The root cellar.

The house has a root cellar:



I find it ineffably mysterious:



It might seem spooky to you...



... but here, to me, it's very sweet.

IN THE COMMENTS: Simon Kenton wrote:

We had a root cellar of Mormon provenence. The walls were lined with glass jars filled with food canned in the 1920s. Some of it looked much as food looks, some of it was black and powdery. And the whole place had become the Abode of the Spiders. Their webs brushed your face, your hair, and attached suddenly to it, and at the edges of your vision, you were aware of them darting about, wondering if you were ready for paralysis and transmutation into the not-readily-imagined consciousness of Lactrodectus mactans.

One could meditate on the hands and heart that had prepared that food, set it aside and forgotten it, now both dissipated; perhaps that was ineffably mysterious. But not even rose spectacles and emergent love, which we too experienced in our turn in that house, made that place 'very sweet.'

Into the floodway.

Come on...



To the east fork...



It's the floodway...



Now, let's get out of here...

At the Striped Wall With Tulips Low-Angle Café...

... you can talk about me... you can talk about anything...

What's with Althouse?

She's not blogging, not much anyway. She's — what? — in Ohio for Spring Break? Who goes to Ohio for Spring Break.

Well, that picture is from last Tuesday, when I was meeting Nina for some laughing and serious talk at Barrique's Wine Cave on Monroe Street in Madison. Nina memorializes the confabulation at the end of this long post, thusly:

Tuesday – I paid the price for my protracted recline on the ER bed the previous day. I had classes and endless meetings and appointments to get through and it was a tight fit. Luckily the day ended with a glass of wine with my most happy friend. I suppose you don’t remember my suggestion that mental health requires putting in hours with happy people? I did that tonight.

I'm aiming to spill the happiness, my friends, so be happy here.

Mysteries of the Althouse day.

Where I'm blogging from...

... 500 miles from home.

Under the white trees...

The dog has found a sweet morsel of deer:



A liver? A kidney?

UPDATE:

With the last class over at 2:40, I run to my car and head out...

... driving 500 miles, stopping only once...



I arrive at my destination at 11 p.m.

The next morning:



IN THE COMMENTS: HelenParr wrote:

Two lips.
Sensen at he.
Springs break

"Americans Like Big Government: They just don't really know it yet."

That's the line.

And, of course, part of Big Government is to feed us that line. It's part of the scheme of getting us to like it. Sometimes government sounds like a creepy stalker....

Organs the surgeon removed from a 7-year-old girl's body: stomach, pancreas, spleen, liver and large and small intestines.

Surgeon Tomoaki Kato redefines "inoperable."

"Thank you for giving me back Heather... Everyone said, 'She'll end up dying on the table.' He was our last hope..."....

The surgery resembled a multiple-organ transplant, Kato said, except that the young patient served as her own donor and did not need anti-rejection drugs. Her organs were removed and chilled in a preservative at 4 degrees above zero. Those that the cancer hadn't destroyed were replaced in her body.

Kato's biggest fear was that her liver might fail. He asked her father, a volunteer firefighter, to serve as a live donor, if need be. Fortunately, the organ survived, and the call never came.

(Via Jac.)

Speaking of Robin...

"'Rockin' Robin,' even with the little dances [Megan Corkrey] does, I hate to death. She looks like she's having an emotional fear breakdown in the middle of things, I think she forgets some words, the little dances stop looking funny and weird and just look stupid, and her voice goes from weird and intriguing to shrieky and horrible and desperate. That sucks, I was really looking forward to her doing something cool and then she did the dumbest fucking thing she could think of. Oh my goodness it sounds terrible, man. And then at the end she goes, 'Caw! Caw!' like just to let you know she meant it to sound horrible. It's gloriously WTF and almost earns back my respect. What on earth is she thinking? Kara's like, 'Well, I guess that is your personality, which is nice.'"

And yet it was Jasmine that America sent home this week. Jasmine and Jorge, the persons of color, will be dismissed first this year, and Megan — per Paula — "is pretty enough to be safe this week." Anoop too must be dismissed, and soon will have just li'l Lil and all those white people.

