http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/ Marriage, birth, divorce, transitions, widowed, career, retirement, transitions, death, moving, rules of life, aging, caregiving, life events, life changes http://www.estatevaults.com/images/bol_banner_thumb.jpg http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/ 92 40 en-us jillfallon@gmail.com Jill Fallon Copyright 2009 Jill Fallon 2009-07-04T09:20:30-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/drafting_the_de.html Jill Fallon Culture and Society 2009-07-04T09:20:30-05:00 From the splendid HBO miniseries John Adams , Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Adams go over the draft for the Declaration of Independence. Here is the theme song.  You'll see the earlier American flags inscribed  "Don't Tread on Me", ... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/drafting_the_de.html From the splendid HBO miniseries John Adams , Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Adams go over the draft for the Declaration of Independence. Here is the theme song.  You'll see the earlier American flags inscribed  "Don't Tread on Me",  "Appeal to Heaven" and "Unite or Die". Peggy Noonan writes in Making History Then John Adams rose. He wished he had the power of the ancient orators of Greece and Rome, he said; surely they had never faced a question of greater human import. He made, again, the case for independence. Now is the time, the facts are inescapable, the people are for it, we are not so much declaring as acknowledging reality. "Looking into the future [he] saw a new nation, a new time, all much in the spirit of lines he had written in a recent letter to a friend: '. . . We are in the very midst of revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of the world.' " Outside the wind picked up and the storm struck hard with thunder and lightning. Storms had in the past unnerved Adams, but he spoke steadily, logically and compellingly for two hours. -- ..on the morning of July 5, the people of Philadelphia started getting their hands on independently printed copies of the Declaration, and the impact was electric: My God, look what they said yesterday—"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." And on the 6th, a local newspaper carried the text of what had been agreed upon on the 4th. And so the celebration of the Fourth of July as one of the signal moments in the history of human freedom, was born. And so we mark it still. -- Almost two years ago, I was lucky enough to tour Mount Vernon with a dozen people including him. (If I were David McCullough I would know the date and time. But I know the weather.) At the bottom of a stairway leading to the second floor, we chatted for a moment, and I asked him how he accounted in his imagination for the amazing fact of the genius cluster that founded our nation. How did so many gifted men, true geniuses, walk into history at the same time, in the same place, and come together to pursue so brilliantly a common endeavor? "I think it was providential," he said, simply. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/drafting_the_de.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/freedom_from_re.html Jill Fallon Civilization - Can We Keep It? 2009-07-04T08:02:23-05:00 IN the years following his presidency, Thomas Jefferson had time to contemplate more deeply on freedom and reflect on the importance of education of the citizenry. He wrote in 1810 in a letter to William Duane,  "The information of... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/freedom_from_re.html IN the years following his presidency, Thomas Jefferson had time to contemplate more deeply on freedom and reflect on the importance of education of the citizenry. He wrote in 1810 in a letter to William Duane,  "The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom."  Elsewhere he wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey in 1816, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." All of which makes even more alarming a recent  survey of Arizona high school students who were asked basic questions of citizenship that are asked in the test given to candidates for U.S. citizenship.    Only 3.5% of the public high school students passed! •  More than 70 percent of Arizona high school students were unable to identify the  Constitution as the supreme law of the land. •  75 percent were unable to correctly identify the first 10 amendments to the Constitution as “The Bill or Rights". •  More than two-thirds of the students surveyed could not identify the two parts of the U.S. Congress. •  Half of the public school students surveyed could not identify the two political parties in the U.S.  •  Eighty-five percent of students surveyed did not know the length of a term of office for a U.S. Senator.  •  Only 26 percent of students correctly answered “the President” when asked who is in charge of the Executive Branch of government  •  Only  26.5 percent of students identified the first President of the United States as George Washington. God help us if our schools can not educate students in the most basic elements of our history or the responsibilities of citizenship.    