Enjoy the 19th-century anthropomorphic bears of William Holbrook Beard above and here. (Wonder what the Google Search will make of that?)

Bears were a pop culture phenomenon during the TR era. Perfessor Bill Edwards offers a playing of the early 1900s dance hit "Grizzly Bear" along with some fine sheet music cover art, if you scroll down a bit.

While you're at it, listen to an mp3 of "Big Bear Stomp" by the New South Market Street Jazz Band.

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The Liberal Massachusetts tag is a misnomer, according to a piece in TNR. Left Center Left comments.

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Dawn Eden writes:

One of my favorite things about C.S. Lewis's "Surprised By Joy" is the way he describes how, before he knew the Lord, he gained a taste of divine joy through worldly things—like Norse myths or, if memory serves, a picture on a cookie tin.

I've experienced such a taste through my children. Random Penseur describes this phenomenon more eloquently than I.

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Visit the John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery and be amazed at how much he would accomplish in a given year – say 1890, when he was all of 34.

Hence Samuel Johnson's prayer touches a chord: "I have now spent fifty-five years in resolving; having, from the earliest time almost that I can remember, been forming schemes of a better life. I have done nothing. The need of doing, therefore, is pressing, since the time of doing is short. O GOD, grant me to resolve aright, and to keep my resolutions, for JESUS CHRIST'S sake. Amen." (Via Derbyshire and TSO)

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A Michael Oakeshott quote making the rounds on the merits of age versus youth in politics speaks also, I think, to the root causes of European anti-Americanism.

Perhaps the Euros see themselves as wise and sophisticated in the ways of the world in a way the cowboy Americans are not. But is it also possible the Euros act out of a now-permanent adolescent irresponsibility, shorn of a sense of consequences, now that the US is the world's one and only superpower, required, as they are not, to "feel the balance of things in its hands"?

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Previously when I thought "pants" I thought Fred Mertz, but now I'll think Sandy Berger.

Fr. Rutler recalls a similar mishap involving the Book of Kells: To my surprise, I later found several major illuminated pages in my socks.

TNR Editor-in-Chief Martin Peretz weighs in on Berger, Joe Wilson &c.

Meantime, ScrappleFace offers its own spin on Terror in the Skies.