The 50-State Interview Series Continues with Our Maine Attraction: Eva Gallant!

[Welcome to readers linking here from Wikileaks, which just posted a confidential State Department cable revealing that the U.S. Government gets all its diplomacy tips from The LG Report!]
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Regular readers of The LG Report (and constipated ones too) know that we don't normally use people's last names -- a practice which keeps lawsuits to a minimum -- but we're making an exception today for renowned blogger Eva Gallant of Maine. 

Eva writes the hugely successful blog "Wrestling With Retirement" which can be accessed by clicking HERE.

Eva graciously agreed to be the subject of our 50-State Interview Series installment on the great state of Maine.  [Yes, we're just randomly bold-facing words at the moment, please bear with us.]

For those of you who want to take a nostalgic look back, and we know there are many, here are links to interviews for Massachusetts,   Florida,   Pennsylvania,   California,   Montana , Ohio,  and the one that kicked it all off, New York.     

So, without further delay, let's put Eva in the hotseat...




The LG Report: Why are Maine lobsters so big and tasty? What makes them better than Kansas lobsters?

Eva Gallant: Everyone knows that Kansas Lobsters are wheat- fed and are raised in wheat fields. The lack of ocean water causes them to be rather dry, like Maine humor. Maine Lobsters are raised on Maine Potatoes and Maine Blueberries. Did you know Maine and Michigan grow more blueberries than any of the other states? And considering the difference in geographic size, it’s amazing that Maine and Michigan are so close in the quantities grown…whoops, did I stray off the subject there? Maine Lobsters are raised on Maine Potatoes and Blueberries and can play guitar and swim in the ocean whenever they want!




A rockin' Maine lobster shows his guitar talents.

 LGR:  Did your car break down in Maine or are you hiding from the law?

EG: Actually, I have a house arrest ankle bracelet that restricts me to the state of Maine. If I cross the border, the authorities are alerted and show up out of nowhere to escort me back.

Please note electronic ankle monitoring device on right leg.  They come in five colors to match any shoe.

LGR:  The Maine winter. Please explain.

EG:  Maine has two seasons: Winter and summer. Summer arrives July 1st and makes its exit on or about July 23rd.

LGR:  Rumor is that there is no "Eva Gallant," and that you're really Stephen King. Please respond. And please don't drop a bucket of blood on us for asking.

EG:  It’s a valid question, since Stephen King is the only Maine Writer that anyone outside of the state has ever heard mentioned. In reality, I’ve never met him, but my best friend from high school’s ex-husband took a writing class with him back in the 60s before he became famous. Does that count?

LGR:  Are you related to "Gallant" of the "Goofus and Gallant" feature in Highlights Magazine, a staple of every dentist's office? If you'll recall, Gallant always did the right thing, and Goofus was always getting in trouble. Can you tell us about one of your own Goofus moments in life?

EG:  Most of my Goofus moments can be found on my blog. Click  HERE  or HERE  to read about two of them.

LGR:  What's the best tourist attraction in Maine, one that should not be missed by any of the 468,567 readers of The LG Report who'll descend on your state this summer after reading this interview? Please give us something that only a local would know.

EG:  Probably the “Seven Wonders of God’s Creatures," in Houlton, Maine. It’s truly unique and something you would find nowhere else!



 [For more information on this unique Maine tourist attraction, please click HERE. ]

Of course, if it’s just plain beauty that you’re looking for, Maine is loaded with beaches, lighthouses, rocky cliffs overlooking the ocean, I could go on and on. Acadia National Park would be the best place, but even President Obama knows about that place. I don’t think he’s visited the Seven Wonders.

LGR:  Did your husband's last name create unrealistic expectations among your family before the marriage?



Eva's competition fighting for business back in the day.

EG: They were just relieved that I was finally done walking the streets with my mattress on my back.

LGR:  You are wrestling with retirement. Have you ever accidentally touched his junk while wrestling? Don't be embarrassed to reveal the truth, nobody really reads The LG Report anyway.  This is just between us.

