Happy Hogmanay

When I was a kid we used to celebrate Hogmanay on New Year's Eve because our closest neighbors and dearest friends, Tom and Jean Gage, were Scottish. So, throughout my childhood, New Year's Eve meant singing Robert Burns' poem "Auld Lang Syne" and waiting for a tall dark stranger to be the first person to cross the threshold at midnight carrying a lump of coal, a piece of shortbread, some coins, salt and whisky. My dad and the other neighborhood dads would take turns disguising themselves each year to play the part. I had no idea what it was all about but it was magical and mysterious to us kids.

When I was 19, my dad died on New Year's Eve. The following year Tom's wife, Jean, died. Tom and my mother had always been good friends and no one was surprised when they announced the next year that they were going to get married. At that time I felt that, since my mother was now going to be taken care of, I could finally leave South Africa before I was put in jail again.

(In those days, anyone who criticized apartheid was called a communist and Kafirboetie - which is Afrikaans for nigger-lover - and was jailed. Too many anti-apartheid activists "fell out of windows while in custody." I had also started to dislike the real communists in the anti-apartheid movement and did not feel like dying for their Marxist dystopia.)

So, with my mom happily married to Tom, I moved to Scotland to stay with my friend, Keith McGibbon, in Dumfries, the birthplace and stomping ground of the poet Robert Burns. Keith and I used to drive up to Edinburgh every weekend. It was here that I celebrated my first real Scottish Hogmanay pub-crawling with Keith and his drunken sailor friends around the city and watching the fireworks over the Castle at midnight.

Keith, like most Scotsmen, had hollow legs and was able to drink twice as many Scotch whisky with beer chasers as I could. I tried to keep up but I started suffering from hangovers for the first time in my life. One night we were went dancing at some disco and the next morning I woke up to find myself lying on a sofa in a strange house. I had no idea how I got there until a young lady came in to ask me if I wanted to go to Mass with her.

Apparently I had been dancing with her when I had passed out on the dance floor and she had taken me home. So off to Mass I went with the young lady and her parents and siblings. I didn't go back to being a church-going Catholic again but I did stop drinking for the next 15 years. I decided to get away from Keith and his drunken sailor friends and moved to London.

I don't have one drop of Scottish blood in me but seem to draw Scottish people to me. In London I met another young Scottish lady who was a ballet dancer. She was not only beautiful but also had the typical wicked Scots sense of humor, heavy with sarcasm. We married and, when she got pregnant, we decided to move to Scotland to be closer to her mother in Glasgow where our son was born.

Where was I? Oh, yes - Hogmanay. Only now, as I am writing this, did I realize that I don't have a clue what it means so I'm going to Google it and see what I find.

It seems that it was an old winter solstice tradition brought to Scotland by the Vikings. The Scots started using Hogmanay as an excuse for a party after Christmas was banned in Scotland by the Presbyterians for 400 years until 1950 because Christmas was regarded as a "Popish" holiday.

To ensure good luck for the house, the first person to cross the threshold should be dark male. This may be because, in the Viking days when blond strangers arrived on your doorstep, it meant trouble. The lump of coal, piece of shortbread, salt, money and whisky are obvious symbols of prosperity.

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld lang syne
For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o kindness yet, for auld lang syne."

Some pics of the Hogmanay fireworks over Edinburgh Castle.

Some pictures of my sister's visit

On Christmas Eve, the four of us took a trip to see the Golden and Silver Falls. The drive up to the Falls is hair-raising. They are only about 20 miles from where we live but it took us nearly an hour to get there. The road winds around on a narrow ledge between the steep mountain cliff on one side and the deep river ravine on the other. But seeing the Falls was ample reward for the extra gray hairs that I got from the drive.

The waterfalls are about a mile apart. Both falls are over 200 feet high. Silver Falls is called that because it cascades over grey granite. Golden Falls has a backdrop of golden granite. They are not as tall as the falls in Yosemite but are just as spectacular falling from the top of the mountain.

We took so many pics of the Silver Falls that we ran out of memory in the camera and only got a few decent pic of the Golden Falls.

One: Chuck, Maryann and Andy at the beginning of the hike to the falls.















Two: Silver Falls















Three: Me and my little sister at the Silver Falls















Four: Me, Maryann and Andy at the Golden Falls















Five: Maryann at the Golden falls















On Christmas morning, I took Maryann hiking to our north creek to show her how we pump water from it to irrigate the fruit trees in the dry summers. Our little "waterfall" isn't very big but it is flows all year round and provides water when our well runs dry.

Six: Little sis and me down at the creek















Seven: The trail through the forest down to the creek. Maryann is holding an inedible winterberry bush. The other bushes are black huckleberries and salalberries.















Eight: Maryann fell in love with my truck and was itching to drive it but did not have an international license.















Nine: She was a bit scared of the chickens - especially Cecil Rhodes, my huge and fierce Rhode Island Red rooster but I did get her to hold Tannie Tarentaal (Afrikaans for Auntie Guinea-fowl) my bantam guinea-hen.

