Sunset last Sunday:

It seems to be food night in our corner of the blogosphere: cannibalism here; cows and pigs at Querencia (see comments also); and now the always worthwhile Michael Pollan with an outside perspective. Bon apetite!

Attend the Tale...

Our current hometown has a surprisingly laudable array of musical talent, and we went recently to our pizza-and-beer joint to see one. Though he proved a very skilled guitarist with a definite songwriting talent, I couldn't help reflecting on the phenomenon of young man's music being performed by a man rapidly ceasing to be young. What a burden is the blessing of youthful talent, coupled as it is with an obligation to mature and refine in artistry, particularly when one's genre itself tends to impede maturity and refinement.

These reflection, as it happens, apply almost perfectly to Tim Burton's new film adaptation of Sweeney Todd, Stephen Sondheim's Broadway opera of misanthropy, manslaughter and cannibalism. The first thing to understand about Sweeney is that, despite its Broadway provenance and its lurid subject matter, it punches above its weight as a serious work, one good enough to support a variety of interpretations in performance. Many people assert that it qualifies as an opera, meaning I suppose that one can enjoy this shabby little shocker while maintaining full highbrow cred. Sweeney and his accomplice Mrs. Lovett are surprisingly sympathetic and funny as they descend to the nadir of human villity; the work has a decently classical tragic inevitability and is a serious portrayal of cruelty and vengeance; and the music sometimes achieves real power. A good benchmark interpretation with excellent performances by the two leads is this one. The musical has genuine potential for serious filmmaking and a director as peculiar and creative as Burton might have made it soar.

Alas, he doesn't. A lot of Burton's creativity seems to have frozen into mannerism, and in Sweeney he revels far too exclusively in the tale's ghoulish and downright disgusting aspects, as the opening credits' extended shot of CGI blood flow attests. I couldn't help thinking that this is a Sweeney for teenagers, not adults, for an audience eager to snigger at Londoners wolfing down their fellow man, with a heavy dose of weird for weird's sake (attested by the meaningless and distracting skunk streak in Johnny Depp's hair). Worse still, Burton's preoccupation with not flinching from the story's brutality sometimes overwhelms the musical's best moments of black humor.

The movie's puerile tendencies show up most strongly in the casting. When I first saw the cast list, I couldn't believe that Burton chose Pretty-Boy Depp as Sweeney over the marvellously villainous Alan Rickman (who is by far the best reason to watch the Harry Potter movies). Rickman is plenty good as the sadistic Judge Turpin, but the role is just too small for him, and I greatly regret that his potential as Sweeney must be forever consigned to my imagination. And Depp is simply too light for the role, and too young. Logically, he's not really old enough to have a 16-year-old daughter, and dramatically he just isn't equal to the character's sad, bitter, vengeful Weltschmerz. Again, a young man's talent in an old man's art. And not as bad, but again distracting, is the pointlessly over-the-top casting of Sacha Baren Cohen (Borat) as Pirelli; buffo though he be, Pirelli is eventually revealed as yet another sadist, but Cohen remains a buffoon.

More positively, Helena Bonham Carter, whom I usually loathe, was surprisingly decent and sympathetic as Mrs. Lovett. I especially enjoyed her number By the Sea, her sad fantasy of bourgeois oceanside Cockney happiness with a cannibal accomplice at her side. Timothy Spall (another Harry Potter regular, the rat guy) was an excellent choice for Beadle Bamford. And the pacing in the drama's final scenes is excellent, a substantial improvement in clarity over the stage version I've seen, as the ghastly events speed towards their inevitably tragic end. Don't get me wrong; the film was absolutely a diverting way to spend a couple hours.

Perhaps the oddest of Burton's modifications to the musical was his choice to eliminate the choruses that open, close and interject in the drama. Given the director's facility with surrealism, I would have thought that choruses offered plenty of potential for spectacle, as well as some useful control of the film's pacing. I was surprised how much I missed them, especially at the end. Choral strophes and antistrophes can mould an audience's response to tragedy, giving a more meaningful shape to a series of unfortunate events, not to mention giving the audience a tune to whistle on its way out of the theater, and this work turned out to suffer noticeably from their omission. I also find it telling that another of the drama's classically tragic touches (can't be more specific without a spoiler here) was also eliminated. This film version of Sweeney Todd is unfortunately little interested in tragedy, but only in ghoulish spectacle. At the latter, it is a smashing success.

