AMERICAN DIGEST

[BUMPED AND UPDATED] In the Midst of Horror, Something Wonderful: "I had two prayers. He answered both. This is my second prayer."

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:30:10 -0800

Wait for it.

UPDATE: Barbara Garcia, Her Dog, and Life Under the Oklahoma Sky : The New Yorker

Barbara Garcia had been living in her neighborhood in Moore, Oklahoma, for forty-five years before yesterday’s tornado flattened her house. She was interviewed by a TV news crew while standing on top of the rubble of her home. She is covered in dust and has some scratches, but she describes the experience calmly—she took shelter in a bathroom, sitting on the toilet with her dog on her lap. She felt the stool lift up out of the floor. “I rolled around a little bit,” she says, and then found herself lying in the debris. She never lost consciousness, but she lost her little dog. She looks over the pile of wood and metal scrap behind her. “I know he’s in here somewhere.”

Just What Did the Hitler Rants Say?

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:31:14 -0800

Adolf Hitler speech English Subtitles

In those iconic newsreels where Hitler rants in black and white, it's easy to forget that those rants had content.

He was railing against a group of people, labeling them as enemies of the state (and enemies of the people who mattered), mocking them, de-legitimizing them, blaming them for the country's problems, tacitly endorsing any actions taken against them.

Oh yes; it can happen here.

A comment at ‘When Fascism Comes to America . . .’ | National Review Online

Birth of the F4 Moore Twister

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:34:46 -0800

Charles Cook captured the six minutes of the 5-20-13 tornado's chilling beginnings from a mall parking lot on his cell phone camera.

"Incredible video my Dad took of the May 20th tornado FORMING and destroying everything in its path near Newcastle, OK. He was out that way for work today and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was worried it was going to come back at him and was searching for a way to scoot out its way once he was able to gauge how insanely close it was to him. He hung in there, though. Unbelievable." -- From Reddit

Large video after the jump.

At Lindbergh's Grave

Tue, 21 May 2013 02:54:25 -0800

On May 20, 1927, Lindbergh took off in the Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field, near New York City, at 7:52 A.M. He landed at Le Bourget Field, near Paris, on May 21 at 10:21 P.M. Paris time (5:21 P.M. New York time).

"If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."
-- Psalm 139

That long green swell that sears my eyes
As I drowse on this bed of black stones,
Is it the Irish coast rising in the dawn
Beyond the brushed silver of my cowling
Where, throughout the night, I trusted
Not in some desert God's directions,
But like all fools who dreamed my flight
In the calibrated compasses of man?

That rushing sound, is it the crowd at Le Bourget,
Swarming past the barriers and lights
To scavenge my Spirit; to lift me up
Into the air that only heroes breathe?
Or is it the age-old sigh of sea on stones,
Known to those who pace the shingle
And the swirled black sands that wrap
These impossible islands in a shawl of waves?

That painting daubed on the chapel's window --
Not the roselined mandala at Chartres
Where flame in glass misprisoned sings --
But a cruder Savior, bearded, browned, and popular;
An icon obtainable to plain sight, a trim God
Limned flat upon the glass in dull gesso,
And, when light moves behind it, looking down....
Is this the sign in which, at last, we conquer?

Conquer? I'd laugh the laugh of stones
Had I but eyes to see and lips to breathe.
No, I am content with my reduced cathedral
Here above the ocean where man and apes
Together waltzing lie, having done at last
With all horizons, having done at last with sky.

If you would see me now pass by
The small green church where ancient banyans
Bloom with shade and guard
The tower and the bell which you
May toll for you or me, or other souls
Not yet delivered to the stars and sea.

And then, retreating, mark the tree
Whose tendriled branches hold but air,
And shadow both the church and stones
Beneath which wait both apes and men
Who, foolish with their hunger for the air,
Swung branch to branch up all the eons
And, letting go at last, they learned --
Through my night's leap -- to rise.

