This morning at Pope Farm Conservancy.

Details on "Sunflower Days" here.

"Foes of shorts — you may know the type of man who, despite the risk of developing heat rash and a reputation as a crank, opposes the things on principle..."

"... argue that the childishness denoted by their brevity cannot be overcome. The detractors contend that shorts are categorically unattractive on grown men, that even when they look good they seem callow. I need to guess that on some level, a significant subset of shorts-­wearers agree, given the persistence of cargo shorts. The pockets of cargo shorts, though ideally practical for a roofer or a gaffer on the job, make rather less sense as the omnipresent ornaments of weekend-­wear that they are, unless you regard them as a kind of ballast to balance puerility. Those pockets aren’t empty; they’re full of the idea of rugged work. To butch up the look in full, a fellow does not settle for the basic khaki coloring of old colonial campaigns but instead pursues a camouflage print. This is a standard streetwise look — camo cargos, T-shirt, a pair of Nikes bearing the soaring silhouette of Michael Jordan. Not for nothing, ­Jordan’s early ’90s taste in long basketball shorts is credited with steering us away from skimpiness and toward hems that swagger below the kneecaps, swishing like zoot suits."

One paragraph from a NYT Magazine essay by Troy Patterson about men in shorts titled "He’s Got Legs."

"Mr. Trump fired [his top political adviser] Roger Stone last night."

"We have a tremendously successful campaign and Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity. He has had a number of articles about him recently and Mr. Trump wants to keep the focus of the campaign on how to Make America Great Again."

CNN quotes the Donald Trump campaign, then gives us this from Stone, who says he wasn't fired, he quit:

"Unfortunately, the current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights have reached such a high volume that it has distracted attention from your platform and overwhelmed your core message. With this current direction of the candidacy, I no longer can remain involved in your campaign... I care about you as a friend and wish you well. Be assured I will continue to be vocal and active in the national debate to ensure our nation does not again turn to the failed and distrusted Bush/Clinton families."

So "Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity," that's the kick in the ass the campaign wants to give to a man who sought a somewhat graceful exit? Well, then, give it to us Roger. Use your moment in the sun and dish the dirt on Donald.

Or... perhaps one of the better candidates is reaching out for Stone.  There are so many candidates, and perhaps Stone is good enough to feel the demand. I don't remember his name, but I see he's been around a while. Here's a Politico article from just before the debate: "Donald Trump’s debate ‘dirty trickster’/Roger Stone is just one of many behind-the-scenes figures to influence the GOP debate." That does have a whiff of Roger-is-using-the-campaign-for-his-own-personal-publicity about it.

Whether game-changing moments emerge on camera and how they play online will depend on a cast of lesser-known characters who have shaped the rules of the forum, worked to influence what the moderators and debaters say on stage, prepped the candidates and have their finger on the button of the social media conversation.

Stone is perhaps the most important of them. He got his start in big-time politics as a college student on Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President, and he publicly embraces his image as a dirty trickster, including cooperating with a 2008 New Yorker profile by Jeffrey Toobin titled, “the Dirty Trickster.”

In the profile, Trump calls his once and future adviser a “stone-cold loser” and suggests Eliot Spitzer should have sued Stone for a stunt in which the operative allegedly called Spitzer’s aged father, claimed the elder Spitzer was being investigated for loans made to his son’s political campaigns, and threatened him with arrest if he refused to cooperate with an imaginary subpoena. He has a tattoo of Nixon’s face on his back.

ADDED:

"Lena thought NOHO was BORO. Then hypothesized that BO RO might stand for something. Boston Rosewater."

"Lena says it sounds like a sex act. Or when you use Guinness as perfume. 'Splash a little rosewater on your neck.' Me: 'Why would you put Guinness on your neck?' Brayden: 'Have you *been* to Boston?' Lena: 'Shhh. Boston can hear you?' Now she's calling John Mellencamp 'John Menstrual Cramp.'Also Lena is an ex-bartender and is distressed never to have had a Brompton cocktail, even after finding out what's in it (it's not something you'd consume for pleasure ... probably)..."