P.S. Yes, I too am now contemplating Odious' finger. But Mrs. P. and I have a duet to learn:

Y'all will get more blogging from me when I get the tip of my finger back.

And continuing the theme of surreal personality cults, good God, look at this: public architecture in Turkmenistan. I'd heard repeatedly of the golden statue of the late leader Turkmenbashi which rotates in a 24-hour cycle always to face the sun, but it's something to see the photos. The Wikipedia article cites some altogether remarkable presidential decrees (remember, this happened within the living memory of today's children):

ballet and opera were banned after Niyazov felt they were "unnecessary ... not a part of Turkmen culture"

In March 2004, 15,000 public health workers were dismissed including nurses, midwives, school health visitors and orderlies and replaced with military conscripts.

In April 2004 the youth of Turkmenistan were encouraged to chew on bones to preserve their teeth rather than be fitted with gold tooth caps

In April 2004 it was ordered that an ice palace be constructed near the capital.

In 2004 all licensed drivers were required to pass a morality test.

In February 2005 all hospitals outside Aşgabat were ordered shut, with the reasoning that the sick should come to the capital for treatment. All rural libraries were ordered closed as well, citing ordinary Turkmen do not read books.

The Turkmen words for bread and the month of April were changed to the name of his late mother, Gurbansoltanedzhe.

In fact, the President-for-Life renamed all the months and days of the week. Turkmenbashi also wrote the Ruhnama, which purports to be a national epic for the Turkmen people. History will judge; I will merely note that T-shirts appear to be available (though what's up with the Romanov eagle?).

Is this how types such as Galba and Otho would have behaved had they come to power in 1991? Was the Turkmenbashi in fact ahead of his time?

To end on a brighter note, Turkmen music is damn good.

Update: Ethnocynologist Steve Bodio reminds me that the Turkmens also have damn good dogs and horses. Well, they're Central Asians, so I take those accomplishments for granted. Always nice to ponder on them, though.

And still more, this time strictly Turkmen.

The closest humans have come to building a Death Star

Are other people as fascinated by North Korea as I am? The place is every bit as interesting and grimly enlightening as any dystopian science fiction. The main difference is that if you really contemplate the matter, it makes you want to hit someone in a way Brave New World does not. In any case, if you share my perverse and depressing fascination, don't miss the worst building in the world.

(Actually, isn't there something in San Francisco rather like it? Near Gough Street, I think, and visible from some distance? That was my first thought upon opening the link.)

And here's video of it. (The soundtrack elicited a perfect Pavlovian response from Mrs. P.: "I want sushi.")

Finally, lest you think that the poor devils are utterly unlike us, behold this footage of North Koreans viewing a group of South Korean pop tarts. Their response is much the same as mine.

Via the (other) Blowhards.

Sigh. I don't have a TV, so watching the candidates on online video was a depressing revelation (radio was bad enough). I wouldn't trust these people to change my oil. I think I really am going to vote for Brad. He was a damn good waiter, and that's no small accomplishment.

Moro Rogers is working on illustrations for C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, here and here. Looking forward to more!

UN peacekeepers are vandalizing rock art sites, reports the London Times. Sigh. At least these idiots were dumb enough (like a river passenger I once had) to sign and date their vandalism. For once, I wish the full wrath of European political correctitude may fall on their heads.

Via Cronaca.

William Wegman (the weimaraner guy) illustrates the current Met Opera season.

Meanwhile, back at Diablo Canyon....

We saw 3:10 to Yuma recently the recent remake, not the original), and I was highly pleased. It really is nice to see a well plotted, well acted (Russell Crowe is great, but I kept thinking, "How did Jack Aubrey become an old west outlaw?"), generally quality western, and looking at some home landscapes in cinematic context was an added treat. For instance, here we have the distinctive profile of Buckman Mesa beside Christian Bale's boot:

And here's Peter Fonda about to flip a stage coach in my old haunt of Diablo Canyon:

I actually wandered out there inadvertantly during filming to take a hike, and saw a flock of trailers and signs pointing toward various chase sequences. Through a remarkable act of willpower, I resisted the urge to climb the back of the mesa and trundle some rocks on the invaders, whoever they might be. In hindsight I regret it; I might have serendipitously contributed to a fine film. As I recall, they did manage to kill a horse with no help from me. What's a western movie without at least one dead horse?