EG:  Accidently? (Giggle) Never! But I can tell you, that’s some tired junk!

LGR:  If you couldn't live in Maine, what state would you live in and why?

EG:  The state of constant inebriation; ‘cause I couldn’t face life outside of Maine for a very long period of time any other way!



Geo tries to avoid his fans with a disguise

 LGR:  We know that you don't know Geo, but for this question, just assume that to know him is to want to kill him. If Geo came to Maine and asked you to be his tour guide, how would you accidentally knock him off:

a. Take him onto a boat and induce him to crawl into a lobster trap to get a better look and then slam it closed and throw it overboard after jabbing him a few times with your sailor's knife?

b. Get him the first spot in line at the LL. Bean Outlet in Freeport on Black Friday so that he will be trampled to death by bargain hunters?

c. Upon first meeting, shoot him in the face with your 12-gauge and then simply say to the police "Sorry, I thought he was a moose. But he's from New York, so who cares?"

Note: If you have another creative Maine-centric way to kill Geo please let us know.

EG:  I kinda’ like “C” but it would probably be easier to just take him up north and leave him in the Allagash. If the bears don’t get him, come spring the black flies will!

LGR:  Do you ever get sick of all those businesses with names based on puns of the word "Maine," like "Maine Event," "Maine Street," "Trim Your Maine" and "Maine-ly Clothes?

EG:  There are 25 businesses based on that pun in my area phonebook alone! I Maine-ly ignore them!

LGR:  Do you ever plan on moving back to the United States?

EG:  I thought I might retire there……whoops, I’m already retired. Oh, well, maybe in my next life!

LGR:  Would you consider yourself to be Maine's #1 blogger? You have this honor according to The LG Report.

EG:  That’s a pretty good possibility, since only about 5 households in Maine actually have electricity, and if you don’t count the blogs sent by smoke signals.
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That's it for this posting folks, our warmest thanks to Eva Gallant for being our main Maine interview subject and discussing Maine-stream issues with us.  Eva will receive the same LG Report gift that all of our other interview subjects have received, namely "stu gots" as our Italian friends would say.  And if you have some time, please check out Eva's Blog, it's very entertaining.

We thank everyone for stopping by and we hope to see you here again soon!

Plymouth Plantation: The First Thanksgiving

by Michael Kaplan

The First Thanksgiving. An idealized portrayal by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris, 1912-15.

“Our corn [meaning wheat]  did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good, but our peas not worth the gathering, for we feared they were too late sown, they came up very well, and blossomed, but the sun parched them in the blossom. Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after have a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors; they four in one day killed as much fowl, as with a little help beside, served the company almost a week, at which time amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain, and others.  And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” 

This is Edward Winslow’s firsthand account of the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation in 1621. It is one of only two primary sources that describe a scene that has become one of the mythic touchstones of American history. The Pilgrims, a small band of sturdy, self-reliant, God-fearing people, crossed the Atlantic on a leaky ship, the Mayflower, endured much hardship to settle a wilderness where they could govern themselves freely and worship as they chose. This inspired the ideal image that Americans have of themselves: heroic pioneers who risk all for the sake of liberty.

Here is the other primary account, from Governor William Bradford’s history of the colony, Of Plymouth Plantation:

They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was a great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.

What Winslow and Bradford described was a traditional English harvest festival, a secular celebration of medieval origins, devoted to eating, drinking, and making merry. But this first Thanksgiving was also a Puritan rite of spiritual devotion. Contrary to the popular image, the Puritans were not sour and morose people; they knew how to have fun. But the demands of heaven took precedence over those of earth. We don’t know the exact date it was held; a nineteenth-century historian estimated that it was probably between September 23 and November 11 and most likely in October, soon after the Pilgrims had harvested their first crop of corn, squash, beans, barley, and peas. It was only after the crisis of King Philip’s War in 1676 that Thanksgiving became an annual event in New England, held on a Thursday in November or December. This was a more solemn occasion of fasting, feasting, and sermonizing, reminding the colonists that New England was founded as a holy experiment. It was not until 1863, at the height of the Civil War, that Abraham Lincoln established the last Thursday in November as the national Thanksgiving holiday that we celebrate today.