From Rex Parker's write-up of today's NYT Crossword puzzle, which he's doing in a "Madison Avenue Starbucks that [his] companion Lena called 'the saddest Starbucks ever.'" "NOHO" was the answer for "Big Apple neighborhood," and  "Ingredient in a Brompton cocktail" was the clue for "cocaine."

I was reading that on my iPad but I jumped up to write this on my iMac after I clicked on that link at "it's not something you'd consume for pleasure ... probably. " Oh, my! I did the puzzle last night before conking out and I got "cocaine," which was 2 Down, after seeing some of the Acrosses. It's only just now that I'm learning that a Brompton cocktail is not a recreational drink:

Brompton cocktail... is an elixir... [m]ade from morphine or diacetylmorphine (heroin), cocaine, highly-pure ethyl alcohol (some recipes specify gin), and sometimes with chlorpromazine (Thorazine) to counteract nausea, it was given to terminally-ill individuals (especially cancer patients) to relieve pain and promote sociability near death....

The original idea for an oral mixture of morphine and cocaine helping patients in agony with advanced disease is credited to surgeon Herbert Snow in 1896.

The Brompton cocktail is named after the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, England, where it was invented in the late 1920s for patients with tuberculosis. While its use has been rare in the 21st century, it is not entirely unheard of today.

To promote sociability near death....

At the Sunflower Café...

... you don't have to look at the bright side.

Mystery photo of the day.

It's not a slide. Note the pointed wedge at the bottom. Clue (from a nearby sign):

"It would have been way too uncomfortable to worry about a tampon for 26.2 miles."

"I thought, if there’s one person society won’t fuck with, it’s a marathon runner. If there’s one way to transcend oppression, it’s to run a marathon in whatever way you want. On the marathon course, sexism can be beaten. Where the stigma of a woman’s period is irrelevant, and we can re-write the rules as we choose. Where a woman’s comfort supersedes that of the observer. I ran with blood dripping down my legs for sisters who don’t have access to tampons and sisters who, despite cramping and pain, hide it away and pretend like it doesn’t exist. I ran to say, it does exist, and we overcome it every day. The marathon was radical and absurd and bloody in ways I couldn’t have imagined until the day of the race."

Kudos to Kiran Gandhi.

That happened back in April, but I'm seeing it this morning because of a commenter on the post about Donald Trump going — as I put it — menstrual on Megyn Kelly.

ADDED: A couple commenters recommend a product called "sport tampons," which I'd never heard of, presumably rebranding of the extra-large "super" tampons. I found Playtex Sport Tampons at Amazon. I see that they are super absorbency tampons, which means that they absorb 9-12 grams of fluid. Is that enough to get you through a 26.2-mile run? Whether it is or not, I'm noticing the warning from the manufacturer that you should "Select the minimum absorbency needed to control your menstrual flow in order to reduce the risk of getting TSS." Toxic Shock Syndrome can kill you, and "scientific studies which have concluded that higher absorbency tampons increase the risk of TSS."

Here's the story of a 27-year-old model named Lauren Wasser, who nearly died from TSS and ended up with one leg amputated. She went to bed feeling sick, as if she had the flu and was later discovered "facedown on the bedroom floor with a fever of 107 degrees."

Lauren said that she does not remember being put into a medically induced coma, or friends coming in to pay their last respects. She does remember waking up with 80 pounds of fluids being pumped into her, and black toxins pumping out. Her mother was advised to prepare for Lauren's funeral. 

She's suing, and she's also back to modeling and says: "I'm more beautiful than I've ever been because I've experienced so many things. I can relate to so many different people. It's just made me a better person."

How a fairly normal-looking woman would look styled in the manner of various distinctive fashion/makeup photoshoots.

Nathalie Croquet does a great job with this, not overdoing critique of the fashion and beauty industry. She says "I feel people need a more spiritual approach to life, and good fun. I’m happy to give them that, even if I’m just making fun of myself."

She's French, by the way.

