Jake Wirth's

Cosmic stars in alignment? Cubs Win! Cubs Win! The possibilities of a Sox-Cubs Series are bandied about here and here for starters. And the Google News archive on the subject keeps growing. We can only hope. In the meantime, view video clips of the old "Bud Man, Cub Fan" ads at this Harry Caray tribute site. Heeeyyy!

Give this man a Sox pennant. Credit

Get your David Ortiz Cowboy Up tee-shirts here! Is this the year the cowboy hat replaces the self-doubting Puritan's sugarloaf?

A writer (I believe it was Martin F. Nolan) has suggested the Red Sox' original name of Pilgrims better conveys the team's eternal questing in the face of New England Calvinist preordained failure.

Tom Fitzpatrick of Salem reflects on the local tradition of baseball as character-building exercise:

Being a Red Sox fan is a penance, rather like wearing a hairshirt. It is irksome at times, especially during September and October. It is an acquired taste that very few but true New Englanders can acquire. The personal fortitude required to withstand constant disappointment is not something folks from just anywhere are blessed with. Rather, like the New England weather, the fortunes of the Olde Towne Team are something to be endured. One needs a very healthy dose of stoicism to remain sane while watching the Red Sox over the years.

And as Samuel Johnson was fond of pointing out, "There are more things in life to be endured, than to be enjoyed." The Red Sox fate has, unswervingly since Woodrow Wilson was president, been something to be endured. The number of times that they have managed to find a way to be defeated since 1918 truly beggars the imagination.

But New England has something to enjoy this morning. We should all enjoy it while we can. Sic transit gloria mundi.

The pilgrim theme has been struck over the years. To mark the 1930 Tercentenary of Boston both the Red Sox and Braves wore on their uniform sleeves a Pilgrim Hat patch, revived by the Cooperstown Ballcap Co in this souvenir hat. In their very first years (1901-02), the Boston Americans were called the Plymouth Rocks and the Puritans. As late as the '60s and '70s, the Sox were sometimes referred to by capsule writers in the annual Sporting News baseball guide as the Pilgrims, as the Phillies were nicknamed the Quakers. I could swear a Willard Mullin-style caricature of a musket-toting pilgrim in red socks was used promotionally by the club in the early 1970s. (If anyone can confirm this, I'd like to get my hands on one of the cartoons.)

A travel piece on Massachusetts' Plimoth Plantation in the Sunday Times of London this past July intertwined Pilgrims with baseball:

"'Excuse me sonny," said the man with the lime-green sports coat. "Do you know how the Red Sox did last night?" The pilgrim, who had been ploughing a steady line through Plimouth Plantation's 17th-century herb garden, shouldered his wooden hoe and adopted a puzzled look. "I am sorry sir," he said in a strange nasal West Country accent. "But I have no knowledge of this Red Sox of which you speak."

"Hell, you're good son," said the tourist. "Hey Dottie, come over here and take a picture of me with this guy."

America loves reliving its history. Throughout the country there are heritage farms, forts, Wild West towns and Indian villages where staff dress up in period costume and act out life as it was lived 300 years ago. The granddaddy of them all is the pilgrim village at Plimouth Plantation on the road from Boston to Cape Cod, a short hoe down from where the brethren are reputed to have first set foot on American soil. Here, professional pilgrims tend to their animals, build houses and work their farms while all the time talking to their visitors in an array of 1627 accents.

Most tourists listen rapt to their descriptions of daily life, but there are always one or two intent on catching the actors out with questions about sport or the US presidents. As you'd expect, Plimouth's pilgrims are well-trained to handle these situations. Even when a 747 splits the sky leaving a trail of vapour behind it, they barely blink. "Why, it must be some kind of bird unique to these parts, master," they say before getting back to churning cheese.