Mugabe, mambas and malaria

I got up at four am this morning to drive my sister to the nearest airport where she caught the 6.00 am flight to Portland in a little two prop plane. From there she flies to Atlanta, then Paris and arrives in Johannesburg on Sunday.

[A quick word about airline security: We had to be at our little local aiport 90 minutes early to go through security. Okay, it's nice to know that our planes are secure but, as I watched the TSA folks frisking old ladies, I couldn't help thinking that it was a waste of time and money. There were almost as many security agents as passengers. There were about a dozen agents, many of whom I know - one is a tenant of mine. The twenty or so passengers were mostly business people commuting to Portland. There were five or six holiday travellers like my sister and a young couple with a baby and another young couple laden down with parcels still wrapped in Christmas paper.

All passengers had to remove their shoes and coats and pass through metal detectors. Then they were waved with some sort of electronic wand and frisked. I estimate that the whole operation costs about a half a million dollars a year just in salaries. How many millions do the detection devices cost? I would prefer that that money be spent on large international airports frisking obvious potential terrorists not making old ladies take off their shoes while being patted down like street thugs. The Israelis use racial profiling but they don't rely on it alone. They also use psychological profiling. Why can't we copy the Israelis? Oh, right - the ACLU.]

Thanks for all the comments on my post below about the new gun control laws in South Africa. Yes, they are bad - almost as bad as Africa's other dangers - Mugabe, mambas and malaria.

When I decided to leave San Francisco nearly three years ago, I did consider returning to South Africa. Coming from a farming family, I have always wanted to return to the land. I researched acreage in every state in the USA and also Australia and New Zealand because the currency exchange rates were so good that I would have been a multi-millionaire in Oz or NZ. South Africa at first seemed attractive because the exchange rate was even better than Oz or NZ - eleven Rands to the dollar. I could have bought hundreds of acres of prime vineyards in Franschhoek (where my ancestors first settled over three hundred years ago.)

There was one farm in the Cape with 140 acres of mature wine grapes, horse pastures, a dairy herd and a river full of trout. The farmhouse was an eighteenth century building in Cape Dutch style with white gables and thatched roofs like those in the pictures below. The price tag? One million Rands or less than $100,000. (I'm sure you can see from the beauty of the Cape wine-country why I considered returning to my roots.)

Well, Andy (a farm boy from Texas and used to adventure in the Navy) and I, being impulsive guys, were ready to pack our bags but Chuck (the sober New Englander and the most level-headed musketeer in our family) dug in his heels and said no! Chuck had been to South Africa with me in 1983 and, and unlike Andy, knew what to expect. He kept insisting that he would not move to South Africa because of the "three Ms" - Mugabe, mambas and malaria. Chuck won the battle.

Mugabe: The communists in the South African government are still agitating for more land to be confiscated from white farmers as has happened in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. But Mugabe does not give the farms to the peasants as promised and instead gives the stolen farms to his family and friends. As a result, Zimbabwe is now facing a terrible famine. Hundreds of thousands are expected to die of starvation next year and the communists in South Africa are threatening to do the same.

Mambas: These snakes are scary. I used to catch and keep snakes in my teens and was bitten a couple of times by night-adders and other venomous snakes. I once had a pet night-adder that coiled itself around my waist and went with me to school everyday hidden under my shirt. I even caught a deadly poisonous puff-adder once eventhough I was terrified of them because they are so aggressive.

I also caught and kept six boomslange which have the most deadly poison and no anti-serum. But boomslange are very shy and timid and their fangs are at the back of their mouths so they have to bite and then move their mouths forward in a chewing motion before their fangs can pierce your skin. They seldom bite but, if they do, you pull them off quickly before they can get their fangs into you.

The one snake which I would never even approach let alone catch and keep was the mamba. Their venom is deadly and very fast acting but the worst trait of the mamba is that they are territorial snakes and guard their territory fiercely. They have been know to actually chase and kill people who wandered too close to the holes in the ground where they live.

Malaria: The Afrikaner government eliminated malaria nearly 60 years ago with DDT and kept it at bay with regular sprayings of other pesticides. The new government is so corrupt and inefficient that they have neglected spraying and as a result the malaria-bearing mosquitoes have returned with a vengeance and South African once again has a malaria problem. If you have ever seen anyone suffering from malaria ague, you will know that it is one of the most horrible diseases and the ague can return any number of times for the rest of your life until it eventually kills you.

But, the real clincher for me in deciding against returning to South Africa was when the new government started talking about gun-control. There is no way that you can be a farmer in Africa without guns. Even before the new gun control laws which were recently enacted, life on a farm in South Africa was dangerous, not only because of the wild animals but because of marauding gangs invading white-owned farms, killing entire families and taking over the farm. Since the new government has been in control, nearly two thousand white farmers have been murdered.