People are losing the true sense of freedom as a call to personal responsibility not escape from it. When Pope Benedict visited the U.S. and spoke at the White House last year, he spoke of freedom in a fresh way.  "Freedom is not only a gift, but also a summons to personal responsibility. ...The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate. It also demands the courage to engage in civic life and to bring one's deepest beliefs and values to reasoned public debate. In a word, freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II. In reflecting on the spiritual victory of freedom over totalitarianism in his native Poland and in eastern Europe, he reminded us that history shows, time and again, that "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation," and a democracy without values can lose its very soul. Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity. values can lose its very soul. Those prophetic words in some sense echo the conviction of President Washington, expressed in his Farewell Address, that religion and morality represent "indispensable supports" of political prosperity. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/freedom_from_re.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/what_does_freed.html Jill Fallon Civilization - Can We Keep It? 2009-07-04T07:10:22-05:00 When it comes to personal behaviour we have now come to believe that there is no right and wrong. Instead, there are choices. So writes Jonathan Sacks across the pond in Credo: Without a shared moral code there can... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/what_does_freed.html When it comes to personal behaviour we have now come to believe that there is no right and wrong. Instead, there are choices. So writes Jonathan Sacks across the pond in Credo: Without a shared moral code there can be no freedom in our society. What has been lost is trust — our trust in those we chose to look after our affairs — and trust is the basis of society. If we are to recover it, we must ask some deep questions. -- I believe we have lost our traditional sense of morality. I do not mean that we are less moral than our grandparents. We care about things they hardly thought about: world poverty, inequality, global warming and the loss of biodiversity. We are more tolerant than they were. But note this: the things we care about are vast, distant, global, remote. They are problems that require the co-ordinated action of millions, perhaps billions of people. The difference we as individuals can make to any one of them is minimal. That does not mean they are not important: they are. But they are issues of politics, not of morality in the conventional sense. When it comes to personal behaviour we have now come to believe that there is no right and wrong. Instead, there are choices. The market facilitates those choices. The State handles the consequences, picking up the pieces when they go wrong. -- Without conscience there can be no trust. Without a shared moral code there can be no free society. Either we recover the moral sense or we will find, too late, that in the name of liberty, we have lost our freedom. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/04/what_does_freed.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/03/eye_tooth.html Jill Fallon Scientific wonders 2009-07-03T16:29:19-05:00 I have a lot of open tabs and many things to blog about, but this is the strangest, most surprising and wonderful news I've heard this week. Blind man sees wife for first time after having a TOOTH implanted... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/03/eye_tooth.html I have a lot of open tabs and many things to blog about, but this is the strangest, most surprising and wonderful news I've heard this week. Blind man sees wife for first time after having a TOOTH implanted in his eye 'The doctors took the bandages off and it was like looking through water and then I saw this figure and it was her. She's wonderful and lovely. It was unbelievable to see her for the first time.' --- 'I feel fantastic getting my sight back,' he said. 'I can't really describe it - it's beyond words. I was blind for 12 years and when my sight came back everything had changed. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/03/eye_tooth.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/03/no_skin_in_the.html Jill Fallon Economy 2009-07-03T10:41:47-05:00 Negative equity  found to be the biggest reason for the mushrooming rate of mortgage foreclosures since 2007. Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown.... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/03/no_skin_in_the.html Negative equity  found to be the biggest reason for the mushrooming rate of mortgage foreclosures since 2007. Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/03/no_skin_in_the.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/02/kitsch_is_a_dis.html Jill Fallon Art 2009-07-02T13:56:29-05:00 Roger Scruton on Beauty and its corruptions Kitsch is a mould that settles over the entire works of a living culture, when people prefer the sensuous trappings of belief to the thing truly believed in. It is not only... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/02/kitsch_is_a_dis.html Roger Scruton on Beauty and its corruptions Kitsch is a mould that settles over the entire works of a living culture, when people prefer the sensuous trappings of belief to the thing truly believed in. It is not only Christian civilisation that has undergone kitschification in recent times. Equally evident has been the kitschification of Hinduism and its culture. Massproduced Ganeshas have knocked the subtle temple sculpture from its aesthetic pedestal; in bunjee music the talas of Indian classical music are blown apart by tonal harmonies and rhythm machines; in literature the sutras and puranas have been detached from the sublime vision of Brahman and reissued as childish comic-strips. Simply put, kitsch is a disease of faith. Kitsch begins in doctrine and ideology and spreads from there to infect the entire world of culture. The Disneyfication of art is simply one aspect of the Disneyfication of faith -and both involve a profanation of our highest values. Kitsch, the case of Disney reminds us, is not an excess of feeling but a deficiency. The world of kitsch is in a certain measure a heartless world, in which emotion is directed away from its proper target towards sugary stereotypes, permitting us to pay passing tribute to love and sorrow without the trouble of feeling them. -- "Beauty" (Roger Scruton) The paradox, however, is that the relentless pursuit of artistic innovation leads to a cult of nihilism. The attempt to defend beauty from pre-modernist kitsch has exposed it to postmodernist desecration. We seem to be caught between two forms of sacrilege, the one dealing in sugary dreams, the other in savage fantasies. Both are forms of falsehood, ways of reducing and demeaning our humanity. Both involve a retreat from the higher life, and a rejection of its principal sign, which is beauty. But both point to the real difficulty, in modern conditions, of leading a life in which beauty has a central place. -- To point to this feature of our condition is not to issue an invitation to despair. It is one mark of rational beings that they do not live only -- or even at all -- in the present. They have the freedom to despise the world that surrounds them and to live in another way. The art, literature and music of our civilisation remind them of this, and also point to the path that lies always before them: the path out of desecration towards the sacred and the sacrificial. And that, in a nutshell, is what beauty teaches us. Fyodor Dostoevsky once made an enigmatic remark, "Beauty will save the world" about which  Alexander Solzhenitsyn organized his Nobel Lecture on Literature in 1970 And so perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three. And in that case it was not a slip of the tongue for Dostoyevsky to say that “Beauty will save the world,” but a prophecy. After all, he was given the gift of seeing much, he was extraordinarily illumined. And consequently perhaps art, literature, can in actual fact help the world of today. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/02/kitsch_is_a_dis.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/isnt_saving_the.html Jill Fallon Economy 2009-06-30T21:21:42-05:00 The horrific solution of  the cap and trade legislation is far worse than the problem. The Waxman-Markey Travesty The formulation of the so-called Waxman-Markey bill was less traditional legislative sausage-making than an unspeakable practice out of The Jungle. Its... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/isnt_saving_the.html The horrific solution of  the cap and trade legislation is far worse than the problem. The Waxman-Markey Travesty The formulation of the so-called Waxman-Markey bill was less traditional legislative sausage-making than an unspeakable practice out of The Jungle. Its architects bought off every possible interest group no matter what the policy consequences until they had a bare majority to slam it through the House sight unseen (a physical copy of the final bill didn’t yet exist when it passed) -- Originally, the Obama administration counted on $80 billion a year from the government’s sale of emissions credits. To win over industry, Waxman-Markey gives the credits away for free. Poof! There goes the revenue. -- The upshot is that an Environmental Protection Agency analysis says that under Waxman-Markey, there will be no reduction in emissions by 2020. The progressive Breakthrough Institute estimates that emissions could continue at their current business-as-usual rate through 2030. Perversities abound. According to the Los Angeles Times, under the bill, the U.S. “would use more carbon-dioxide heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005.” Time writes that “the total amount of renewable energy generation under Waxman-Markey would actually be less than the renewable energy that would have been produced without the bill.” -- Even if Waxman-Markey were perfectly formulated, it would reduce global surface temperatures by only one-tenth of 1 degree Celsius in 100 years. That’s a negligible difference, purchased at a great price. The only people who benefit are the "permanent class of government-addicted elites" The Obama/Pelosi/Reid Democrats in charge of everything in