Edward Winslow in 1651.

The real importance of the harvest festival in 1621 was the cementing of an alliance between the vulnerable settlers of Plymouth and the Pokanoket tribe (a branch of Wampanoag nation) of Chief Massasoit. The Pilgrims would not have survived without the generosity of the Native American Indians. Much of Winslow’s and Bradford’s chronicles of the colony’s first year are devoted to the complex diplomatic dance that brought this alliance into being.

36° Matt Stone (- 25)

Classement 2010 - 36° / Classement 2009 - 11°

38° Andres Velencoso Segura - +39

Classement 2010 - 38° / Classement 2009 - 87°

pub Allure Homme Sport Chanel

Leftovers

It's the day after Thanksgiving and leftovers are everywhere, even here at The LG Report.  Strictly speaking, these aren't actual leftovers, but they feel that way, so we're going with it.

Let's face it, you're so leftover-fatigued by now that you won't know the difference. 


Yesterday started off with LG's sister, MIG, ordering him (she was channeling her inner drill sergeant) to go to the store, on an Emergency/ASAP basis, to buy a turkey baster.  MIG was preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for nine people and she had no turkey baster.  Apparently LG wasn't moving fast enough, because she called him a name that sounded like a derivative of the word "baster."

If LG ever prepares a full Thanksgiving dinner for nine people (highly unlikely), here will be his shopping list:

1. Turkey
2. Turkey baster
3. The rest

As you most likely know, only fools go to the supermarket to buy last-minute items on Thanksgiving Day. 

LG went to the supermarket to buy last-minute items on Thanksgiving Day. 



She's smiling now.  Wait until he pulls out the AARP card.


Here's what LG really loves: When he's in line at a checkout behind someone who appears oblivious, as if they've just smoked a Cheech-and-Chong-style fattie, while the cashier rings up an order that could feed the Fifth Battalion.  Then, when the tabulation is complete, the customer appears shocked that they're expected to produce payment.  It's only at this point that the clueless dope begins rooting around to find their form of payment.  This process usually takes several minutes.  And, in the case of many women, as we've covered previously in this space, it results in the emergence of the dreaded checkbook. 

Aaaaaaagh! 

Pull up a chair and take a load off, you'll be here a while.

The whole supermarket-on-Thanksgiving experience sucked.  Of course, LG won't have to worry about it next year, because after MIG reads this, here's where he'll be eating his next Thanksgiving dinner:

We hear that the Grand Slam Turkey Dinner is not so bad.

Noit Update: Some of you know Noit and/or will remember the story of how he landed in the hospital following a fall from a tree last month.  We're happy to report that Noit is in a rehab center and progressing nicely.  He will, hopefully, be home before Christmas.  He certainly has learned his lesson: Noit is so cautious now that he won't even look up his family tree (ba dump.)    

Here's a photo from LG's visit with Noit last week:

Noit uses his bandaged arm to wrestle with a donut. Nutritional therapies are clearly not part of his recovery process.



Our last item of the day:

Notice the "Throwback - Made with real sugar, Limited time only" claim?  Back in the early 1980s, LG worked at a 7Up distributorship for four summers.  The weathered veterans used to wax nostalgic for the old days when soda manufacturers used real sugar in their beverages (long since replaced by corn syrup, fructose and other, cheaper, sweeteners).  They said that the real sugar soda tasted remarkably better.  So when LG saw the Pepsi bottle above, he jumped at the chance to try it for himself.

The Verdict: Same crap.  Basically indistinguishable.  Just another corporate fraud.  Or maybe the weathered veterans were just pulling LG's leg.  Either way, don't waste your money on "Throwback" soda.  Throw it back.  That's your LG Report Consumer Tip of the Day. 