So here I am on my little farm in Oregon. I don't have a beautiful Cape Dutch winery - just a little old ranch house. Yes, there are a few dangerous animals like mountain lions and bears but at least I can legally keep guns for protection and sofar the worst run-in with the local wildlife has been when the two border collies were dumb enough to attack a porcupine and got snouts full of quills.

Merry Christmas

Christmas Poem

by G.K.Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Two Nativity scenes painted by:

One: CORREGGIO (b. ca. 1490, Correggio, d. 1534, Correggio)

Two: PIERO della FRANCESCA (b. 1416, Borgo San Sepolcro, d. 1492, Borgo San Sepolcro)

The South African Meerkat

Suricata suricatta is the South African meerkat which is a member of the mongoose family. They live in the semi-desert areas of the Karoo and Kalahari. They differ from other mongooses in that they live in large colonies made up of many families. They eat mostly insects, scorpions, lizards and snakes. They look rather comical when they stand up on their hind legs.

Sunday pictures and poem

Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity

by John Milton (1608–1674)

IT was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav'n-born-childe,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff't her gawdy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour.

Only with speeches fair
She woo's the gentle Air
To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinfull blame,
The Saintly Vail of Maiden white to throw,
Confounded, that her Makers eyes
Should look so neer upon her foul deformities.

But he her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyd Peace,
She crown'd with Olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphear
His ready Harbinger,
With Turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing,
And waving wide her mirtle wand,
She strikes a universall Peace through Sea and Land.

No War, or Battails sound
Was heard the World around,
The idle spear and shield were high up hung;
The hookèd Chariot stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood,
The Trumpet spake not to the armèd throng,
And Kings sate still with awfull eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

But peacefull was the night
Wherin the Prince of light
His raign of peace upon the earth began:
The Windes with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmeèd wave.

The Stars with deep amaze
Stand fixt in stedfast gaze,
Bending one way their pretious influence,
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence;
But in their glimmering Orbs did glow,
Untill their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The Sun himself with-held his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferiour flame,
The new enlightn'd world no more should need;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Then his bright Throne, or burning Axletree could bear.

The Shepherds on the Lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sate simply chatting in a rustick row;
Full little thought they than,
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly com to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or els their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busie keep.

When such musick sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet,
As never was by mortall finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringèd noise,
As all their souls in blisfull rapture took
The Air such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echo's still prolongs each heav'nly close.

Nature that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia's seat, the Airy region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was don,
And that her raign had here its last fulfilling;
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heav'n and Earth in happier union.

At last surrounds their sight
A Globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shame-fac't night array'd,
The helmèd Cherubim
And sworded Seraphim,
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes to Heav'ns new-born Heir.

Such musick (as 'tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the sons of morning sung,
While the Creator Great
His constellations set,
And the well-ballanc't world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltring waves their oozy channel keep.

Ring out ye Crystall sphears,
Once bless our human ears,
(If ye have power to touch our senses so)
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the Base of Heav'ns deep Organ blow
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to th'Angelike symphony.

For if such holy Song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold,
And speckl'd vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould,
And Hell it self will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Th'enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,
And Mercy set between,
Thron'd in Celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,
And Heav'n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the Gates of her high Palace Hall.

But wisest Fate sayes no,
This must not yet be so,
The Babe lies yet in smiling Infancy,
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss;
So both himself and us to glorifie:
Yet first to those ychain'd in sleep,
The wakefull trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

With such a horrid clang
As on mount Sinai rang
While the red fire, and smouldring clouds out brake:
The agèd Earth agast
With terrour of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the center shake;
When at the worlds last session,
The dreadfull Judge in middle Air shall spread his throne.

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
Th'old Dragon under ground
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurpèd sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swindges the scaly Horrour of his foulded tail.

The Oracles are dumm,
No voice or hideous humm
Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathèd spell,
Inspire's the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell.

The lonely mountains o're,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament;
From haunted spring, and dale
Edg'd with poplar pale,
The parting Genius is with sighing sent,
With flowre-inwov'n tresses torn
The Nimphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

In consecrated Earth,
And on the holy Hearth,
The Lars, and Lemures moan with midnight plaint,
In Urns, and Altars round,
A drear, and dying sound
Affrights the Flamins at their service quaint;
And the chill Marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat

Peor, and Baalim,
Forsake their Temples dim,
With that twise-batter'd god of Palestine,
And moonèd Ashtaroth,
Heav'ns Queen and Mother both,
Now sits not girt with Tapers holy shine,
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn,
In vain the Tyrian Maids their wounded Thamuz mourn.

And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dred,
His burning Idol all of blackest hue,
In vain with Cymbals ring,
They call the grisly king,
In dismall dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis hast.

Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian Grove, or Green,
Trampling the unshowr'd Grasse with lowings loud:
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest,
Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud,
In vain with Timbrel'd Anthems dark
The sable-stolèd Sorcerers bear his worshipt Ark.