Washington have decided to order everything on the menu, and a permanent class of government-addicted elites --lawyers, economists, think-tankers, MSMers, senior bureaucrats-- are cheering them on because the growth in the size and complexity of government means a growth in the demand curve for specialist services at specialist prices. The jobs supposedly created are an illusion. Looking at the experience of creating green jobs in Spain which bet heavily on that premise and the promise of wind energy, a recent study found that each green job cost more than a million dollars to create and resulted in the destruction elsewhere of 2.2. jobs. The Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston released a study today finding that the studies claiming economic benefits to government imposed green jobs were seriously flawed and that such programs actually hurt the economy. Proponents of “green collar” jobs promise that government subsidization of these jobs will create a net increase in employment, economic growth, recovery from the current crisis, and energy savings, all in addition to environmental benefits. Unfortunately, these claims are based on seriously flawed economic analysis. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/isnt_saving_the.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/breitbarts_laws.html Jill Fallon Culture and Society 2009-06-30T20:39:31-05:00 Richard Fernandez, Carnival of grotesques My first reactions to Andrew Breitbart’s article were a) that the lines between the serious and bizarre in modern culture have drawn dangerously near each other; and b) who heck makes up rules like... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/breitbarts_laws.html Richard Fernandez, Carnival of grotesques My first reactions to Andrew Breitbart’s article were a) that the lines between the serious and bizarre in modern culture have drawn dangerously near each other; and b) who heck makes up rules like “Black beats white. Gay beats white. Black beats gay.” I’m sure that Breitbart is right in perceiving them - in fact we should call them Breitbart’s Laws. -- If Poets were the unacknowledged legislators of Shelley’s world, then who are unacknowledged legislators of ours? If Shelley’s commentary remains valid then the true authors of Breitbart’s Laws are the Carnival of Grotesques collectively referred to as popular culture. They make the rules to which we subconsciously conform. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/breitbarts_laws.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/bungee_dating.html Jill Fallon Rules of Life/Lessons Learned 2009-06-30T20:36:34-05:00 When you can learn an important lesson from the experience of others, count yourself lucky.  In Bungee Dating in New York City, Gerard Vanderleun tells the story of his friend last night and it's not to be missed. Bottom... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/bungee_dating.html When you can learn an important lesson from the experience of others, count yourself lucky.  In Bungee Dating in New York City, Gerard Vanderleun tells the story of his friend last night and it's not to be missed. Bottom line, when you're going out on a 'non-date' with a girl you like who's under a lot a stress, a mutual massage spa salon is not the best idea for reasons you will find out. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/bungee_dating.html#comments http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/mcdo_in_paris.html Jill Fallon Signs of the Times 2009-06-30T17:00:28-05:00 How McDonald's Conquered France In the battle for France, Jose Bové, the protester who vandalized a McDonald's in 1999 and was then running for president, proved to be no match for Le Big Mac....By 2007, France had become the... http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/mcdo_in_paris.html How McDonald's Conquered France In the battle for France, Jose Bové, the protester who vandalized a McDonald's in 1999 and was then running for president, proved to be no match for Le Big Mac....By 2007, France had become the second-most profitable market in the world for McDonald's, surpassed only by the land that gave the world fast food. Against McDonald's, Bové had lost in a landslide. --- for a limited time with pepper sauce McDonald's France was sourcing 75 percent of its ingredients domestically, and he felt it was imperative from a PR standpoint to force French farmers, hypocritically applauding Bové, to publicly acknowledge the large volume of business that they were doing with McDo. -- They came, they ate, and they lingered. As Gravier artfully put it, "The French population uses McDonald's in a very French way; it is fast food, but not that fast."...Americans visited McDonald's more often than the French, at all hours of the day, frequently alone, and opted for takeout 70 percent of the time. The French spent more money per visit, came in groups more often than Americans, and did 70 percent of their eating during regular lunch and dinner hours. "We have a food culture in France; eating is not a feeding moment, it is a social moment," Gravier said. http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/06/30/mcdo_in_paris.html#comments