Sea, stone, tree, ape and Savior:
These now my long companions are.
Better here, I think, in this dank green
Cartoon of Paradise, this slight-of-hand Eden;
Better here beneath the pumice stones
Where strangers drop a wreath a year.

Better in here deep than out there wide --
Hovering over the pillaring waves alone,
Suspended between the old world and the new,
Trusting in man's compass to guide me home;
Descending down the sharp cold blade of dawn.
Better, much better, in here at last to wait
In here where the shawl of the waves below
Enfolds that fire they could never snare.

-- At the Palapala Ho'omau Church, Hana, Maui

Composed and photographs taken on site. Hana, 2003 Lindburgh flew the Atlantic and opened up the skies 86 years ago this week. May 20–21, 1927. An inch of time but all is "changed, changed utterly."

Unsung Great Americans: Vivien Maier

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:26:33 -0800

"Picture this: quite possibly the most important street photographer of the 20th century was a 1950s children's nanny who kept herself to herself and never showed a single one of her photographs to anyone.

Decades later in 2007, a Chicago real estate agent and historical hobbyist, John Maloof purchased a box of never-seen, never-developed film negatives of an unknown "amateur" photographer for $380 at his local auction house.

John began developing his new collection of photographs, some 100,000 negatives in total, that had been abandoned in a storage locker in Chicago before they ended up at the auction house. It became clear these were no ordinary street snaps of 1950s & 60s Chicago and New York and so John embarked on a journey to find out who was behind the photographs and soon discovered her name: Vivien Maier. -- Found at Auction: The Unseen Photographs of a Legend that Never Was

Judge Jeanine Pirro: "So Who's Running the Joint? I'm Convinced My Mom Could Do a Better Job"

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:11:29 -0800

"Why is it that you can mobilize the IRS to go after political enemies but you can't mobilize troops to save American lives in Benghazi?"

Last week eloquently summed up, rolled into a ball, and tossed into the next week which should, I hope, be even more devastating to the current crop of craven cowards in the White House.

Harry Reid said, "They're hyperventilating about Benghazi. President Obama was absolutely right to call this a sideshow. This is about smear politics and nothing else."

Hyperventilating? I'll tell you what Mr. Reid, and no due respect intended here:

There were only two people hyperventilating in Benghazi. They're the ones painted by Al Qaeda-linked lasers - two men on a roof who disobeyed your order to stand down, waited hours for help that never came because you wouldn't give the cross border authority order, and instead, fired up Air Force One for your Las Vegas fundraiser, and went to bed.

So don't give me your holier than thou rhetoric, and your arrogant condescending hogwash that you're going to get rid of all the wrongdoers or throw us a few crumbs like the grainy pictures of terrorists 8 months after an attack. Or give me your "I'm going to fix it" riff. And do us all a favor - explain a few things. Judge Jeanine Blasts Obama Admin @ Fox News Insider

The Commute: Crossing the river in Russia with excavators

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:15:44 -0800

Greatest Pickup Ever: The ICON Dodge Powerwagon D200

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:24:18 -0800

From the genius that is ICON.The speaker has a flat affect but stick with him and the overwhelming nature of what was done with this Powerwagon will engulf you.

Shift It

Fri, 17 May 2013 03:50:04 -0800

More Obama I Say. MORE O!-BA!-MA!

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:24:42 -0800

In the afterglow of the last week I have come to realize that what is deeply wrong with this country is that so far we have neither heard enough nor seen enough of President Obama.

I now think we need to see more. Much more. We need to bask in his warm visage and be lulled with the hum of his valved voice. We need to have a morning message from the President every day on all cable news channel. Indeed, we need to have it broadcast on all TV channels, especially ESPN and other places where citizens dodge their need to know the truth and their duty to look up from their coffee and upon the wonderful latte-tanned visage that is Obama.

We need to see his face with his honeyed message oozing out of his mouth in the lead-in to Good Morning America and Fox and Friends both without fear or favoritism.

