My part of NJ is drenched in Revolutionary War history. I live at the foot of the Watchung Mountains, known to Washington as the Blue Hills. They were a natural barrier behind which the Continental Army was safe from incursions by the British out of New York. The Blue Hills run more or less east to west and parallel the main agricultural region of the state. From the heights, Washington’s troops could keep tabs on any British activity on the plains below. The Continentals were a menace to British security and frequently raided British foraging parties before returning to the safety of the ridge tops. Washington, with his main army, kept to the shelter of these hills. Down on the plain were some local militia and General Sullivan’s division to support them.

During the summer of 1777, General Howe tried to entice Washington down from the safety of his Middlebrook encampments and to bring about a general engagement. Howe was confident that he’d be able to crush the Continentals if he could meet them in open combat.

There is big news today in women’s swimming.  Canadian Summer McIntosh broke the world record in the 400 Individual Medley (IM) twice in one week!  Today she swam 4:23:65, eclipsing the world record she just set on Wednesday.  Amazing job!!!  But the point here is to compare and contrast the difference between the men’s and women’s events.

Last year at the Canadian Olympic trials in the 400 IM, the slowest man swam 4:20:67.  He didn’t make the team.   That’s almost exactly 3 full seconds faster than today’s women’s world record.  The fastest Canadian man who didn’t make the Olympic team swam 4:16:90.

Many years ago, when my sister-in-law had just joined our family, I got her a calendar for Christmas. As she opened it, under the tree, she exclaimed, “Oh, good, ours was just running out.” My brother, her husband, responded, “That always seems to happen this time of year.”

Paper calendars are not passé, of course, appearing on those social media surveys that say, “Give yourself a point if you ever used…” along with rotary phones and floppy discs. We still have a paper calendar on the fridge, but we’re pretty old school.

Many of us used to choose between pocket calendars: Month at a Glance or Week at a Glance. And there were, of course, the calendars that had just one day at a time. But they also had a Far Side cartoon or a Bible verse or something else to keep us tearing off the sheets to get to the next day.

Champlin Park High School won the Minnesota Class 4A high school girls softball state title last week, with a six-foot-tall, 17-year-old man who identifies as a girl pitching three dominant complete games in the state tourney.  What bravery!

Just another toothpick of insanity on Tim Walz’s bonfire of a state.  The Minnesota Star Tribune and the other state legacy media have completely hidden the trans-component of the story, but everyone in the softball community was well aware of the cheating.  Glad Outkick has been providing some coverage.  And in Minnesota, all you have to do to change your gender is amend your birth certificate–no surgery or drugs required.  You can keep your genitalia and hang out in the opposite sex’s locker room, all while dominating on the field.  Title IX no longer applies here.  You’ve come a long way, baby!

I am listening to the incomparably wonderful Stephen Fry read his own brilliant and entertaining summary of all Greek myth and legend, Mythos. It is an experience both informative and deeply revealing about the nature – and failures – of pagan cultures.

For starters, I think we can all agree that myth satisfies the deepest human intellectual need to try to understand how we got here, and why, and what, really, life is all about. No thoughtful person is immune from these deep-seated questions. The answers we have available to us are impossible to prove, either way – which is why it comes down to faith. And even though it is fashionable to suggest that the Greeks didn’t really believe in all that silly Pantheon stuff, it still did not stop them from sacrificing children to the gods.

Corporate media once again shows its bias. You would have thought having been burned by Russian collusion, Hunter’s laptop, the mental competence of FJB, and the origins and management of Covid, they would be more suspect.  Once again, they push the narrative of “mostly peaceful protests.”

Here is my favorite:

Another day older and deeper in debt.

Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is a huge disappointment to those Republicans who want smaller government, less spending, and shrinking debt.  But apparently fiscal conservatism is dead.  Debt doesn’t matter.  From a fiscal perspective, Republicans are now just Democrats with different spending priorities.   Both now believe in big government.  The public Treasury is the black bag, spewing bribes to voters; maximizing chances of reelection.  It’s a sad commentary on the contemporary Republican Party that one has to look to Bill Clinton for the most recent example of fiscal sanity.

Doug Watt again provides insightful observations, this time about anti-Catholic bias in his post about the infamous and imbecilic Richmond Memo.

We can get some insight into the mindset of the memo’s author by reflecting on who is and who is not a perceived enemy. Why, for example, would one feel visceral hostility to orthodox Catholics (and almost certainly also against pro-Israel Jews) but not Hamas or Antifa?

I have always seen sanctuary cities and states as manifestations of nullification: states or localities defying federal law. The original nullification had to do with tariffs, of which we are currently awash, but this is a different nullification issue. In Andrew Jackson’s administration, his own Vice President was a supporter of the nullification of federal tariff laws; the South was harmed by them, whereas the North perceived itself to benefit from them. Jackson famously said that he would personally lead 40,000 federal troops into South Carolina and hang the first man he caught promoting nullification, even though he was a Southerner and opposed the tariffs. The issue then was fraught, but a compromise was worked out that more or less satisfied all and kept the nation intact.

Venues that enforce sanctuary status are in overt violation of federal law. This has been the case for many years; in fact, many decades. Neither party, and certainly not both parties together, has reached anything approaching a compromise since Reagan was rolled by the Democrats after having accepted a deal in which amnesty for those already here would be exchanged for enforcement of the borders to prevent further illegal immigration. The amnesty was granted; the border enforcement never materialized. That has so poisoned the well that nothing has been possible since. Democrats want both illegal immigration ad libitum and citizenship for all.

Forest Whispers shows the difference between realistic photography and expressive painting in a creative way.

The current spat between Trump and Elon takes me back to a central moment in my political formation. It had to do with George W. Bush’s proposed reform of Social Security. Like most policies, he had an outline of what to do and left the specifics to Congress, but it was an outline based on reason and decency. Needless to say, I was a big fan.