He feels from Juda's Land
The dredded Infants hand,
The rayes of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside,
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe to shew his Godhead true,
Can in his swadling bands controul the damnèd crew.

So when the Sun in bed,
Curtain'd with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an Orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale,
Troop to th'infernall jail,
Each fetter'd Ghost slips to his severall grave,
And the yellow-skirted Fayes,
Fly after the Night-steeds, leaving their Moon-lov'd maze.

But see the Virgin blest,
Hath laid her Babe to rest.
Time is our tedious Song should here have ending,
Heav'ns youngest teemèd Star,
Hath fixt her polisht Car,
Her sleeping Lord with Handmaid Lamp attending:
And all about the Courtly Stable,
Bright-harnest Angels sit in order serviceable.

Pic one: Giotto's Nativity



















Pic two: Dietes (it used to be called Moraea) is a South African iris, known as fortnight lily in South Africa because it supposedly blooms every two weeks. Actually it blooms at odd times from spring through fall. It is not deciduous but it is hardy to about 18 degrees so can withstand Oregon frosts fairly well. It is also drought tolerant but blooms best with some water in summer.

Pic three: close up of white and lilac dietes.

Pic four: a yellow and brown dietes.

Tagged by the Prof

Right Wing Prof has tagged me and I'm game to play. I’m supposed to list five weird things about myself but I've got so many weird things about me I don't know where to start.

Prof listed that one of his "weirdities" was eating sandwiches from the edge into the center and making sure everything on the sandwich is perfectly evenly spread. Well, I thought that was normal. Is there any other way to eat it? Also, I can't stand to watch anyone else spreading butter or mayonnaise because they seldom spread it right to the edge. So, that can't be weird since at least one other person does it too.

Prof also listed being a packrat as weird. Excuse me, us packrats are just being practical. It always costs more to buy it later. Even if you're not using it now, you never know when you'll need it. Trouble is, it's finally caught up with me. I moved here two years ago and I still have not unpacked half of what I brought. There are boxes everywhere but I have lots of empty shelves and closets.

(Does being queer and being with the same two buddies for 24 and 13 years respectively count? Okay, never mind.)

The fact is that I can't think of any weirdities. I'm the sanest person I know so I had to consult Chuck and Andy and they came up with a few. Here goes:

1. Tea. Chuck and Andy think I'm nuts to drink hot tea on a hot day but it's much more cooling than iced-tea (which is what my mom used to call cockroach pee.) They don't realize that hot tea is what helped the British to conquer India and the rest of their tropical Empire. They also both think I'm loony to drink ten cups of tea a day and are embarassed when I stir the sugar in my tea loudly by clanging the spoon on the sides of the cup especially in restaurants when waiters rush over thinking that I've summoned them only to find that I was simply stirring my tea.

2. Windows. They both think I'm crazy to leave windows open in winter. Well, even my visiting sister agrees. They all whine and squeal that I'm letting all the heat out when I open windows when the central heating is on or wood stove is burning. Sorry, I need fresh air. I sleep with all three of my bedroom windows wide open even when the outside temperature is below zero. Needless to say, no one will sleep with me.

3. Very loud voice. Everyone I know has been embarassed at one time or another because my strongly-accented South African voice carries - i.e. I will remark in what I think is a sotto voce that the food in a restaurant stinks and is not much better than what I have in my compost heap on the farm. What's the big deal? I'm not going to come back to that restaurant and I figure the people at the table next to us will get a heads up before they order over-priced pretentious pig-swill.

4. Dogs and other non-humans. Chuck and Andy have gotten used to the fact that I call all animals "dogs" but it disconcerts my sister (who is new to it) when I refer to the chickens as "dogs." My only excuse is that the only non-human creatures I had before I had a farm were dogs. Okay, I know it's because I am lazy and can't always remember what animal I'm talking about and I think of all non-humans as "dogs." Trouble is it backfires because I then I have to spend more time explaining which "dogs" I'm referring to such as "you know the egg-laying dogs' (chickens) or "the milking dogs" (goats.)

5. It grosses everyone out that I kiss all my "dogs" (yep, even the chickens but not THAT way) and talk baby-talk to them. Guess what? Who do the "dogs" listen to and obey immediately?

Bonus weirdity (and the only one I'm really ashamed of) is that I talk to myself while driving and cuss out other drivers eventhough they can't hear me.

I'm going to tag:

Suzie of Assorted Babble
Little Miss Chatterbox
Three Score and Ten or More
Patty the Redneck Granny
Atessa the Epiphanic Allison

PS I wanted to tag Fred the Redneck Texan but he's been tagged recently by someone else.

PPS Little Miss Chatterbox just reminded me that she was tagged this week already. Oops! So I'm going to replace her with Beth who was the first person to tag me months ago. Revenge is sweet, Beth.

Roy Campbell - unafraid of Virginia Woolf

[I'll sneak this in while no one's looking because it's probably boring to anyone but me.]