Sorry, to play the race card on "American Idol." (Argue with me and I will dig in and stand my ground.)

But Jasmine did suck and so did Jorge and Anoop. Worse than Megan, really, because Megan — beautiful white girl though she is — has found an original and bizarre way to be bad and that's entertaining. (Watch it here.) How astounding that a girl that pretty thinks she needs to find a new way to amuse us. Kudos to Megan!

So: The race problem this season is not caused by America's failure to vote for the nonwhite contestants. It is caused by the judges' fear of an excessively white final 12 and their consequent padding of the final group — expanded to 13 — with persons of color who just plain didn't deserve it.

The subject of Michelle Obama's bare arms is so important...

... that Robin Givhan must hop over into The New Yorker:

They are not outlandishly sinewy Madonnaesque limbs. Obama’s athletic arms are achievable—in between the kids’ soccer practice, the executive suite, and the grocery store. Those arms represent personal time. They are evidence of a forty-five-year-old woman’s refusal to give up every free moment in service to husband, kids, and all the nagging distractions that could have filled her days and left her tuning in to “Oprah,” trying to figure out how she’d lost herself along the way. The arms imply vanity and power: two things that make many women uncomfortable and yet are fundamental to self-confidence.

What articulate arms!

articulate

SYLLABICATION: ar·tic·u·late
PRONUNCIATION: är-tky-lt

ADJECTIVE: 1. Endowed with the power of speech. 2. Composed of distinct, meaningful syllables or words, as human speech. 3. Expressing oneself easily in clear and effective language: an articulate speaker. 4. Characterized by the use of clear, expressive language: an articulate essay. 5. Anatomy Consisting of sections united by joints; jointed.

I meant definition #5.

Bristol Palin will not marry Levi Johnson.

I have no opinion on the subject. Do you?

And the new NYT columnist is: Ross Douthat!

Happy?

Justice David Souter describes the Supreme Court term as "sort of annual intellectual lobotomy."

That slipped out along with some lofty comments about how people need to read more and how he's forced to do his serious reading in the summers between Court terms.

That makes some people, like Tony Mauro, the author of the linked article, wonder about rumors that he may be leaving the Court:

If he thinks of his work on the Court, even sarcastically, as a nine-month-long, brain-evacuating experience, it is easier to see why he would want to leave it behind -- if nothing else, to catch up on his reading.

Others I'm sure would put that more harshly: If you don't appreciate the great work of the Supreme Court, get the hell out.

Me, I would speculate that he's fine with the Supreme Court work and he was just being funny — and effusive about the value of serious literature.

ADDED: On reflection, I think the problem he's talking about is something I experience as a law professor. I love the work, but it requires me to devote most of my reading time to judicial opinions and lawprof articles and books. This kind of reading is useful raw material for doing what one loves to do, but it isn't enriching on a deep enough level.

My main problem with Souter is that he is one of the judges who writes the long tedious opinions that I have to chew my way through. May I suggest that if he wants more of a challenge during the Court's term that he devote himself to writing better sentences? Just on the Strunk and White level, could you please edit the hell out of those damned things?

If you don't like what reading that stuff does to your brain, why do you do what you do to my brain? If the Term for you is a lobotomy, consider that you are also the lobotomist!

"Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes..."

"... who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship."

Camille Paglia wants heads to roll:

Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office and given the scattered, demoralized Republicans a huge boost toward regrouping and resurrection. (Michelle, please use those fabulous toned arms to butt some heads!)

Heads should roll and arms should be used to butt heads. But butting heads is done with 2 heads colliding. If arms are involved, it's not butting. Even if the arms are fabulous and toned, it's not butting. Meanwhile, can you go mano-a-mano with a lamb? Lambs don't have manos. They have those little hooves. Perhaps fabulous hooves, but still. Butt still: Fight on, Camille! We love you... some of us do anyway. Others say Salon can "get Ann Althouse to do the same thing for much less money."

AND: Some day, when I get home after a long, strange conversation, I'll tell you everything about My Dinner with Camille.