Historical accuracy goes hand in hand with political correctness and further down the trail at Hobbamock's Wampanoag Indian Homesite I came across native Americans all too eager to let me know they were there first and what sort of impact the pilgrims had on their lives. "Ah yes," said our friend with the sports coat. "But do you know how the Red Sox got on last night?" "They lost it in the ninth." "No kidding?"

The rallying cry of the Maple-Flavored McGovern, Howard Dean, is Take Our Country Back! What I want to know is, when exactly was the country in the hands of the Bread & Puppet Theater, and when was it wrested from their grasp? And how many of the Birkenstocked disposesssed await the order to march?

Sox clinch AL wild card. See a slideshow.

The Sun Never Sets… The seal of the Hudson's Bay Co. that once held rights to one-twelfth of the world's land mass is heraldry at its best * The Spectator, oldest magazine in the English language, is marking its 175th year * Stephen Fry makes his directorial debut with a film adaptation of Waugh's Vile Bodies * Fry is interviewed by the Financial Times * The Sept. 26 Commonweal features an appreciation of Waugh by biographer Robert Murray Davis that is well worth reading

Harvard-Princeton program, 1934

I know I put those liturgical directives somewhere

I have no problem with altar girls. As long as they ring the Sanctus bells on cue. The kerfuffle prompted in some corners by a reported new Vatican rollback on liturgical innovation seems a bit misplaced. Why argue over who enters the sanctuary when the whole notion of the sanctuary has been done away with, as in the cathedrals at Los Angeles (also above), or Milwaukee, or at Evry, France (where a papal Mass is shown being celebrated)? Why stipulate the replacement of entry gates in altar rails when most all the altar rails themselves have been removed? Dale Price has more thoughts on the topic: Wonder how he really feels?

He controls the vertical and the horizontal

Where there is discernment of subliminal messages beamed over the Lawrence Welk Show, there is the Church.

In light of these revelations via Fr Sibley (Sept. 22), it becomes clear these sayings by the Champagne Music Maker are actually secret code.

Democrats, Democrats, do it up brown: Boston talk radio host Jay Severin calls him General Wesley Gump. You do have to wonder what sort of ambition would make a decorated four-star general lend his military honor as cover for an anti-war movement that wants America to lose in the world.

Already the comparisons are being made to the general who carried the Democratic banner against Lincoln in the Civil War election of 1864. Rick Brookhiser writes at The Corner: Wesley Clark is George McClellan--proud, smart, by the book, untalented, incompetent. All stars, no battles.

Victor Davis Hanson at NRO recalls 1864: Copperheads turned to the diminutive, dapper, and glib failed general, George McClellan, who was willing to throw in the towel and accept a brokered stalemate. Lincoln, who had done so much to prevent war, was castigated as a warmonger with the blood of thousands of his hands. And this was in his fourth, not his first, summer of bloody fighting. But Lincoln, writes Hanson, did not listen to gabby George McClellan — or consider the Copperheads anything other than defeatists whose enticing policy of appeasement would only postpone but not end the killing.

Historical background on the Copperheads, the spiritual ancestors of today's anti-war Democrats, may be found here and here and here.

The Parlor Songs site features a campaign song purportedly composed by Stephen Foster for McClellan, "Little Mac! Little Mac! You're the Very Man!" How about these lyrics?

Dem-o-crats, Dem-o-crats, do it up brown
Lin-coln and his Nig-ger heads won't go down
Gree-ley and Sum-mer and all that crew,
We must beat Lin-coln and John-son too.

Note the side the accommodationists with slavery were on then. Note the side the appeasers of terrorism are on now.

[A site dedicated to the songs of Stephen Foster questions his authorship of "Little Mac," which may be heard in MIDI version here. The Library of Congress' America Singing collection features a number of McClellan campaign song-sheets. Search here.]

Mark Steyn doesn't think much of the general. Nor does MCJ.