Oh, yeah, and make sure you have a turkey baster in your house before Thanksgiving Day, unless you want to stand in line behind a lady with a checkbook. 

See you back here again soon kids!



George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation: Divine Providence and American Exceptionalism

by Michael Kaplan

On October 7, 1789, President George Washington issued this proclamation establishing November 26 as a holiday to acknowledge God’s providential role in the creation of the United States, the establishment of the Constitution, and the preservation of liberty.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th. day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquillity, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

This is how it appeared in The Massachusetts Centinel, on October 14, 1789:

And here is an image of the original document in Washington’s own hand from The Library of Congress:



And here is a modern reading on YouTube:

The federal government had been operating a mere seven months when Washington issued this proclamation. There were no guarantees that the American experiment in liberty and self-government would succeed. Indeed the new government would soon be embroiled in rancorous political and ideological conflict over Alexander Hamilton’s program for economic modernization and the consolidation of federal power, which would lead to the creation of the first political parties. This would be followed by the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, twenty-two years of war-to-the-death between Britain and France, which the new United States would barely survive intact. Andrew Jackson’s decisive victory over the British at New Orleans in January 1815, which guaranteed America’s survival and prospects for future greatness, has obscured just how perilous the preceeding years had been. Remember, only four months before Old Hickory’s triumph, the British had captured Washington, DC and burned the White House and the Capitol. America’s long-term prospects had always been boundless; but only if she could weather the storms of domestic and international turmoil in the short term.

Washington understood all too well what was at stake in 1789. America needed all the help she could get for the challenges that lay ahead. Indeed, Washington saw the hand of God at work in the course of the American Revolution. He had said it was “little short of a standing miracle” that the United States had won the War of Independence against the mighty British empire. As the commander in chief told his best general, Nathanael Greene, at the close of the war:

If Historiographers should be hardy enough to fill the page of History with the advantages that have been gained with unequal numbers (on the part of America) in the course of this contest, and attempt to relate the distressing circumstances under which they have been obtained, it is more than probable that Posterity will bestow on their labors the epithet and marks of fiction; for it will not be believed that such a force as Great Britain has employed for eight years in this Country could be baffled in their plan of Subjugating it by numbers infinitely less, composed of Men oftentimes half starved; always in Rags, without pay, and experiencing, at times, every species of distress which human nature is capable of undergoing.

Washington said much the same in his farewell orders to his soldiers and officers:

A contemplation of the compleat attainment (at a period earlier than could have been expected) of the object for which we contended against so formidable a power cannot but inspire us with astonishment and gratitude. The disadvantageous circumstances on our part, under which the war was undertaken, can never be forgotten. The singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were such, as could scarcely escape the attention of the most unobserving; while the unparalleled perseverence of the Armies of the U States, through almost every possible suffering and discouragement for the space of eight long years, was little short of a standing miracle.

The war could not have been won, Washington emphasized, without the heroic exertions and sacrifices made by those Americans, aided by Divine Providence, who put their lives on the line in what often seemed a hopeless cause.

It is not the meaning nor within the compass of this address to detail the hardships peculiarly incident to our service, or to describe the distresses, which in several instances have resulted from the extremes of hunger and nakedness, combined with the rigours of an inclement season; nor is it necessary to dwell on the dark side of our past affairs. Every American Officer and Soldier must now console himself for any unpleasant circumstances which may have occurred by a recollection of the uncommon scenes in which he has been called to Act no inglorious part, and the astonishing events of which he has been a witness, events which have seldom if ever before taken place on the stage of human action, nor can they probably ever happen again. For who has before seen a disciplined Army form’d at once from such raw materials? Who, that was not a witness, could imagine that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed, by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers, or who, that was not on the spot, can trace the steps by which such a wonderful revolution has been effected, and such a glorious period put to all our warlike toils?