About twenty years ago I ran out of anything of any value to me to read. I read everything that I wanted to by the time I was forty - from Plato to the Bible; from Shakespeare to "Shane" with some odd stops in between like translations from French, Russian and Sanskrit literature. After that I could find not "literature" that I found engrossing so started reading only non-fiction like tax-tables, legal forms, the Wall Street Journal, history, biographies and autobiographies.

This past year I was rewarded with quite a few engrossing books. I recently finished reading the South African poet Roy Campbell's autobiography and am now reading a biography of Campbell by Joseph Pearce, "Unafraid of Virginia Woolf."

The Bloomsbury types, like Virginia Woolf, detested Campbell because he sided with Franco and the Royalists in the Spanish Civil War. They also detested J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Hilaire Belloc and other Catholic writers who also sided with Franco only because Franco was against communism and the destruction of the Catholic church.

Tolkien introduced Campbell to C.S. Lewis who did not like Roy Campbell at first because the South African poet had taken sides against the "heroic Communist revolutionaries" during the Spanish civil war - but Lewis was an atheist at the time. After Lewis had become a Christian he warmed up to Campbell. Tolkien probably liked Campbell because they were both Catholics and had both been born in South Africa.

The "Bloomsberries" (as Campbell described the Woolf crowd) and the British Left in general rooted for the "heroic Communist revolutionaries" and called the South African poet a "Fascist." The Bloomsberries, of course, were pie in the academic sky Marxisants who believed in "Fabianism" - the gradual, incremental introduction of a Rousseauistic Utopia and the usual Counter Enlightenment Marxist "to each according to his needs" commie dilletante nonsense.

Campbell saw the Bloomsbury crowd as a mixture of depraved libertine "useful idiots" and manipulative and amoral control-freaks who were only interested in wealth, fame and wielding power over the lumpen proletariat (i.e. you and me) whom they purportedly want to "uplift" - yeah right, uplift on the end of a forklift-truck tossing your body into a mass grave like Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

Campbell later told his daughter, Anna, about his final break with the Bloomsberries when he and Virginia Woolf were both guests at Vita Sackville-West's house, "Long Barn" (which he describes as "something between a psychiatry clinic and a brothel.") This took place a few months before Woolf killed herself. Anna recalls:

What put the finishing touches to [my father's] malaise at Long Barn was coming across Virginia Woolf, crawling about under the bushes. She raised her face so ravaged by madness that he fled....

Yep, that's the face of madness all right. It's called pie-in-the-skyness and it's what happens to people who tell lies and wish to manipulate others - like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky nowadays.

I love Roy Campbell not only for his poetry (which was excellent - T.S. Elliott thought that Campbell's poetry was better than his own) but because I can relate to his life so well. Like him, I was born in Durban and I matriculated from the same school as he did. He condemned apartheid in the 1920s even before there was a name for it and he hated communism and pretentious Marxisant dilletantes.

Virginia Woolf and the other Bloomsberries of course were playing the same game back in 1930s as the current commies do now - describing anyone who attacked their communist rubbish as "Fascist." Campbell was no Fascist but he did loathe communism.

Laurence Durrell came to Roy Campbell's defense over the allegations of the poet's "Fascism" thus:

He made enemies. He was held up as a Fascist by the poets of the Left but since they had already decreed that Plato was a Fascist, this too was something of a compliment. I once heard this wicked Fascist calmly recall that he had to leave South Africa because of the hostility he had aroused by seriously defending the cause of the Blacks in his writings....

When Campbell read Hitler's Mein Kampf, he declared: "Good gracious, this man won't do - he's a teetotalitarian vegetarian!"

The liberal/socialist left at the beginning of the 20th century were on the rise and ended up controlling the British and American political culture (as well as the Frogs and Fritzes European culture) throughout the latter half of the 20th century and to the present time. (But they're finally on the defensive yet we still may lose. Freedom-lovers will always have to be be vigilant.)

Campbell and Tolkien saw the creeping liberal/commie danger and were in the fore-front of the fight against the rising socialist tide. What they had in common also was their Catholicism. It seemed that the only voices of opposition to the growing commie culture in Britain at that time were conservative Catholics like Tolkien, Campbell, Waugh, Chesterton, Belloc etc. They were horrified at the British populace's growing passivity and dependence upon the welfare state.

T.S Elliot (the American poet who immigrated to England) and C.S. Lewis being Anglican Protestants (Episcopalians) were kind of in the middle. They didn't really trust the Catholics but they also hated the Commies. Tolkien convinced Lewis that he was deluded to be an atheist but it was Roy Campbell who finally won over C.S. Lewis in the battle against Fabianism/communism.

Campbell wrote reams of poetry - most of it pretty vicious anti-communist political satire (but some of it is not - it's primitive and passionate and African.) He realized even back in the 1930s that the worst commies - worse than all the nazis, bureaucrats, freedom-hating nosy-parking busy-bodies put together - were elitist leftie "academic" dilletantes playing with "intellectual ideas."