I like that she finds the good and the ridiculous in the different looks. It's clear that some commercial approaches to beauty and fashion can be adapted and used to good effect by a "normal" woman walking around in the real word (Lancome, Voltaire, Eric Bompard, Paule Ka, Givenchy) and some things only work on a model who is posed and lit in a fantasy setting (Etam, Acne Studios). Of course, it's always funny to copy the poses and expressions of models. I feel that I've seen that many times, but this is a nice example of that genre of comedy.

Trump says Megyn Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever."

He went menstrual on her.

"A Michigan lawmaker had an email sent to his Republican supporters falsely claiming he had been caught having sex with a male prostitute..."

"... apparently believing such a smear campaign would help distract attention from an alleged extramarital affair between him and another lawmaker...."

The Detroit News... obtained two recordings secretly made in May by a former aide of state Rep. Todd Courser, a tea party-backed social conservative from Lapeer. In the recordings, Courser asks the aide, Ben Graham, to email Republican activists and operatives from an anonymous account to create "a complete smear campaign" about him....

Young people lack a sense of humor... and it's the professors' fault.

According to Caitlin Flanagan, talking to Bill Maher about her new piece in The Atlantic, "That’s Not Funny!/Today’s college students can’t seem to take a joke."

This is a very old topic really. The only thing that seemed new is the long, inside look at the annual convention of the National Association for Campus Activities, through which many entertainers get hired and which doesn't work as a channel into paid employment for comedians who seem at all politically incorrect. For example, one comedian got laughs with the idea of a "sassy black friend":

But afterward, two white students from an Iowa college shook their heads: no. He was “perpetuating stereotypes,” one of them said, firmly. “We’re a very forward-thinking school,” she told me. “That thing about the ‘sassy black friend’? That wouldn’t work for us.” Many others, apparently, felt the same way: Yee ended up with 18 bookings—a respectable showing, but hardly a reflection of the excitement in the room when he performed.

I don't know why anyone would expect something as bureaucratic as the National Association for Campus Activities to bring anything edgy and transgressive into town.  That doesn't mean students don't know find transgressive things funny, just that they're staying out of trouble. And why court trouble over "sassy black friend" — which is just an old stereotype, eliciting an easy laugh? It's not the Lenny Bruce line of comedy that really challenges people! It's comfortable, careless, and silly.

Would Lenny Bruce seek approval and income through the National Association for Campus Activities? No. He wouldn't even try. And that's not because the students wouldn't find him funny. They would. And so would the professors. But he'd have to find a different path to reach them, and he wouldn't whine about that! He'd want to be rejected by the bureaucratic filters of the National Association for Campus Activities. I think. I don't know. He's dead. I'm just using his rotting corpse in a manner he's in no position to refute.

Flanagan says:

If your goal were simply to bring great comics to a college campus, it would be easily accomplished. You would gather the school’s comedy nerds, give them a budget, and tell them to book the best acts they could afford.

Who's the "you" here? The university administration? That's all so wrong-headed, handing $$$ to students who somehow could be identified as the "comedy nerds" and letting them choose "the best."

If you wanted to bring great comedy to college students, you'd open a comedy club near campus and operate entirely independently and beholden to nobody.

ADDED: Previously on this blog: "Why did Caitlin Flanagan write such a poorly supported article on fraternities and rape?"

And why did the Wall Street Journal publish it? Was there a whole lot more material in the original article, which was then edited down to make Flanagan look utterly ridiculous? 

It begins with the description of one horrible crime. It ends with Flanagan describing her own fear of men. It's lurid and emotional to tell us about one woman's victimization and another woman's feelings, but where's the support for Flanagan's proposition that fraternities should be shut so that women can achieve equality on campus?...

Meade texts from the backyard at dusk just now.

"Why ‘I Am Cait’ is an unwatchable mess."

David Kaufman in The New York Post:

Unlike the conventional Kardashian franchises, “I Am Cait” is delivered as TV with a message: Caitlyn Jenner’s transition is valid, her activism vital and her future very much a work-in-progress...

Valid. 