By putting aside their local and sectional jealousies, enduring untold hardships and privations, and forging a national identity in the crucible of the war, the men of the Continental Army had secured the independence of their (sometimes ungrateful) fellow Americans. Victory gave Americans the opportunity to pursue happiness. “It is universally acknowledged,” Washington told the men, “that the enlarged prospects of happiness, opened by the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, almost exceeds the power of description. . . . In such a Country, so happily circumstanced, the pursuits of Commerce and the cultivation of the soil will unfold to industry the certain road to competence.” Or, as historian John Ferling writes in the conclusion to his magisterial history of the Revolutionary War: “The American people and their soldiers, not just General Washington, had endured to gain a victory that, they prayed, would usher in a world filled with greater promise than would have been their lot under aristocratic, monarchical Great Britain.” (Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence [New York: Oxford University Press, 2007], p. 575.) Six years later, President Washington and the American people were embarking on a new stage in the journey to make that hope a reality.

American exceptionalism, Washington firmly believed, rested on Divine Providence. In this Thanksgiving Proclamation, the president was asking the American people to acknowledge the miracle of their new nation and the God-given gift of liberty. These are thoughts we should all keep in mind as we celebrate and count our blessings this Thanksgiving Day.

© 2010 Michael Kaplan

One Nation Under Starbuck$

We don't know if you've noticed, but many of those stores that advertise "We Buy Gold, Highest Prices Paid!" are now buying Starbuck$ drinks because, on a per-ounce basis, Starbuck$ liquids cost more.  A lot more.


One of LG's strategies in offsetting the high price of Starbuck$ drinks (besides the obvious: don't purchase them, which nobody in America seems to be able to do...) is to grab at least a week's worth of free napkins for his home on the way out the door.  Sometimes, if none of the fancily-named Baristas are paying attention, LG will also grab a chair or small table to take with him.  Hey, there's no price tag on them, they must be free too!  It seems to LG that the profit margin of one of their "vente" lattes takes into account the stealing of a chair.  LG's next ploy may be to build a house out of the free coffee stirrers.   

Starbuck$ took its name from Starbuck, the first mate on the Pequod, the main ship in Herman Melville's great American novel "Moby Dick."  That's a fact, Jack.  Note: many people erroneously think that the character Starbuck was known for drinking a lot of coffee in the book.  That's not true.  At least not according to the Cliff Notes.  That was a good enough source of information for you in college, why stop relying on it now?

Here's a map of where Starbuck$ stores are located in the United States.  The light gray area shows where an actual Starbuck$ is located (the dark gray outlined areas show the boundaries of Starbuck$ sales districts):

A team of NASA astronomers recently discovered that there are now more Starbuck$ locations in the world than there are stars in the universe.

We'll leave you with a couple of Starbuck$-related images:

A typical line of Starbuck$ patrons awaiting their morning cup of Joe.  There are two more Starbuck$ across the street.

 

 

There's enough scratch here to buy a vente latte for yourself and two more for your friends!

That's it for today folks.  Please check back again soon, we have a lot in store, including, from Maine, the next installment of our LG Report 50-State Interview Series (And you thought we forgot about that, didn't you? Sorry, no...)  


Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Welsh actors hope to conquer America -- like Andy

Inspiration to many and in more ways than one...

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/11/07/welsh-actors-hope-to-conquer-america-91466-27614029/

World's Best Pumpkin Pie Recipe...And How To Tell If You're A Total Loser

[Interesting Tidbit: 87% of The LG Report readers say it's their sole source of world news.*]

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*By using an odd number like 87%, we hope to make this totally-fabricated figure seem believable.

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LG is not having a good day.  He went to the local McDonald's and they would only sell him a "Melancholy Meal."  They said he didn't deserve a Happy Meal. 

Bummer.

He's also not feeling good about that picture, just below, of a slice of delicious-looking pumpkin pie.  Linger over the photo, let the imaginary smell of warm pumpkin pie, topped with freshly-whipped cream, rise up into your nostrils, igniting a holiday sensory explosion in your brain.  Wow, that's good!