But leave it to Jonah Goldberg to tell why he opposes Clark:

Besides the fact that the Clinton mafia is mysteriously supporting him (If they think he can win, then you'd think Hillary wouldn't want him to run since a Clark Presidency would ruin her chances to be president) I'm opposed to Wes Clark running for President because he is the only Democrat it's hard to make fun of. It's hard not to make fun of Sharpton, Kucinich, and Braun. Lieberman looks like a rodeo clown who hasn't had his foundation make-up removed yet. Edwards is a trial lawyer who would still be a trial lawyer if he looked like Kucinich. I think I've said this before, but Dean's the sort of arrogant liberal who yells at you for buying the wrong book at his used book store. John Kerry looks like some suction-cup-fingered demon sucked-out his soul through his temples. Graham thinks he's doing history some great favor by recording his bowel movements on notepads.

'If the seemingly barren and war-strewn field of litigation can be the playground where spirit dances, it can revel anywhere.' Cloying, yes, but even more, chilling: This innocuous-seeming bit of New Agey sprightliness accompanies a plug for the book Litigation as Spiritual Practice by one George Felos. He's the attorney for a Florida husband who wants to shut off food and water to his brain-damaged wife. Starving the woman to death is presented as a blow for her "Right to Die" by the attorney, who fancies himself a mystical sort.

Courtroom Yogi of Death, is more like it. Imagine devoting so much energy to the "spiritual," yet being so utterly devoid of conscience.

The Schiavo case is appalling. Amy Welborn offers a roundup of coverage, while Fr. Johansen suggests civil disobedience may be in order. He's right.

FDNY Pipes & Drums

The Cops in Kilts of the Chicago Police Emerald Society cite a description of the bagpipes given in 1581 by Galileo's father:

"The Bagpipe is much used by the Irish. To its sounds, this unconquered, fierce, and warlike people march their armies, and are encouraged to feats of valor. With it they also carry their dead to the grave, making such a mournful sound, as to force the bystander to weep."

Particularly recommended from the Chicago police pipe band's mp3 page are the Quiet Man and the Garryowen sets.

And for more Garryowen, see the Fighting 69th trailer at TCM.

The Neoconservative Persuasion: I've been simpatico with the NeoCons since my days reading The New Republic and Commentary in the 1980s. As an ancestral Democrat who admires FDR and Truman and JFK and RFK, who sees a great mission for America in the world, and to whom the Republican Party will never really be home, I find David Frum's description of Neoconservatism strikes a chord:

The term "neoconservative" was coined back in the 1970s by people on the left as a term of abuse for those fellow leftists who were showing signs of backsliding from the lunatic orthodoxies of 1960s liberalism. In those mad days, it did not take much to earn the "neo" label. You could be a socialist like Penn Kemble or a yellow-dog Democrat like Daniel Patrick Moynihan--all you had to do was express some doubt that society was to blame whenever a black youth knocked down an old lady to steal her purse.

Quickly, however, the term "neoconservatism" assumed a more precise meaning. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, friends and foes of the neoconservatives came to accept something like the following definition: A neoconservative was a former liberal or leftist, typically from a poor background, typically Catholic or Jewish, who had been driven rightward by the intellectual and moral implosion of liberalism in the 1960s. They were often the children of immigrants. They had witnessed and in many cases suffered terrible oppression and persecution in Europe. As they saw it, the difference between America and Europe was the difference between life and death. They began as Democrats, but as the Democrats turned against American exceptionalism, so they turned against the Democrats. Still, they retained some of their youthful statism on economic issues and, often, some ancestral affection for Democratic heroes of the past: FDR, Truman, and sometimes Kennedy and Johnson.

As the years wore on, the old line between neoconservatives and traditional Republicans began to blur: One ex-leftist-turned-rightist told me this story. She had attended the New York high school known as the Little Red Schoolhouse in the early 1950s. At her 40th reunion, one of her classmates reproached her for her political migration: "I hear you've become a neoconservative." The ex-leftist answered defiantly, "Yes--in fact, I've just re-registered as a Republican." "Oh please," her classmate replied. "Don't exaggerate."