Weather Channel too.

We need to have Barack Obama’s message, whatever it might be on whatever day, delivered dripping from his lips to all of us on the front page of whatever newspaper we are still reading online with a video-embed set on autoplay.

We need to have Obama's dulcet tones crooning his soothing message as the lead-in to NPR’s Morning Edition and that thing most considered among All Things Considered.

We need to have Obama's lilting phrases replace the bumper music at the top of Rush Limbaugh’s show.

In short, we cannot have enough of listening to the President tell us what he’s thinking and what the right way to think about what he’s thinking is.

We need to hear his inspiring words and see his craggy and indomitable face every day. We need to look and look again upon that clear eye, square jaw, and firm forehead leaning ever "Forward" and asking for our spare five bucks. We need this every single day.

I am in ernest about this. I will even pay higher taxes to make this so. We need, in the most urgent and important way, to see the wonder that is Barack Obama.... All. The. Time.

I hope that his coming testimony to the Congress, and to the special prosecutor, and to a grateful nation of church ladies in wild hats is only the beginning of this program of all Obama all the time!

This then is my solemn prayer. in the words of that most holy and revered of Presidents, George W. Bush, "LORD, MAKE OBAMA APPEAR IN THE FACE OF ALL. BRING. IT. ON. 'Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die'."

Brand New State. Gonna Treat You Great!: Let's Hear It for Oklahoma

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:54:40 -0800

W.H. Auden: Old People's Home (from Epistle for a Godson, 1972)

Wed, 15 May 2013 05:43:25 -0800

All are limitory, but each has her own
nuance of damage. The elite can dress and decent themselves,
        are ambulant with a single stick, adroit
to read a book all through, or play the slow movements of
        easy sonatas. (Yet, perhaps, their very
carnal freedom is their spirit's bane: intelligent
        of what has happened and why, they are obnoxious
to a glum beyond tears.) Then come those on wheels, the average
        majority, who endure T.V. and, led by
lenient therapists, do community singing, then
        the loners, muttering in limbo, and last
the terminally incompetent, as impeccable,
        improvident, unspeakable as the plants
they parody. (Plants may sweat profusely but never
        sully themselves.) One tie, though, unites them: all
appeared when the world, though much was awry there, was more
        spacious, more comely to look at, its Old Ones
with an audience and secular station. (Then a child,
        in dismay with Mamma, could refuge with Gran
to be revalued and told a story.) As of now,
        we all know what to expect, but their generation
is the first to fade like this, not at home but assigned
        to a numbered frequent ward, stowed out of conscience
as unpopular luggage.
                  As I ride the subway
        to spend half-an-hour with one, I revisage
who she was in the pomp and sumpture of her hey-day,
        when week-end visits were a presumptive joy,
not a good work. Am I cold to wish for a speedy
        painless dormition, pray, as I know she prays,
that God or Nature will abrupt her earthly function?

Obama Is All Wet: The Newspage Genius of Matt Drudge

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:17:12 -0800

The Drudge Report now:

Extra visual, verbal, and historical punning points for "Son of Watergate?"

Why has Matt Drudge never received a Pulitzer? Because a Pulitzer, at this point, would demean this most modern Michelangelo.

Amazing Photos: Baby Hummingbird Nest

Tue, 14 May 2013 01:01:49 -0800

[Click to enlarge]

[Click to enlarge] and, yes, that's a housefly in the foreground.

Just two shots from a massive photo essay on this miracle on a small branch of a small tree next to the parking lot of a golf course in Colorado. Full show RIGHT HERE. Take your time. It's a big (BIG) page and the photos are high-res, but it's worth it. [Thanks to Rodger the Real King of France]

[Reposted from 2011 to go with the Nest Video below]

Robins: 4 Eggs, 4 Weeks

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:50:10 -0800

Robins: 4 Eggs, 4 Weeks from Fred Margulies on Vimeo.