Now read on for an explanation of why this is all a despicable and cheap fraud...

Do you see that box on the right labeled "Feedjit?"  It chronicles the locations of people clicking onto The LG Report. It also, in some cases, reveals the specific phrase that those people were searching when they found The LG Report.  LG has noticed that a lot of people find us when searching "The World's Best Cheesecake Recipe."  Recipes are apparently a big hit on the internet.  If you remember that post, which can be found by CLICKING HERE, it was rather deceptive.  But in a funny way.

So we gave today's entry a title which includes the words "World's Best Pumpkin Pie Recipe" to see how many hits it brings.  You too can play along with this exciting game by checking back frequently to see how many suckers are being lured in by this deceitful ploy.  Sorry, but the click-whores in The LG Report's corporate office made us do it.  Greedy people run the world.  Goldman Sachs is rumored to be trying to purchase The LG Report.  Feel free to spread that rumor as much as you'd like.  In fact, we can probably get even more hits by typing: "Money-Making Secrets of Goldman Sachs!" 

Those still interested in making a pumpkin pie can CLICK HERE  to find a nice recipe from the good folks at The Food Network.  See, there is some justice in the world (although we suspect that people who were truly searching for a kick-ass pumpkin pie recipe didn't bother reading down this far.  Their loss.

Next issue:

HOW TO TELL IF YOU'RE A TOTAL LOSER [which you personally can't be since you're cool enough to read The LG Report.]

Here it is, a simple test:

The LG Report thanks Chris in Boston, inventor of Kring Krang, for this photo.

If you have Facebook friended an inanimate object, such as a parking garage, then you are a TOTAL loser. Seriously, friends with a parking garage?  Do you have a weekly poker game with the local mailbox and two fire hydrants?  Are you dating a warehouse? 

And finally, we put on our National Enquirer hat for a moment to reveal the first-ever picture of Geo's love child with Tiny Tim.  [Geo, by the way, was the one who gave us the idea for the "World's Greatest Pumpkin Pie Recipe" fraud, so feel free to kick him in the junk when you see him.] 

Here he/she/it is:

The love child was spotted coming out of the apartment of his/her/its best friend, a Parking Garage.

That's all for today folks, go forth and prosper, but don't forget to check back often.  See you soon!

Added/corrected info in Bio

"Whitfield will make a brief appearance in the prequel mini-series Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, scheduled to premiere in January 2011."

* Added to Bio. Taken from reference: "'Spartacus': 'Gods of the Arena' or gods of TV?". TCA Press Tour. Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/08/tca-press-tour-spartacus-gods-of-the-arena-.html. Retrieved 7 October 2010.

Also correction : spouse - Terrica Smith-Whitfield (1999–2003)

Two Pictures for Two-sDay

Warning: Objects may be closer than they appear in the blog.
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LG is a bit disappointed today.  Last week The LG Report was up to a record 46 followers, but now we notice that we're back down to 45.  We'll let the hounds loose to track down our escapee.  We don't know who deserted us, but we'll probably find him hiding in a barn in a nearby village.  Must be a fan of San Antonio who took exception to our previous post.  Maybe he's hiding in the Alamo. 

Our tasers are set on "high" and the fugitive will be subjected to a Homeland Security-style full-body scan and an "aggressive" pat down search.  All of our guards are nicknamed "Fred Sanford" because they are not shy about touching your junk. 

The rest of you who stayed behind and didn't race through that hole in the fence will be given an extra cookie and an extra hour of TV after dinner.  We reward good behavior around here.

OK, back to our "Two Pictures for Two-sDay" theme.  In bloggerland, it's quite common to make up new (and lame) themes as needed.  Whatever works and is convenient.  LG had two pictures to post today so, presto, the new theme. 

One picture is old and one is new.  Sorry girls, but nothing here is borrowed or blue.

