The effort to throw out the Balthus
Is warming the ghost of Sir Malthus:
“Our art’s overbreeding.
Too much painting needs feeding.
You empty the too-crowded salle thus.”

There’s a reason [Texas] A&M hasn’t won. I think the reason is because they haven’t had a coach this good. When they had Bear Bryant in the 50s, if they hadn’t been on probation in ’56, they would’ve gone to the national title game then, or they would’ve been in the running for it…

I tell you what, and this is going to make [Southern Methodist University] fans mad, but if you want to keep your coach, if you really like Chad Morris then you’ve gotta get off the Boulevard and go to games… [H]ow are you going to bring recruits in there and the place is not even half full?…

I took my kids to the tailgating scene on the [SMU] Boulevard. It was amazing. We had been to Arkansas two weeks earlier and I would tell you that that was a better scene than what I saw in Fayetteville.

… It’s just as good as the one at Ole Miss that everyone talks about.

… It’s scenic with the trees forming that canopy. It’s great. The band comes marching down. And I’m looking around, there’s all these people, young guys and young girls, with dogs on leashes at these tailgating parties. I’m like who’s bringing their dogs to a tailgating party, and what are they going to do with them when they got to the game? Then I got my answer. Nobody goes into the game. They have got to find a way to get people from that tailgating scene into the stadium. How you get those people to take that five minute walk? I don’t know. But if they could, they could create a really nice atmosphere. The stadium’s nice. The tailgating scene is nice. You could sway some recruits. That grass berm behind the end zone. That’s all really nice, but they’ve gotta get people into the stadium.

… Listen, you people have gotta go and you’ve gotta fill up this place. That is a shame. It’s a disgrace.

… The disgrace is that you don’t walk five minutes off this boulevard to get in that game. If you’re not going to do that for your team, well shame on you.

Snapshot from Home.

Zion! Zion! Look away!
Do not let your eyes betray!
Would God that this Shekel
Bore on it a schmeckle
Than a Jew a shiksa led astray.

************

And if you have any doubts that Israelis live in close-to-theocratic conditions, with fatwas routinely issued by idiots who have state backing, review the history of Beit Shemesh’s WOMEN OUT! signs. A long, long saga of the pointlessness of Israel’s Supreme Court, it presents itself today as having been resolved

—

“The order to remove the signs with a police escort and a constant police presence will send a strong message that the rights of the women of Beit Shemesh are important,” said [one attorney]. “The ruling is a victory for the rule of law over the rule of lawlessness, a victory for the rights of women for respect and equality. We will continue to monitor and combat all instances of exclusion of women in Israel.”

— except that the police won’t show up, or after a little time they’ll give up, or their presence will generate riots after which the government will let them put up the signs again. Read a similar saga involving Women of the Wall.

None of it means UD gives up. She’s a fervent WOW supporter. But that Israel is currently basically a theocracy is hard to deny.

….HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

***********

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

… Timothy McVeigh, and Nicolae Ceausescu.

… this painting is now on sale.

**************

That was quick. Sold.

Conn, who started his law practice in a trailer in 1993, had portrayed himself as “Mr. Social Security.” He fueled that persona with outlandish TV commercials and small-scale replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial at his office in eastern Kentucky.

Yes, his name’s even Conn.

… so UD assumes that James Levine will remain alongside him, securely honored at her revocation-phobic alma mater, Northwestern University.

NU will apparently take your honor back if it hasn’t formally forked it over yet, as with conspiracy theorist Jeremiah Wright; but once it’s in your hot little hands, you get to keep it.

Levine, whose 1984 recording with UD-favorite Kathleen Battle singing UD-favorite Henry Purcell (Levine’s on piano), is, well, a UD-favorite, has been accused of sexual abuse.

… if you’d like to hear UD talk about what it’s like to live in Munro Leaf’s house. (This assumes any of my comments survive editing.)

… and talked to my old friend Marian Green about Munro Leaf. (An NPR reporter visits me tomorrow to talk about Leaf as a resident of Garrett Park, and about what it’s like to live in his house.) Also got hold of this wonderful photograph of him enthralling children in some foreign country with stories of his famous bull.

******************

Best of all was this article

about a Garrett Park Elementary School cookbook in which all recipes are in the metric system because “the Maryland State Board of Education has called for all Maryland schools to be totally metric by 1980.”

Munro Leaf of Garrett Park, the well-known children’s author, not only read and approved the manuscript but chose the title [Metric Tastes Good, A Different Kind of Cookbook From the Garrett Park Elementary School PTA] and drew the cover illustration.

… Commonwealth School, has died at 97.

Charles Merrill was the son (as was his half-brother, James Merrill) of the co-founder of Merrill Lynch.

Mr UD likes to tell the story of how Merrill (also school headmaster for decades) gathered some students one day and told them he had a brother who was a poet, and they were all going to go on a field trip to hear him read.

“Eyes rolled,” Mr UD recounts. “Oh yeah, he happens to have a brother who’s a poet… Who knew he meant James Merrill??”

… tomorrow an NPR reporter, for Morning Edition, arrives to interview UD about what it’s like to live in Munro Leaf’s house.

This is all by way of preparation for the release, in a couple of weeks, of a big-time movie based on Munro’s book, The Story of Ferdinand.

*******************

(Photo of one of UD‘s topiary bulls
with a visiting cat by Judy Folkenberg.)

In other words, at Sacramento State, it’s a win-win!

The guy’s got balls. When it comes to freeloading, the guy has major balls.

And look at his research! This is from 2016.

Yale might want to take this down.

Big award-winner.