On the other hand, what's with Hollywood's inveterate, unyeilding dyslexia in regard to landscapes? Yes, yes, it doesn't bother most audiences, nor should it really, but just once I'd like to see them get one right. 3:10 to Yuma is set in Arizona, but was obviously filmed entirely within about 30 miles of Santa Fe. Unbelievable as it may seem to the masses, most of New Mexico (particularly Santa Fe) looks nothing like most of Arizona (particularly Bisbee). Just once, just once I'd like to see a western in which landscape nerds like me could turn to our dates with a satisfied snigger and say (for instance), "See, Captain Gunnison's not being shot full of Paiute arrows just anywhere. That really is the Sevier Desert!" "Fremont's men are eating each other in the real La Garitas!" How cool would that be? Seems like we're about due for a new Apache movie, and wouldn't it be wonderful to see one filmed in vast, intricate, utterly bizarre landscapes of southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico instead of the done-to-death vistas of Monument Valley and southern Utah?

Sigh. No one likes my ideas. I spent half the afternoon imagining a western with a plot based on Njal's Saga.

Good music quote:

Twentieth-century music is like pedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance.

--Kingsley Amis, 1982

Quote found here, which discusses the problem at some length, and blames it largely on excessive taxpayer funding of the arts. We have made similar observations.

Hat tip: Blowhards.

"It's a story from long, long ago," continued the old man. "Once upon a time, there was a wise and able king who eagerly sought out capable people. He ordered that his minister find the smartest person in the entire realm, so as to appoint him the teacher of the prince. One day he could assist the prince when he ruled.

"The minister himself was extremely intelligent. He scoured the land, leaving no stone unturned, until he found the three smartest people. The minister thought of every way he could to test the three. But unexpectedly, he was unable to determine which one was smartest. The minister was embarrassed because the king had instructed him to find the single smartest person in the realm. He had to do something to find out who it was.

"After giving the matter much thought, he came up with a solution. He assembled the three people and asked them to look at five jade disks on a table. Then he said, 'Three of these jade disks are blue and two are green. I am going to blindfold you, after which I will place one disk on top of your head. Then I will remove the blindfolds. You will be able to see the disks on top of the others' heads but not the one on top of your own. You cannot speak nor gesture to one another, and anyone who breaks the rules will be put to death on the spot. The first one to guess the color of the disk on his own head will be deemed the smartest person in the land, and will become the prince's teacher. But if you guess incorrectly, you will be executed at once.'

"So saying, he blindfolded the three smart people and placed one jade disk on top of each one's head. Then he removed the blindfolds. The three people looked at one another for some time, but no one said a word. Finally, one of them got it, guessed the color of the disk on top of his head, and became the prince's teacher. Later he himself became minister and enjoyed wealth and a high position his entire life.

"So what color were the disks on top of the people's heads?"

--The City Trilogy, by Chang Hsi-kuo.

Oh, very well, here's something: the HMS Beagle Project.

In 2009, the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth we will launch a sailing replica of HMS Beagle. An icon of scientific progress, she will circumnavigate the globe in Darwin's wake, crewed by aspiring scientists and researchers. They will carry out original research both at sea and on land, updating Darwin's observations, breaking new scientific ground and relating the adventure of science to enthuse a new generation of young students.

The Project's blog is worth a glance as well, and shall presumably wax ever more interesting.

The aforementioned blog informs us that David Attenborough's next project shall be about Charles Darwin.

Finally and best, (indeed, worthy of near immortalization as the O&P Current Pick) is the Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary blog, daily entries from both Darwin's and Fitzroy's journals, plus illustrations!

Well, I again have a number-sorceror on retainer, but I still don't have much of interest, except some really great pictures of sharks. Some fantastic video of these breaching attacks may be found here.

Sorry for the silence, readers, but our computer is currently dead, possibly very dead indeed. In any case, I have little to report, save that the phrase "unseasonably cold temperatures" is highly irritating to hear on the radio in January.

The following manually type-written letter was on my desk this morning, with a note from my boss:
[Odious],
Please see me about this.