Here's the first shot, circa 2000:

 
This is a Halloween photo of good friends of LG's who live in Connecticut.  As LG recalls, they were the "Garbage Family" that year.  A somewhat random and wacky idea, but, let's be frank: it fits perfectly with this blog.  Look at the son on the left.  Have you ever seen a kid less happy to be in a Halloween photo?  LG is not sure if the Rod Stewart hair was real or a wig.  LG is pretty sure that the youngest boy, in the middle, had not graduated from anything at that point in his life, despite the graduation cap, and LG knows for a fact that the oldest, on the right, was not studying at Boston College at the time.  Overall, LG's friends did a great job with this costume.  They'd fit right in in San Antonio.  Did we just lose another follower?

This second, and final, photo of the day is quite special.  We've been told by New York art dealers that we can expect it to one day hang in The Louvre or The Favre or one of those other great international museums. 

According to experts, it should fetch at auction (sometime in the next five years) between $29 million and $43 million.  An eccentric industrialist from Switzerland is the most likely buyer.  The name of this great work of photographic artistry, which LG snapped himself on Saturday, is simply "The Great Coincidence."

Here, feast your eyes:

That's all for today folks, please check back again soon.  Thanks for stopping by, as always! 


      
 

What the Saudi Royals Really Think of America: The Unkind Musings of Princess Reem Al-Faisal

by Michael Kaplan

I came upon a reference to this article in the conclusion to Amy Chua’s book, Day of Empire. Chua, who teaches at Yale Law School, was discussing the impact anti-Americanism, which is most virulent in the Islamic world, might have on America’s future prospects as a democratic hyperpower and civilizational empire. The author of the op-ed, in the English-language Arab News, is Princess Reem Al-Faisal, a professional photographer and granddaughter of the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. The princess wrote this screed, worthy of the most rabid America haters on the left, early in the Iraq War in 2003.

Mekkah Mosque during the Haj. By Reem Al-Faisal

The American people, her royal highness proclaims, must get over their obsession with American exceptionalism; for American history is nothing more than a chronicle of unrelieved oppression, atrocity, and misery without precedent in human existence. The American character, in Princess Reem’s considered opinion, is evil and rotten to the core. Here is the full piece:

The Americans insist that most criticism directed toward their policies stems from a deep-seated anti-Americanism, which the entire world has been suffering from since the founding of the US.

In fact I find that the world has been more than forgiving toward the Americans from the very beginning.

If you take a quick look at American history, you will realize instantly that the atrocities committed by the Americans on their fellow man might be one of the worst in human history, and that’s saying much—one, because humanity has reached levels of evil that no other creature on earth can compete with, and two, because the very short history of the American nation makes its crimes even more shocking when compared with other, more ancient lands.

The Americans are responsible for one of the most thorough and extreme genocides in history, that of the Native Americans. Yet the world still sees it as a benign and innocent state which faced great challenges and surmounted them through ingenuity and perseverance. As the Americans proceeded to the extermination of the native people of the land they were conquering, the world looked the other way even though it was generally well documented and the few of them who are left still suffer from discrimination to this day.

After the Native Americans came the African continent. An entire continent was depleted of its richest resource — its people. Four hundred years of a predatory policy in Africa left it crippled and mutilated, and it will take several centuries for it to be restored to its original self—a land of plenty and wealth, a dignified land.

How dare America look the rest of the world in the face, when it refuses even to admit or ask forgiveness from just these people it has so wronged.

You talk about anti-Americanism. I say the world is besotted by an America which never even existed. The land of the free and the home of the brave only exists in the song and nowhere else.

It is time for us, the rest of the world, to see America as it truly is, just another nation with great gifts and terrible faults.

There is nothing special about America, and we, and most of all the American people, must begin to admit this. When we begin to view America in the light of reality, then we might begin to avoid the horrors which have been wreaked on humanity by those who think they are above the rest.

It is time for the American nation to acknowledge its crimes and apologize and ask forgiveness from the many people it has harmed. Beginning with the Native Americans, followed by the Africans and South Americans, right through to the Japanese, who have suffered such horror by being the only race to know the true meaning of weapons of mass destruction.