Whether the chosen agent of destruction
Be plague or famine, earthquake or eruption,
Conquistadores, like Cortes or Pizarro,
Or Commissar, more bigoted and narrow,
Or, worse than all, a snowy-haired professor,
Of a neat violin the fond possessor,
To fiddle when it all goes up in flames,
The crime is one: the sentence is the same!

I can recommend any books by or about Campbell to anyone who enjoys reading about a man who grew up with Zulus in Africa but became one of England's greatest poets with stops on the way during his youth as a bullfighter and anti-communist in Spain and later enlisting in Britain to fight against Hitler.

Campbell had to go to boot-camp when he was over forty in order to get into the army and by that time he was physcially pretty beat up already. But he ended up beng an NCO and only got discharged after he had contracted malaria in East Africa where he was a spy for the Allies.

No wonder he hated the "soft" life that the commies were promising to the masses.

Sunday pictures and poem

A Christmas Carol

By Josiah Gilbert Holland

There’s a song in the air!
There’s a star in the sky!
There's a mother’s deep prayer
And a baby’s low cry!
And the star rains its fire while the Beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a king.

There’s a tumult of joy
O’er the wonderful birth,
For the virgin’s sweet boy
Is the Lord of the earth.
Ay! the star rains its fire and the Beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a king.

In the light of that star
Lie the ages impearled;
And that song from afar
Has swept over the world.
Every hearth is aflame, and the Beautiful sing
In the homes of the nations that Jesus is King.

We rejoice in the light,
And we echo the song
That comes down through the night
From the heavenly throng.
Ay! we shout to the lovely evangel they bring,
And we greet in his cradle our Saviour and King.

Pics: Gerbera jamesonii is known as Transvaal daisy in Britain and Barberton daisy in South Africa where they originate from and grow in the wild. They are not easy to grow because they will rot if dirt gets in their leaf-crowns. In nature, they are bright orange but hybrids have been developed ranging all the way from white and creamy pale yellow to pink and crimson. (One-quarter of all garden flowers originated in South Africa.)

The pursuit of happiness

I've got lots of horrible memories and, yes, I used to dwell on them when I was younger. Well, when you're young and dumb, it's seems like fun to pick at your scabs. Okay, maybe not for everyone - but, I confess, I used to do that.

I was just sitting on the front verandah last night smoking an after dinner cigar, sipping a glass of cognac, (the Frogs do some things well - like brandy) looking at the stars and listening to the nocturnal creatures rustling in the forest around me; when I realized that it's been a long time since I've dwelled on the bad things that have happened in my life. Thank God!

It sort of happened subconsciously as I mellowed with age - ignoring the bad times and recalling the good times instead. The bad memories will always be there to remind us not to make the same mistakes twice but the good times need to be unwrapped carefully and savored and enjoyed.

I can't remember the exact time and place when I finally realized that gratitude was the secret ingredient in the recipe for happiness; that more blessings came every time I just slowed down a bit, took a deep breath and counted the blessings that I already had.

This is not some sort of esoteric nonsense. It's practical common sense. Money can't buy love or health or happiness but gratitude and joy can sure draw prosperity and fulfillment towards you. The best thing that you can do for anyone else is to be grateful and cheerful. Wealth doesn't make you happy but happiness sure helps you to enjoy wealth. I've known plenty of miserable rich people.

When I count my blessings every night before I go to sleep, I always start with Chuck and Andy who have been with me for 24 and 13 years respectively and are my most trusted allies and my family. Everyone needs trustworthy allies and a loyal family.

After that I thank God for:

my next breath - yep, I still need air
my well and creeks - definitely need water
food - boy, I love good food
beauty, joy and music - almost as necessary as food
my good dogs, cute cats and canaries that sing like angels
my hens who lay fresh eggs everyday
my kind and loving neighbors
my business, customers and employees
my house - shelter from the storm
my 4-wheel drive truck which is better than a team of oxen
my septic tank

The list goes on so long that I usually fall sleep before I finish. It works better than counting sheep. If you did not know the trick of counting your blessings, try it - you'll like it. I guarantee it.

I look at these electron-microscope pics (below) of real snowflakes and wonder how anyone can be an atheist. Atheists and Darwinists think that they can answer all the important questions about life, the universe and everything - how, what, when, where. But they can't answer the most important question - why?

Why was this universe created? If it's just a "Big Accident" and evolution is the answer, then why isn't this world just some plain old ugly thing that churns out living creatures like a factory? Why is it so beautiful? Why do human beings love beauty? Why are snowflakes so beautiful? Why was I created? Simple - to be happy and enjoy all this beauty and sing the praises of my Creator with a heart filled with gratitude.

PS A while back Andy told me about this article by Dennis Prager but I forgot to read it. Yesterday Chuck posted a link to it on the blog he recently started. It's definitely worth reading this article:

Happy people make the world better by Dennis Prager.