All was sic.

The 90th Birthday made L- the Queen of Queens, and I was happy to share this appreciative Wonder of the World so that it was doubly fun to make for the Employees some Barbecue Pork Ribs (nice Jewish goodies) my annual thank you.

As M- would tell you, I'm looking for a copy of recipe, the one which was name 'L-'s Recipe' which called for a certain type of Stewed Tomatoes from (so they said was in Washington State)raised. And having been a study of qualities of foods in my initial Wholesale Grocery, I called to ask "What particular area in Washington is it?" THEY WOULDN'T TELL ME until I sort of tempted them to be a special so that I didn't complain and guess what, It is going to be given to me to keep out of trouble, and I believe the [Grovery Store] is going to be honored so you all will become famous if M- finds the Soup*which your group called 'L-'s Soup'. *recipe.

Sincerely,

[redacted]

Megan McArdle provides the definitive food quote of the month (yes, I'm aware it's only the 3rd):

I abhor fake meat. If you really want anonymous grade-z vegetable matter pulverized into tiny pieces, assaulted with various chemicals, and then processed into something that at least superficially resembles a chicken muscle, I suggest you have the processing done by a chicken.

Indeed. And, mildly apropos, we are eagerly anticipating the impending delivery of our half a pig, from just a few miles down the valley. And to flaunt again without shame the agrarianism of our environs, Mrs. Peculiar recently noticed the following (paraphrased) on the wall of our bank:

Dear ________ Bank,

Thank you for buying my 4-H pig _______. She is very nice and smart. I hope she tastes good.

I'm sure she did, darling, no doubt she did. And no doubt ours too will attain such glory.

And the first of 2008: The canyons of far western Colorado, yesterday morning, with Utah's La Sal Mountains behind.

Be sure to enlarge the first two. Even large, Blogger compresses the detail.

The Last of 2007

And one last for the year: sunset ice on the Gunnison river. Happy New Year!

Year's End Outing with Rock Art

Here are some scenes of my last hike of the year, yesterday, in a very fine, moderately isolated canyon in western Colorado (the diligent can surely deduce the location, but my current stance is that nowhere needs any publicity whatsoever). First, the context, with frozen waterfall. The bedrock is basement metamorphic schist, overlaid by some odd red granitish stuff I couldn't place, followed by cliff-forming Wingate sandstone:

Unsurprisingly, the Indians liked this place. Inhabitants included Desert Archaic culture, possibly the Fremont and certainly historic Ute. One sees hand prints pretty often, but I was pleased to find one that strikes me as a bear print:

Some abstracts, in their spectacular gallery:

The same up close:

Historic Ute presence is clearly visible here. I hesitate to identify the beastie. The first thing that leapt to my mind, somehow, was horny toad, but it seems hard to justify any taxon with close examination:

An elegant pecked herbivore body, reminds me of the graceful forms of Old World rock art:

Another panel in splendid context:

Detail of above. Again, hand prints are common enough, but the unusual inclusion of the arm here conveys a reaching, grasping which is highly evocative. Though hardly objectivly warranted, thoughts come to the mind of desparation, clutching at the stone:

Finally, what can this engraving evoke save hunting magic? The bighorn sheep, perched in a high place, surveying the territory; likewise the artist/hunter, eulogizing his prey in stone as he too scans the canyon for another animal.

And so the author, high against the cliff, crouching and looking at the canyon, red stone, frozen stream, the tribes gone, the sheep still here.

Long time gone.

Well, I've got about an hour left of my twenties, but birthday presents are already open. Quite worthy of display are the following gifts, courtesy of the Querencia household: plush pathogens!

Click to enlarge: that's Typhoid, a very recognizable shepherd's crook Ebola and Salmonella in front; and Giardia in the back. Giardia definitely gets to come on my next commercial river trip, to the general edification no doubt. Hell, I've harboured him three times, I may as well be candid in my status as vector!

Things to which I look forward in 2008:

Update: Apologies: video is gone. It was the trailer for Life in Cold Blood, the upcoming BBC series with Attenborough on (at last) reptiles and amphibians.

Christmas has debauched our armadillo.

Happy New Year to all!

Christmas Linguistics: The word eggnog has recently been substantially antedated, by an impressive 51 years from its earliest citation in the OED.