Gone are the wife, the dad pants and the gaggle of kids, replaced by... [a] boring chief protagonist whose minority status does not a personality make. Indeed, throughout the Kardashian television canon, no character was . . . well . . . duller than Bruce Jenner. He was a good husband, great dad and enviable golf player (and, of course, Olympic deity). But a scintillating on-air presence? Meh — not so much. Bruce worked well as a background presence; Caitlyn, however, struggles to carry a scene.

Ultimately, Jenner suffers from an acute sense of ho-humness that no amount of makeup, surgery or Vanity Fair covers can erase. As Cait, she may now be the most visible member of America’s most-talked-about minority group. But no matter how hard she tries, Cait simply can’t undo Bruce’s decades of boring white-dudeness.

Why not just come out as boring? Boringness is also an orientation. It's valid. It's not much of a TV show, but it's something many people are ashamed of and struggle to hide. Why does Kaufman imagine that a boring man would become interesting by taking on the various outward and inward trappings of womanhood?! Women are quite often boring. Theoretically, perhaps, Jenner was boring because Jenner was hiding Jenner's true self. But I watched enough of "I Am Cait" to form a permanent working assumption that Jenner really is boring. And being a woman, like being a man, is boring.

With her hilltop mansions and forest hideaways and endless SUVs, Cait just can’t cut it as the trans community’s activist-in-chief. Instead of preaching — albeit nobly — about how she and her sisters seek to live, Cait should simply just live. And not as an officially sanctioned trans person, but simply as a person.

A boring person?

Jurors reject the death penalty for James Holmes.

"Only one juror needed to dissent for the sentence to be life in prison."

Prosecutors, emphasizing the human toll and indiscriminate cruelty of opening fire on a happy crowd of moviegoers... argued that toll he exacted was so great, and the indiscriminate rampage so horrible, that death by lethal injection was the only just punishment.

But defense lawyers said it was not hatred or a desire for notoriety that propelled Mr. Holmes to plot and carry out the massacre, but a deepening form of schizophrenia that infected his mind with powerful delusions that killing people somehow increased his “human capital.”...

Would you have voted for the death penalty? I would not.

Would you have voted for the death penalty for Holmes?

Yes.

No.

Can't say without sitting through the trial.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: I've fixed the headline, which originally said "John Holmes," instead of "James Holmes," prompting Laslo Spatula to say "So we expect the death penalty if you have a famously long cock?" And Xmas said: "James! John Holmes has already been hung."

ALSO: Some commenters perceive a flaw in the poll, so here's a second poll, designed to eliminate that flaw:

Would you have voted for the death penalty for Holmes?

Yes.

I am always opposed to the death penalty, so no.

I accept the death penalty when it's justified, but I would vote no.

Can't say without sitting through the trial.

pollcode.com free polls

AND: Poll results:

What happened when Megyn Kelly asked the candidates "if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first."

At last night's debate, the last question (before the closing statements) was about religion, and it was a rather odd question, not something the moderators would have allowed themselves to ask. But Facebook was used to collect questions, and that made it possible to reach predictable topics from a strange angle. So, for religion, Megyn Kelly was able to use: "I want to know if any of them have received a word from God on what they should do and take care of first." She kicked it to Ted Cruz with a snarky "Senator Cruz, start from you. Any word from God?"

Cruz thought fast and said: "Well, I am blessed to receive a word from God every day in receiving the scriptures and reading the scriptures. And God speaks through the Bible." Perfect. But he had a whole minute to talk, so he proceeded to talk about his rough childhood and his consistent conservatism, tying both to religion. The drunken dad "gave his heart to Jesus." And "the scripture tells us, 'you shall know them by their fruit,'" so don't just listen to who says he's conservative. Ted Cruz has the conservative fruit to show you.

Kelly threw it to Governor Kasich. What do you think? Has God told Kasich what to do? Kasich begins his answer: "Well, Megyn, my father was a mailman." Isn't that just the ultimate nonanswer? He goes on to do his rough childhood talking points, then — in a strained effort to get to religion — proclaims "I do believe in miracles." That seems to refer both to his ability to get elected and the potential to fix America. A little more blabber and then back to God: "He wants America to be strong. He wants America to succeed. And he wants America to lead." Then, in a nutty non sequitur: "And nothing is more important to me than my family, my faith, and my friends." What about your country? Your friends come before your country? If you are serious, you're disqualified. But he's not serious. He's blabbering the time away and keeping as far away from the question as he can get. Why not just say I have not received a word from God about my campaign?! Would it kill you to dignify the anointed Facebooker with a straight answer.