When you think about a Muslim suicide terrorist, is "happy" the first word you think of to describe him?

When you think about Nazis or Communists or Klansmen or child molesters, do you immediately think, "Now there are some happy people"?

Of course not.

It only takes a moment's thought to realize that while most unhappy people don't engage in evil, most evil is done by unhappy people. This is true on both the macro and the micro levels. We all know how much more likely we are to lash out at others when we are unhappy and how much we desire to make others feel good when we feel happy.

Given this association of evil with unhappy people, it is quite remarkable how little attention is paid to happiness as a moral, rather than only a personal psychological issue. Too often the pursuit of happiness (not the pursuit of fun or excitement) is regarded as a selfish pursuit, when in fact it is one of the best things a person can do for everyone in his life and for the world at large. The Founders of America were brilliant in many ways, not more so than by enshrining that pursuit alongside the pursuit of life and liberty.

The rest of the article is here.

Real Christmas trees

This may be last post I get to do before the New Year as my sister is just about to arrive and spend the next three weeks here.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas.

Oregon produces nearly half of all the live Christmas trees sold in the USA. Most Christmas trees are douglas firs.

Top pic: A local douglas fir tree farm

Middle pic: our tallest douglas fir (which has a lot more uses than just Christmas trees - it's our major lumber tree.)

Bottom pic: old logging photo (you don't get too many douglas firs growing this big anymore.)

Conversation with a Democrat

Before 9/11, when I still lived in San Francisco, I pretty much tolerated Democrats but, after 9/11 they started to sound more and more like Fifth Columnists and I ended up detesting all Democrats except my Rep in Congress, Tom Lantos, who, like Joe Lierbeman, is a pro-WOT Jew. Lantos was in a concentration camp before coming to the USA.

Obviously it was impossible to remain in a city where I loathed the majority of the population. And I mean majority - I joined Republican Meetup and offered to host the meeting at my restaurant. Well, three people turned up and one of them was a Libertarian and another was an atheist.

So, I started looking for places to move to. I looked at every state including Hawaii and Alaska. I researched crime statistics, climate, political affiliation and affordability. Crime ruled out any big city and by then I was sick of cities anyway - I'm a country bumpkin by birth and inclination. So I looked at rural areas and small towns.

Climate ruled out pretty much everywhere except California and the Pacific Northwest. But I knew I had to get out of California because the city sickness permeates the politics of the whole state except the inland counties which have unbearably hot dry summers. The northern California coast has the kind of weather I like - cool foggy summers and mild wet winters - but it is over-run with crazy hippie tree-huggers and snobby limo-liberals (who have driven land prices sky-high.)

Next stop Oregon. Oregon is a blue state except, like California, for the inland counties which are red all the way. The whole Oregon coast is blue with the same tree-hugging types and limo-libs as California. There's one part of the coast that is not blue and that's because it is dominated by a rather ugly, utilitarian, working-class logging and fishing port, the Coos Bay Area. Finally I had found a red county on the coast - a Bay Area that was not totally commie but had the same cool weather as that other less-American Bay Area.

I have a dear friend who lives in Portland. He spent his childhood in Coos county. Then he joined the Navy and went to Viet Nam. When he returned he went to San Francisco. It was the early 70s and he did what a lot of us did in those days - became a hippie. When he eventually returned to Coos bay, he found that he no longer felt at home. As he said to me: "Don't move to Coos county. It's so redneck that they keep sand in their back pockets to rub their necks red. Come to Portland and open up a Joubert's Restaurant here."

Well, I bought a farm in Coos county. It's an odd-ball "red" county. While I was researching Coos county, I was nearly put off by the fact that 70% of its voters are registered Democrat. Then I found out that they had voted for the Republican candidate in all of the elections since Reagan. When I read the local papers on-line to get more info, I found that they excoriated the Oregon state government and detested Portland, Salem and Eugene, the three biggest cities which, like all states, account for two-thirds of the state population.

While I do not like ALL of the Democrats that I have met here, I like a few. Unfortunately most of the Dems here are angry, bitter UNEMPLOYED blue-collar folk who are envious of the rich and prone to conspiracy theories. I feel sorry for them but also want to smack them and tell them to get a life. There also are a few hippie tree-huggers but I avoid them like poison - you can practically smell them coming a mile away stinking of pot, patchouli and political paranoia.

(Non sequitur - I'm watching Gretchen Wilson on TV while I'm typing this. You know - the "Redneck Woman" country singer. Her definition of redneck is "tough, straightforward and happy; rednecks like to have fun." By Gretchen's definition, I definitely like being a redneck. She was a pool shark and grew up in a trailer and now owns a 4,000 square foot house but still shops at Wal-Mart and Target. Good on you, Redneck Woman.)