Fog-drams i' th’ morn, or (better still) egg-nogg,
At night hot-suppings, and at mid-day, grogg,
My palate can regale

--A Glossary of Provincial and Archaic Words, Jonathan Boucher

It is also interesting that the earliest citation jumped a continent. The post cited asserts that a recipe for eggnog was found among Washington's papers at Mount Vernon.

Via Bradshaw of the Future, a blog which will of interest to those entertained by Indo-European roots.

Update: If you're truly interested, here's more.

Merry Christmas!

A bold new sport: Yak skiing, skiing uphill powered by ravenous yak via pulleys. If that's not a thrill, I don't know what is.

Rod Dreher reports that the always execrable Time magazine hoped to depict Vladimir Putin, their Man of the Year, iconographically on the magazine cover. Happily, they were apparently unable to find an iconographer willing thus to debase his craft.

Why has no one told me about this?

"OCW is a free publication of course materials used at MIT. Get lecture notes, problem sets, labs and more. Watch lecture videos and demonstrations. Study a wide variety of subjects."

And on to other things. I've still got a good many books, and one of them that I've been meaning to mention is the Art of Courtly Love, by Andreas Capellanus. It's a tongue in cheek handbook on Love, from getting to keeping to increasing. What struck me reading it was how perfectly applicable to high school romances it all was. Capellanus touches with a needle when he "say[s] and insist[s] that before his eighteenth year a man cannot be a true lover, because up to that age he is overcome with embarrassment over any little thing...." Tarkington's Seventeen might have been written with that maxim in mind.

Capellanus also is the first source I have encounter for the "base" system: the division of the advance of Love's player on the corners of the baseball diamond. He, of course, doesn't mention the game itself, but he does say that "[f]rom ancient times four distinct stages have been established in love: the first consists in the giving of hope, the second in the granting of a kiss, the third in the enjoyment of an embrace, and the fourth culminates in the yielding of the whole person." I was never quite clear what second and third were, but now I have a 12th century authority.

The Art of Courtly Love's worth reading just for the odd power system it espouses, in which the lover must do whatever his beloved--or indeed any woman--commands, and the woman is free to choose whichever lover she finds most admirable; but she must choose. A woman who never chooses a lover is, in one elaborate allegory designed to unlace a pretty bodice, doomed in a strange afterlife to wear fox skins in burning heat while riding in Love's train, then to sit upon thorns and been jounced by men much to her discomfort. Whereas a woman who takes a lover may therefore much improve him, and thereby win great renown. It's a strange book, and even as exaggeration points to a perturbed state of things. I shall close with Love's rules, as won by an unnamed knight (I think Lancelot) from King Arthur's court.

I. Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
II. He who is not jealous cannot love.
III. No one can be bound by a double love.
IV. It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
V. That which a lover takes against his will of his beloved has no relish.
VI. Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity.
VII. When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
VIII. No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
IX. No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love.
X. Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.
XI. It is not proper to love any woman whom one should be ashamed to seek to marry.
XII. A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.
XIII. When made public love rarely endures.
XIV. The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
XV. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
XVI. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
XVII. A new love puts to flight an old one.
XVIII. Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
XIX. If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
XX. A man in love is always apprehensive.
XXI. Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
XXII. Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.
XXIII. He whom the thought of love vexes, eats and sleeps very little.
XXIV. Every act of a lover ends with in the thought of his beloved.
XXV. A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
XXVI. Love can deny nothing to love.
XXVII. A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
XXVIII. A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.
XXIX. A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
XXX. A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
XXXI. Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.

The White Tiger left, and the Black Tortoise showed his usual abominable character. We were lucky, when the floods came: our house was on a hill and it only covered the road in front of us. Neighbors would reach the puddle, get out of their cars, and tromp up the driveway in enormous boots to find out if they could get through. Pick-ups, yes. One remarkable woman in a minivan, barely. Anybody in a car, nope.

A flood may be the most boring natural disaster I've ever witnessed. Water rises without the drama of a good fire or the howl of wind. It doesn't have a barren beauty to it the way a blizzard can. It's brown, dull, and kills more people ever year than any other act of nature. The town up the highway from us, Vernonia, had more than half its houses flooded and three-quarters of its businesses. Like I said, we were lucky--we only lost the things we had in a storage locker outside of town.

