Althouse: At the Pine Needle Café...

March 11, 2012

At the Pine Needle Café...

... the path is wide.

32 comments:

Steve Burri said...: ... needle all you want.; 3/11/12, 10:32 PM
rcommal said...: May I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend a book (something I think I've almost never done here; the last time I can remember specifically is something like six years ago, or something? Could be wrong, but don't think so, at least not by much)? To Althouse even and everybody else.

(And, yes, I did make a point of going through the Althouse portal to make the link, out of blogcourtesy and general respect.

Also, the standard [and real] disclaimer: I don't know either of those people and I benefit not a wit by recommending or linking.); 3/11/12, 10:44 PM
Kirby Olson said...: But narrow is the road that leads to life.; 3/11/12, 10:44 PM
rcommal said...: But narrow is the road that leads to life.

But not narrow is life's abundance and variety. 'Tis the power and the glory.; 3/11/12, 10:56 PM
David Baker said...: The trees like sentences, the leaves words old and new, some lasting, some falling from the page upon the ground.

(Literary/Artistic); 3/11/12, 11:22 PM
wyo sis said...: Is it "not a wit" or "not a whit?"; 3/11/12, 11:27 PM
rcommal said...: wyo sis:

It is "not a whit."

Except at Althouse.; 3/11/12, 11:49 PM
JAL said...: And devoid of snow.; 3/12/12, 12:02 AM
JAL said...: So rcommal, does this book cover something like "fake but accurate"?; 3/12/12, 12:04 AM
rcommal said...: JAL:

It documents in excruciating detail the conversation (accidental, perhaps, in the sense of "who, OMG, would choose this!) between a serious fact-checker and...a writer who wants both to be regarded as a non-fictioneer AND a creative truth-teller, but mostly just doesn't want to be questioned at all on account of thinking it's beyond the pale that he ought be.

Perhaps that's a bad way to describe it. I could describe it in another way. And then to that I would also append: "Perhaps that's a bad way to describe it."

This why I posted the recommendation. As stuff goes, it's not that expensive to buy it. And I'd appreciate reactions from people who actually read it.; 3/12/12, 12:31 AM
Penny said...: But this is the internet, rcommal.

We get our gas for free!

We burp for no one!; 3/12/12, 1:58 AM
bagoh20 said...: #13); 3/12/12, 2:00 AM
Penny said...: Bago?

Ten four.; 3/12/12, 2:15 AM
Penny said...: The beauty of life?

Someone's always counting your steps.; 3/12/12, 2:21 AM
Penny said...: One, two...

TEN... plus one, two, three, four.; 3/12/12, 2:31 AM
Penny said...: Crack?

Shut the fuck up.; 3/12/12, 2:48 AM
Penny said...: We're trying to learn some math here.; 3/12/12, 2:58 AM
mesquito said...: I’ve previously used the term “socialist antibody” to describe the members of a leftwing protest crowd whose function is apparently to shadow and intimidate people they identify as unsympathetic to their cause. I think the following may also qualify. For the last year or so, Ann Althouse has been reporting on some of the more instructive scenes at the Wisconsin protests - as, for instance, when activist doctors invoked the virtue of “public service” while handing out bogus sick notes to absentee teachers, thereby leaving the taxpayer with a multimillion-dollar bill for work not done. All in the name of “social justice,” obviously. It’s fair to say this attention wasn’t always well-received by our egalitarian betters and resulted in death threats, ‘shadowing’ and a promise to “ruin your career, your sense of safety… and your life.”

http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2012/03/this-is-what-passive-aggression-looks-like.html; 3/12/12, 4:52 AM
edutcher said...: I like the pic - nice "Northwest Passage" vibe.

And, yes, mesquito, that quote is right on the money.; 3/12/12, 5:50 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Wide, straight, and well graded. Looks like it was made from an old, abandoned, railroad bed.

Do you really want to deprive future generations of trails like this with your opposition to high-speed rail?; 3/12/12, 6:08 AM
Medical Book said...: What a road to life.

by

Hindi Sahitya; 3/12/12, 6:20 AM
Rusty said...: That makes no sense what so ever.; 3/12/12, 6:58 AM
Patrick said...: All of a sudden, I feel like listening to some Rush. Thanks, WVRebel; 3/12/12, 7:32 AM
Rusty said...: Wide, straight, and well graded. Looks like it was made from an old, abandoned, railroad bed.

