in our pilot episode, Molly Cooper, the wife of a prospering New England merchant admits that she is "undone" by her "weakness for lace." It seems to fit her character, to be certain, and I am fairly certain lace was considered a bit of a luxury, but how much of a luxury? Would it be something completely beyond the reach of a frontier farm wife, or just a tad extravagant? Was lace made widely in the colonies? My suspicion is yes, because inkle and tape looms abounded, but did lace have gradations in quality? (Yes, absolutely, to be certain.) The point is--I could go off and do a one year study on lace, but then the pilot would never be written. How many lace trails can you follow?

Ironically, my Riley ancestors were Nottinghamshire lace-makers, prior to their migration, but I can't find anyone in the family who has even the faintest memory of a lace-making story.

*The basis for these values are drawn from 1761 Mathew Patten transactions which indicate Mathew purchased 9 bushesl of potatoes for 12 pounds, 10 shillings Old Tenor, (3,000 pence) or 333 pence per bushel. In the same year, he purchased 10 ½ yards of “worsted and wool cloath” for 1260 pence, (120 pence per yard). By this evaluation six yards of fabric would be 720 pence, or not quite 2 ¼ bushels of potatoes. (720/333)
Note: May 8, 1767 Patten begins planting potatoes.
Note: On March 4, 1767, Patten “opened our potatoes that were buired and were sound and good”
Note: Zachariah Chandler got 4 bushels of potatoes (total) from Patten on May 18, 1770. (Not clear the price)
Note: In May 1772, Patten sold a bushel of potatoes to Hugh McColley for a pistereen, (a Spanish silver coin), in December of 1766, a pistareen purchased 2 lbs of sugar. (In 1761, 336 pence purchased 2 lbs of sugar; pistareen = 336 pence and had stayed relatively inflation free over those years???)

Celebrations & Radical Notions

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:09:00 EST

Special thanks to all those who danced the night away Saturday night in celebration of two farm anniversaries. It was a LOT of fun. I think, marginally, (dance challenged person that I am) I even have some slightly better sense for how to swing dance now. I believe my son, Samuel, danced nearly every number.

Special thanks to Bill Blanchard and crew, and the Riley's Farm staff who joined in the celebration as well.

Radical Notions

I have used this term before, but I sometimes encounter, at least figuratively, what I call "The Cuff Link Set." These are folks who give some grudging respect to the past, but really have no use for it for longer than a few minutes. These folks didn't invent electric light, the internal combustion engine, or central heating, but they act as though creature comforts and cable television are a cultural sign of enlightenment. In point of fact, they are too conventional to ponder the status quo at all, so they aren't likely to been plucky enough to invent these comforts. They are more likely to just take pride in being exactly like all the other goats. If they were baby chicks, they would be the sort that would happily peck to death the anomalous sibling.

On occasion, for example, our large family has been the subject of wry jokes by people who make spry references to the modern invention of birth control. I don't blink or give this kind of idiocy any quarter. I just say, "yes, well, I'm very intelligent, and so is my wife, and so we are doing what we can to save western civilization. What are you doing?"

I know this sounds insufferable, and radical, but I really am only articulating a notion that has solid roots in any study of history and culture that pre-dates, say, 1968. If you ask the average young married couple today if they are planning on having children, they will likely say, "we're waiting a few years." Families are planned, arranged, and entered into Excel spreadsheets. Most commonly, they are sensibly small. Warren Buffet and the zero population crowd would be proud--and so would all the other goats.

A more draconian version of this "sensible family size" agenda has been going on in China for the last fifty years, complete with forced abortion, parental licensing, and female infanticide. This experiment in social engineering and re-arranging the group-think assumptions about family size has created a large, shiftless, angry population of young men who have no mates.

The correct-think contemporary person is almost guaranteed to cluck, at this point,"but, heah, man don't they have, like, a billion mouths to feed over there?"

It represents a kind of spiritual and intellectual impoverishment to think that the arrival of a child is more of a liability than it is an asset, and I don't care how many of the cuff-link set think otherwise.

Sometimes the radical notion is the truthful one.

Remembering Lexington and Concord And Queen Elizabeth Surrendered to Snake Charmers

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:18:00 EST

Two-hundred thirty-three years ago this morning, a hearty band of farmers said, after ten years of provocation, "enough is enough."

God bless their memory!
Happy Patriot's Day everyone!

The Surface Driven Film

My weakness for historical film, almost any historical film, had me laboring through Shekhar Kapur's "Elizabeth the Golden Age" this week, in a few different bouts, though "bouts" sounds like I was in a fighting match with the film. It was really more of a sleeping match. The deep ruby hues of the art direction and the somnolent ratcheting back to slow motion, even as Mary Queen of Scots is about to lose her head, did the trick. That's pretty bad when you sputter back to consciousness, blurting "did she lose her head yet?"

The fact is that we need a few more Cecile B. De Mille's and a few more Charleton Heston's on the set of these major epics, because these lush tales of the past seem to be almost completely controlled by the art director and almost completely devoid of heart and soul--at least that "heart and soul" that would define the times of the era under scrutiny. Some of these films achieve a kind of thread-counter's intimacy with the forms of the past (the appearance of the throne room, the elaborate gothic traceries of the hallways, the hair piece signature of the queen's ladies), but the soul of the era, the heart-collage of ideas that make up the time, feels painfully like a New Age teenager making a tie-dye circle print out of a Rubens canvas. Somehow, the keepers of England's Gothic cathedrals turned over their cultural heritage, and Good Queen Bess no less, to a band of Calcutta snake-charmers.

And rarely are the makers of a film so clear about their intent. Opines Tim Bevan, producer:

The whole idea was to make a film that spoke to a contemporary audience...and there were two things. One was the overall plot..for a religious fanatic who'll stop at nothing, basically, in order to have their message shoved through and that, actually that the only way forward is one of tolerance, and that we would portray the Queen as a tolerant woman, basically...

And Kapur takes Elizabethan England on quite a little space walk too:

..And so, the second one (the second "Elizabeth" movie in the series), really for me, was about divinity. Was when you have that kind of absolute power, you aspire to be divine...so if you look at the Armada, she finally does become divine, and that's why the Armada is shot in that way..and we've taken the armor off. [Elizabeth] is no longer the avenging. She's clothed, and, as the Spirit, really. And it's almost like the Spirit willed the waves. It's almost like the Spirit willed the fire...so she truly became of the gods..

Wow. A tolerant woman becoming one of the gods. That is so DEEP, man.

Why do the hard-eyed money men turn over good film-making money to idiots like this?