Unfortunately, those things included many of our books. Most are replaceable, but the sight of my signed copy of Tam Lin lying in muddy sewage was a wrench. My wife lost her correspondence from childhood: over twenty years of pen pals, kindred spirits, and her magazine for girls. The Principia Dana gave me for proof-reading it is gone.

These are replaceable things, mostly. They were solid memories, and we still have the ideal ones to treasure. But for the first time I understood Xerxes. If I'd had an army, they'd have been lashing the Nehalem.

Since Boreas has at last graced us with his icy breath, sadly putting our Thai Mouse Shit chili plant on its last legs, I thought I'd follow up last month's winter poetry and art. I was reminded of the following by Steve; I hadn't thought of it in quite some time:

October Dawn

October is marigold, and yet
A glass half full of wine left out

To the dark heaven all night, by dawn
Has dreamed a premonition

Of ice across its eye as if
The ice-age had begun to heave.

The lawn overtrodden and strewn
From the night before, and the whistling green

Shrubbery are doomed. Ice
Has got its spearhead into place.

First a skin, delicately here
Restraining a ripple from the air;

Soon plate and rivet on pond and brook;
Then tons of chain and massive lock

To hold rivers. Then, sound by sight
Will Mammoth and Saber-tooth celebrate

Reunion while a fist of cold
Squeezes the fire at the core of the world,

Squeezes the fire at the core of the heart,
And now it is about to start.

--Ted Hughes

Provided with the happy excuse of books to review, biologist Tim Flannery rhapsodizes about the wonders of the deep. Excellent passage:

To understand the full extent of the constraints that the abyss places on life, consider the black seadevil. It's a somber, grapefruit-sized globe of a fish—seemingly all fangs and gape—with a "fishing rod" affixed between its eyes whose luminescent bait jerks above the trap-like mouth. Clearly, food is a priority for this creature, for it can swallow a victim nearly as large as itself. But that is only half the story, for this description pertains solely to the female: the male is a minnow-like being content to feed on specks in the sea—until, that is, he encounters his sexual partner.

The first time that a male black seadevil meets his much larger mate, he bites her and never lets go. Over time, his veins and arteries grow together with hers, until he becomes a fetus-like dependent who receives from his mate's blood all the food, oxygen, and hormones he requires to exist. The cost of this utter dependence is a loss of function in all of his organs except his testicles, but even these, it seems, are stimulated to action solely at the pleasure of the engulfing female. When she has had her way with him, the male seadevil simply vanishes, having been completely absorbed and dissipated into the flesh of his paramour, leaving her free to seek another mate. Not even Dante imagined such a fate.

A very different age of nature documentary: Frank Buck's film of tiger vs. python. If you read the article, you'll see that the python was at a very unfair disadvantage. The film is here. This is as good a time as any to point out: Per their fallback editorial policy, Odious & Peculiar make no strict claims regarding the veracity of anything.

Also: documentary filmmakers vs. python. Ha!

Sigh. I always neglect to keep up on the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, and when I do check in I feel woefully inadequate as a blogger. What can one do but link?

Extensive subterranean cities of Cappadocia, much vaster than I was aware.

Monastic self-mummification in northern Japan.

The Legend of Belovodye, the Russian Orthodox Shangri-La, often alleged to be located in the Altai Mountains. It's not hard to see why. Of course, this sort of thing is no less problematic in Russian Orthodoxy than anywhere else.

Tipped off by SummitPost, which provides the following, though without a source, alas:

The roots of this myth go back to the violent schism of Russian Orthodox Church of XVII century. The Old Believers were persecuted and their prisoner labor has been widely used in Czarist Russia since late XVII century. An imperial decree of 1737 ordered their use at the Factories and Mines of the Treasury in Siberia. In 1762 another decree offered Old Order refugees in Poland assistance to resettle in Altay. Although escapes from the mines were severely punished, by early XIX century the secret villages of Old Believers abounded in the taiga of Altay.

About the same time, Arkady Belovodsky, an impostor "envoy" from the Hidden Kingdom of Bolovod'ye, started preaching among the European Old Believers about his mystical, powerful country in the East, somewhere beyond China. The White Waters Land of Arkady's sermons retained pre-schism Antioch [sic] Orthodoxy, with seven hundred churches on a huge island. It had a distinctly Shambhala-like quality in that only the truly enlightened people could reach the White Waters.