Mmmm. Looks like an old logging road. You can tell it was reforested in the last 20 or so years. All the trees are the same height.

wv y Marty y not Marty; 3/12/12, 7:42 AM
Toad Trend said...: Patrick

I'm with 'ya. Was power washing my expansive deck yesterday and was doing just that. Was sampling newer stuff, namely, from Snakes and Arrows. This one hit me particularly hard:

Now it's come to this
It's like we're back in the Dark Ages
From the Middle East to the Middle West
It's a world of superstition

Now it's come to this
Wide-eyed armies of the faithful
From the Middle East to the Middle West
Pray, and pass the ammunition

So many people think that way
You gotta watch what you say
To them and them, and others too
Who don't seem to see things the way you do

We can only grow the way the wind blows
On a bare and weathered shore
We can only bow to the here and now
In our elemental war
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/r/rush/the_way_the_wind_blows.html ]
We can only grow the way the wind blows
We can only bow to the here and now
Or be broken down blow by blow

Now it's come to this
Hollow speeches of mass deception
From the Middle East to the Middle West
Like crusaders in unholy alliance

Now it's come to this
Like we're back in the Dark Ages
From the Middle East to the Middle West
It's a plague that resists all science

It seems to leave them partly blind
And they leave no child behind
While evil spirits haunt their sleep
While shepherds bless and count their sheep

Like a solitary pine
On a bare wind-blasted shore
We can only grow the way the wind blows

The Way the Wind Blows/Rush.; 3/12/12, 7:48 AM
David said...: Rusty knows his cultivated forests. Logging road for sure.; 3/12/12, 7:50 AM
Patrick said...: Don"Tread:

Rush was pretty big when I was a kid, and I for "Caress of Steel" when I had asked for their "Moving Pictures" for my birthday. The title track starts softly with acoustic guitar, and then BAM jumps in with a very loud power chord progression. I must have jumped three feet off the ground, because I was not expecting it. I still chuckle about that.

"Working Man" was an anthem of sorts when I was working in high school.; 3/12/12, 8:26 AM
KCFleming said...: I was surprised to see pines in Sedona this weekend.

I have been there before, but it is amazingly beautiful.

Less New Age goofiness this time around, I noticed. Lots of crucifixes for sale, whatever that means.

Sunday breakfast made us laugh because they hired a guy to play a Native flute. I cannot explain why we both found it hilarious. For $60 he would take you to a canyon and play the flute. I wanted to offer him $70 to take use to the canyon and not play, but my wife made me hush.

Anyway, far from the shopping, some gorgeous parks with views that were so perfect they seemed fake.

And this chapel was quite pretty, nestled in the rocks, the vision of an architect named Marguerite Brunswig Staude.

And that's the end of my slideshow.; 3/12/12, 8:27 AM
MadisonMan said...: How come there are no leaves that no step had trodden black? I guess there's have to be two roads diverging for that to happen.

That does not look like early March to me.; 3/12/12, 8:32 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: All that talk of blades and saws
Made the elm trees sway and rock.
To cull them is indeed extreme
And an environmental blot.
They brought their crowns together
and in canopy they thought
Until they photosynthesized an idea
And contrived another plot
They would graft baby Maple scions
upon their sturdy stock
and uplift those stature-challenged shrubs
To share in Nature's brightest light
And put an end to Maple's constant bitching.
That is so annoying.; 3/12/12, 8:33 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: There you have it, the chapel explains the crosses.; 3/12/12, 8:45 AM
Ann Althouse said...: This picture was taken on the Fern Dell Trail at Mirror Lake State Park. If you look a the PDF map, you'll see it's pretty far from anything that would have been a railway path.

It's hard to tell from the photograph, but we're walking up a pretty steep incline on a bluff:

"The rock forming Mirror Lake's gorges is sandstone. Geologists call it Late Cambrian, formed about 500 million years ago. Its sand grains are thought to have been deposited by rivers draining into shallow inland seas. The seas retreated and the sand compacted into sandstone."; 3/12/12, 10:14 AM