Godfather of Neoconservatism Irving Kristol offers his own take on the persuasion.

Meantime, here's Mickey Kaus, this past March, on the passing of Daniel Patrick Moynihan:

A college friend of mine, Catherine, babysat for Daniel Patrick Moynihan in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the mid-1970s, the era when Moynihan was making headlines as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. One everning we went out drinking at a low-rent establishment in nearby, working-class Somerville -- the sort of place where the walls are decorated with the corrugated insides of beer cartons. Scruffy college students talked Marxism by the bar, while a group of actual workers -- ruddy, silver-haired Irish guys, fresh off the job, with dirty pants and sweaters -- lined the back wall, swaying shoulder-to-shoulder, singing old songs. Catherine looked at the line of reddening men and squinted. "Isn't that ambassador Moynihan?" We scoffed at her, until she walked right up and introduced herself to one of the swaying men, who rose up -- and rose, and rose -- and fumfawingly admitted that yes, he was.

I always thought this encounter reflected well on Moynihan -- he may have been the most erudite man to serve in the Senate in the last half century, he may have dressed like an Oxford professor, but he wasn't a snob. He wasn't a pedant either, as Jacob Weisberg noted in a NYT assessment two years ago -- but rather someone whose knowledge gave him a "keen awareness of the past's presence," and the melodramatic sweep of history.

NYC

"I love you, Daddy. I miss you a lot."

Images: NYC * Orlando * NYC * NYC * NYC * NYC * NYC * NYC * NYC

"Danny Boy" Set, performed by the Bagpipes & Drums of the Emerald Society, Chicago Police Department. The pipe band's website has a Flash introduction that is quite moving.

Andante from "Rhapsody in Blue," George Gershwin, solo piano, 1928: One of several renditions of "Rhapsody in Blue" recorded before Gershwin's death in 1937, from the invaluable Red Hot Jazz Archive. Others include this piano roll solo by Gershwin from 1924 and, from 1927, one of three by Paul Whiteman's orchestra.

Angel of the Commons, Late Summer, by Sara Lovering

Agnus Dei, based on Adagio for Strings, by Samuel Barber, performed by the Choir of Trinity College: High * Low (Via IHM)

In Memoriam: Neilie Anne Casey * Dan McNeal * The Hanson Family of Groton, Mass. * Welles Crowther, the Man in the Red Bandanna * And all others lost Sept. 11, 2001

"The Wayfarer"
Padraic Pearse

The beauty of the world hath made me sad,
This beauty that will pass;
Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy
To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun,
Or some green hill where shadows drifted by
Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown
And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven;
Or children with bare feet upon the sands
Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets
Of little towns in Connacht,
Things young and happy.
And then my heart hath told me:
These will pass,
Will pass and change, will die and be no more,
Things bright and green, things young and happy;
And I have gone upon my way
Sorrowful.

FDNY Piper, Ground Zero

"The trade-center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world." Ada Louise Huxtable, NYT architecture critic, 1966

Watched Ric Burns' film on the World Trade Center (a postscript to his New York documentary) and found the buildings' history, which I hadn't known, fascinating. But it was difficult watching: I do not like heights, and my palms were sweating through much of the three-hour program (especially during the section on the French tightrope walker). The scenes of 9/11, including footage not widely seen, were nightmarish.

That morning, I was home watching my son and daughter, then 4 and 2, who played, happily oblivious, as horrors unfolded on the living room TV. So Lileks strikes a chord:

I was nowhere near New York when it happened, of course. But you’d have to be unusually thick not to see that this was the start of something that would affect more than the lower portion of the island of Manhattan. I don’t know what compelled me to grab the videocam off the shelf and start shooting, but I’m glad I did, because what I caught captured something I needed to remember: the TV has the picture of the twin towers engulfed in smoke: my little 14 month old child is grinning with unbearable delight, holding out her Elmo phone. Hi! Hi! Hi! Jasper’s in the corner of the picture, on his back, paws up, whimpering; whatever I was giving off, he got. But Gnat was in Elmo-world, a happy little place in which she’d always be safe, and I’m wondering if her future will be all downhill from here.