Also about the same time, a splinter Old Order group formed the Community of Truly Orthodox Travelers, better known simply as the Runners. They moved from a safe house to a safe house using hand-written route charts.

By 1830s, these three developments crystallized together into the Old Believer quest for Altay Belovod'ye. Believers were trickling from all over Russia, guided by their route-scripts. Some sought the Hidden Land up in the highlands, where all the peaks where called, indeed, Whites. Other continued up Bukhtarma Valley and crossed the border with China. The Old Believers' searches for White Water Land did not abate until 1910s. Today's folk wisdom in Russia pretty much equates White Water Land with the White Peaks of Altay.

Old Believers, incidently, are alive and well. Mrs. Peculiar relates a story of one of her goofy, earnest Orthodox convert friends who noticed a picturesque Orthodox church somewhere in the upper Midwest and knocked on the door. He was answered by a harried, bearded fellow, who, after his visitor had tried to engage him in chat about contemporary American Orthodoxy, burst out, "Why must you yet be persecuting us?" And there are a fair number of them in Alaska. When I spent a stormy January week at a (non-Old Believer) monastary in the Kodiak Archipelago, we saw a fishing boat venturing toward the open sea in atrocious weather one morning. "Old Believers," the monks informed me, "They're always the ones heading to sea when no one else would set foot on a boat."

Speaking of successful upstarts, we saw a fantastic show a week ago in Montrose, Colorado by our classmate from St. John's, Eilen Jewell (warning: sound), who I'm happy to say is doing quite well:



The sound quality in the video doesn't do her justice, but there are several good samples on her web site. Think Gillian Welch with the benefit of some uppers, or maybe June Carter. And her guitarist is a serious, razor-sharp Rockabilly man. Here's a performance of her most upbeat radio hit, and here's her eulogy to Boundary County, Idaho (her native and my favorite state). I'm very glad that old-fashioned country and Rockabilly is gaining popularity and that performers with taste are able to thrive; it's one of the few happy trends to be found in pop culture.

And if you're in a musical mood, definitely don't miss this number, courtesy of 2 Blowhards, with Guy Clark and Emmylou Harris:




Guy Clark's songwriting is increasingly one of my favorite things going, and he and Emmylou together are magic. Another from the pair: Black Diamond Strings.

Via Instapundit, a nice discussion of the stifling effect regulatory burdens place on small businesses and small-scale entrepreneurs. The whole point is well encapsulated in the final paragraphs:

Those who push for federal regulations to rein in "big business" often don't realize that the biggest of big businesses don't mind heavy federal regulation at all. They have the resources to comply with them, not to mention the clout in Washington to get the regulations written in a way that most hurts upstarts and competitors.

Big businesses know that a heavy regulatory burden is the best way to make sure small- and medium-sized businesses never rise up to challenge them.

This has been on our minds lately. Mrs. Peculiar has lately stumbled into a fair bit of demand for a certain home-made product. But to make her enterprise legal would require a $15,000 piece of equipment (and likely much else besides), to do $50 worth of business weekly. It should come as no surprise that chains are dominating our economy when would-be upstarts are subject to hurdles no sane family would choose to inflict on itself for highly dubious rewards. Who wants to attract venture capital just to make some extra beer money on the weekends? But surely that's how a lot of innovative businesses got their start.

On the other hand, it is a pleasure to live in one of Colorado's (and probably the nation's) least regulated counties. It shows. It would take us forty minutes to get to a fast food restaurant, two towns away, but the number of small business owners, entrepreneurs and random folks with pet projects is highly encouraging.

For any readers who, like me, don't generally happen across media coverage of such things, Odious is referring to this (check out the slide show). They're a few miles down the road. It's good to hear from him.

We're not underwater, but it was a near thing. Everyone is fine; more information when I'm sure the phones won't go out.

It's been quite a while since we've changed the current pick in the sidebar, so here you are: the truly excellent mammoth of last year's holiday season from the brush of Olduvai George. The gentleman's blog is currently idling, but his site linked above is full of excellent biophilic art, with an emphasis on the prehistoric and extinct. A perusal is well worth your time.