And now Kelly, who clearly can't ask all 10 guys this word-from-God question, gives it to Scott Walker, and damned if he doesn't get to a straight answer (with a very concise and very religious preface):

Well, thanks, Megyn. I'm certainly an imperfect man. And it's only by the blood of Jesus Christ that I've been redeemed from my sins. So I know that God doesn't call me to do a specific thing, God hasn't given me a list, a Ten Commandments, if you will, of things to act on the first day. What God calls us to do is follow his will. And ultimately that's what I'm going to try to do. 

Then he shifts to more general material from his usual speech but still sticking to the theme of following God:

And I hope people see it in my state, even in the big challenges I took on when I had over 100,000 protesters in and around our capital, trying to do what I thought was the right thing. It wasn't just how I took on those political battles. It was ultimately how I acted. Not responding in kind. Not lashing out. But just being decent going forward and living my life in a way that would be a testimony to him and our faith.

Nicely done, I think. Sincerely religious, complete with "the blood of Jesus Christ," but manifested in public life in ways that are not noticeably different from being a kind, decent person in a way that works for people of any religion or no religion.

Only 2 more candidates are going to get the religion question, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson. Rubio not only avoids the specific question. He goes for a joke:

I think God has blessed us. He has blessed the Republican Party with some very good candidates. The Democrats can't even find one.

He continues with the "blessings" approach:

And I believe God has blessed our country. This country has been extraordinarily blessed. And we have honored that blessing. And that's why God has continued to bless us.

Kelly had woven a question about veterans into the question for Rubio, and with Ben Carson, she changes the question entirely. It's no longer whether God has given you a specific message. It's "a question to you about God and his role, but also... what, if anything, you can do -- you would do as the next president to help heal [the racial] divide?" Carson doesn't talk about religion at all. He goes for science. He says that he doesn't talk about race much "because I'm a neurosurgeon."

[W]hen I take someone to the operating room, I'm actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn't make them who they are. The hair doesn't make them who they are. And it's time for us to move beyond that...

Perhaps someone else on the stage last night would have said that he'd received word from God. Jeb Bush? Chris Christie? Rand Paul? Mike Huckabee? Donald Trump? Who do you think seems most likely to believe God's given him the go ahead? Trump? It's funny to say Trump, but you know, Trump is a Presbyterian:

People are so shocked when they find out I am Protestant. I am Presbyterian. And I go to church and I love God and I love my church"...

"I am not sure I have [ever asked God for forgiveness]. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so.... I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't."

He takes Communion:

"When I drink my little wine—which is about the only wine I drink—and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness, and I do that as often as possible because I feel cleansed.... I think in terms of 'let's go on and let's make it right.'"

Have my little cracker!

ADDED: Interestingly, even as Carson avoided religion when asked about religion, he dragged in religion when the subject was taxes:

"What I agree with is that we need a significantly changed taxation system. And the one that I've advocated is based on tithing, because I think God is a pretty fair guy. And he said, you know, if you give me a tithe, it doesn't matter how much you make. If you've had a bumper crop, you don't owe me triple tithes. And if you've had no crops at all, you don't owe me no tithes. So there must be something inherently fair about that...."

Basing tax policy on the Bible?! Is everything in the Bible presumptively fair? If your answer isn't no, then you'll have a hell of a time getting elected. And spare me the ludicrous folksiness of "God is a pretty fair guy." The man is a neurosurgeon and an elite academic. But he worked with sick children and maybe that's how we're being talked to, like children.

"Teen couple get hit by lightning - but survive because they were holding hands."

"Dr Stefan Reynoso says that their hand-holding helped 'diffuse the electrical current' which entered through Dylan's head and then exited through Lexie's foot."