Anyway, my friend from Portland came to visit me and realized that he loved his old home-town. He kept coming back to dig up his roots and re-unite withe old friends. One day he introduced me to one of his old-time friends, a guy who had moved here from New York in 1962 and raised his kids here. His youngest daughter is a soldier in Iraq. He's a Democrat and hates the war and is in agony about his daughter. But, as I talked to him, he could not help glowing when I said I would pray for his daughter and then he took out his wallet to show me a picture of his daughter in uniform. What a beautiful young lady. It was obvious that he was proud of her.

I said to him: "Thank you for raising such a wonderful young woman. I pray for her safety and hope one day to meet her and shake her hand in gratitude for serving America so bravely."

"For what?" he asked.

"For serving in this war," I answered.

"Yes, but what's the war for?" he insisted.

"Oil," I answered.

His mouth fell open.

"Okay, look," I said; "I figured you you for a guy who doesn't agree with the war but you're too smart so I can't give you the usual schpiel about bringing democracy to Iraq etc. But have you ever thought that we are buying time for our children? There's another 30 years of oil in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq have most of the oil in the world. Isn't it worth securing that - making sure it's not controlled by lunatics like Saddam or insane Islamic terrorists so that our kids have enough time to develop alternative energy sources?"

"Well, I guess," he said; "at least you're an honest Republican."

And he was at least an honest Democrat so I invited him home for dinner.

Sunday poem and pictures

I'm not going to post a Christmas poem today (although this one mentions Christmas) but just the usual Sunday poem. This one is by Thomas Love Peacock who lived from 1785 to 1866.

Love and Age

I played with you 'mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o'er grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wander'd hand in hand together;
But that was sixty years ago.

You grew a lovely roseate maiden,
And still our early love was strong;
Still with no care our days were laden,
They glided joyously along;
And I did love you very dearly,
How dearly words want power to show;
I thought your heart was touch'd as nearly;
But that was fifty years ago.

Then other lovers came around you,
Your beauty grew from year to year,
And many a splendid circle found you
The centre of its glimmering sphere.
I saw you then, first vows forsaking,
On rank and wealth your hand bestow;
O, then I thought my heart was breaking!—
But that was forty years ago.

And I lived on, to wed another:
No cause she gave me to repine;
And when I heard you were a mother,
I did not wish the children mine.
My own young flock, in fair progression,
Made up a pleasant Christmas row:
My joy in them was past expression;
But that was thirty years ago.

You grew a matron plump and comely,
You dwelt in fashion's brightest blaze;
My earthly lot was far more homely;
But I too had my festal days.
No merrier eyes have ever glisten'd
Around the hearth-stone's wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christen'd;
But that was twenty years ago.

Time pass'd. My eldest girl was married,
And I am now a grandsire gray;
One pet of four years old I've carried
Among the wild-flower'd meads to play.
In our old fields of childish pleasure,
Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,
She fills her basket's ample measure;
And that is not ten years ago.

But though first love's impassion'd blindness
Has pass'd away in colder light,
I still have thought of you with kindness,
And shall do, till our last good-night.
The ever-rolling silent hours
Will bring a time we shall not know,
When our young days of gathering flowers
Will be an hundred years ago.

These are pictures of one of my favorite South African deciduous lilies, kniphofia, which we call "red hot pokers" in South Africa. The reason why I grow so many deciduous South African lilies is because they are dormant in winter so you don't have to worry about frost killing them and because they are drought tolerant - which is important on the Pacific coast because we get very little rain in summer.

Kniphofia do like a bit of water in summer unlike most of the Cape lilies. The Cape bulbs will rot if they get summer water. (The Cape is on the west coast and has the same climate as California.)

Natal/kwaZulu, being on the east coast, gets most of its rain in summer. The Drakensberg waterfalls are as beautiful as any in Yosemite and they are similar in that they fall down from the top of the mountains for thousands of feet. And also, like Yosemite, they dry up when the rain stops.

The most spectacular thunder storms I have ever seen are in these mountains. A mighty thunder-clap shook the car that I was driving so hard once that it made me lose control and I ended up in a ditch where I had to wait for an hour till the storm passed because the rain was coming down in sheets so you couldn't see even a foot in front of you.

Pic one: the Drakensberg (Dragon Mountains) which is where kniphofia is found growing in the wild.

Pic two: kniphofia growing in the Drakensberg - in the background is the beginning of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, one of the most beautiful parts of Zululand.

Pic three: kniphofia growing on the side of a cliff.

Pic four: kniphofia in the garden - you can see why they're called red hot pokers.

Pic five: close-up of a partly yellow kniphofia hybrid.

Pic six: an orange kniphofia hybrid - I also have a pure yellow hybrid but don't seem to have a pic of it.

Zulu rickshaws

I posted two of these pictures of Zulu rickshaws before. (The East Indians first brought rickshaws to Durban. They were the first taxis before cars came on the scene. Then the Zulus copied them and became a tourist attraction.)

I found the third picture when I was looking for pics of my sister. It is me in a rickshaw when I was about two - almost 60 years ago!