At that point I thought the fires might go out. I thought the towers might be saved. Then they fell. And you knew that the future had just taken the wrong exit.

Angry? Almost two years later I’m still f*#king furious about it, if you want to know the truth. I’m not sure what emotion these people want me to have. An appropriate amount of sadness mixed with an appropriate amount of shame mixed with a soupcon of perspective and a dram of self-hatred? Can you send me the precise recipe, please? Because from where I stand, I see the two forces I thought the left deplored: religious intolerance and fascism. Together at last! Swirled into one cone! If Kluxers had flown planes into the UN building, these people would be insisting that America was bubbling over with millions of Bubbanazis, and the failure of the networks to mount Second Anniversary specials would be proof that the media secretly embraced the White Power agenda.

Again, I’ll ask the question: when did I overdo it? January 14, 2002? August 23rd 2003, 11:34 AM? Was that the point at which we were supposed to pack it all away in a box and store it in the attic with the newspapers and Time magazines? I pass a house every day that still has a Wellstone! sign in the front window. Should I knock on their door, and ask why they have the sign up? They’re white, male, living in the land of opportunity. Stop grieving. Stop it!

Wellstone died almost a year ago - by accident. Three thousand people died by design that day. Only a fool couldn’t help noticing what it meant: they want us all dead. They want a world in which my daughter is a slave - and even though they’ll never get it, they will kill someone else’s daughter a half a continent away just to make their point.

Christopher Hitchens, meantime, calls for fewer flags and more grit: What is required is a steady, unostentatious stoicism, made up out of absolute, cold hatred and contempt for the aggressors, and complete determination that their defeat will be utter and shameful. This doesn't require drum rolls or bagpipes or banners. The French had a saying during the period when the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were lost to them: "Always think of it. Never speak of it."

The Emerald Society Pipes & Drums of the FDNY keeps an online photo album that includes images, like the one above, taken at Ground Zero. The Society also offers a fine selection of links to other fire- and police-department pipe bands.

Lane Core has put together a Remember 9/11 gallery that includes photos from last year's Flight 93 memorial service.

A flag-toting Ted Kennedy is shown above campaigning in the God and Country Parade (!) of September 1962 in Lawrence, Mass. Can you imagine such a photo being taken today? The image is part of an online exhibit on Essex County history. See also a striking image of the flag waving over the 1962 parade, and a picture of Theodore Roosevelt visiting Lawrence in 1902.

Bucky Harris and Joe Cronin, 1935

So, one more year without baseball in Washington. Is it really such a big deal? One fan journeys to the heart of the American game to find out: A beautiful piece by Washington Post Magazine writer and Red Sox fan Bob Thompson, followed by an online discussion. An excerpt from the article:

More than the games themselves, it's the sharing of them that was and remains important. The college friend we saw yesterday, for example, told us a story about waking his sleeping 6-year-old in 1986, just before Buckner's meltdown, so the boy would be able to say he'd seen the Red Sox win the Series. ("So it's your fault!" I exclaimed, and he didn't disagree.) The people we're staying with tonight, with whom we have much more in common than just baseball, nonetheless can talk endlessly and interestingly about the nuances of individual players and games. When pressed, they're also willing to mull the broader question of what the Sox have meant to New England over the past 40 years.

The argument goes like this: In a period when a tidal wave of homogenization has surged across America, washing out regional differences, New Englanders have resisted the process more than most. They want badly to be, if not unique, at least distinguishable from the mass of their malled and supermarketed fellow citizens. Red Sox fandom has become a marker for the kind of distinctive identity they seek. For newcomers to the region, in particular, it is a bridge to the people they've come to join, a way to assert their membership in something special. (Via Bambino's Curse)

World Series, Pittsburgh, 1960

From Roadside America