The US should leave Iraq after apologizing for over a million dead after an unlawful embargo and a colonial war which at best is a farce and at worst a crime.

Finally, ask an American how many died in Vietnam, and he will tell you 58,000. That is because they have wiped out from their mind the three million Vietnamese as they have forgotten every race and nation they have harmed since their inception.

Are the Americans willing to admit their mistakes? This is the most important question of the 21st century, since much of the world’s safety depends on it.

This is the type of bilge that makes Jacksonian America’s blood boil. Princess Reem launched nothing less than a deliberate assault on the honor of the American people and nation. A pampered princess from a repressive society, who’s had everything handed to her and lives off unearned oil wealth, presumed to speak in judgment on the hardworking citizens of the United States. In fact the American people are paying for her royal highness’s lavish lifestyle with the money we pay at the gas pumps, which is reason enough to search for alternative energy sources. Statements like this make Jacksonians understandably suspicious of the intentions of people in the Muslim world. It’s why Jacksonians adamantly reject the idea of a mosque near Ground Zero. By painting the United States as an unregenerate evil nation, Princess Reem lends legitimacy to the terrorist atrocities of 9/11, which were carried out largely by her countrymen (15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, as is Osama bin Laden). Perhaps she was sending a message to her own country that it should indeed be proud of what was done on 9/11.

According to Josef Joffe, publisher of the German weekly magazine Die Zeit, anti-Americanism “is not criticism of American policies, not even dislike of particular American leaders or features of American life, such as gas-guzzling SUVs or five hundred TV channels. It is the obsessive stereotypization, denigration, and demonization of the country and its culture.” Joffe refers to Reem Al-Faisal’s article as a vivid example. (Joffe, Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America [New York: Norton, 2006], p. 77). Now as I have pointed out in these posts, American history has its share of sins of commission and omission, as the princess was kind enough to remind us. No nation’s past is unblemished. But America is most exceptional in our willingness to confront our national sins and shortcomings, sometimes at great cost, and make our nation better. American history is the story of how we as a nation have struggled to put the ideals of our founding into practice. Democracy and the advancement of liberty and justice are always works in progress.

The Consumation of Empire. By Thomas Cole, 1836.

American history, like the histories of those other civilizational empires, Rome, China, and the early Islamic caliphate, illustrates what archaeologist and historian Ian Morris calls “the paradox of violence.” The wars and civil wars that were an inevitable part of the process of empire building and nation building eventually created peace, prosperity, and an upward arc of social development. “When the rivers of blood dried,” Morris writes of the rise of the Roman and Han empires in the third and second centuries BC, “their imperialism left most people, in both East and West, better off.” Edward Gibbon famously wrote in the fateful year 1776, “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” Echoing Gibbon, Morris concludes:

The payoff from all the wars, enslavements, and massacres of the first millennium BCE was an age of plenty. . . . Its fruits were unevenly distributed—there were far more peasants than philosophers or kings—but more people were alive than in any previous age, in bigger cities, and on the whole they lived longer, ate better, and had more things than ever before.

(Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010], pp. 264, 281, 290).

How much more apt this description is for the America that emerged from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the Industrial Revolution, and three hundred years of savage conflict with the Native American Indians for control of the continent. When the long and painful process of nation building was complete, there would be no peasants or slaves in America. Just free citizens employing their God-given abilities to create wealth and pursue happiness. This is not something one can expect a royal princess to appreciate.

Andrew Jackson understood this process of nation building when he told his victorious troops after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, “The weapons of warfare will be exchanged for the utensils of husbandry, & the wilderness which now withers in sterility & seems to mourn the desolation which overspreads it, will blossom as the rose, & become the nursery of the arts.” Jackson went on to explain, “But other chastisements remain to be inflicted before this happy day can arise. How lamentable it is that the path to peace should lead through blood & over the carcases of the slain!! But it is in the dispensations of that providence which inflicts partial evil, to produce general good.”

Reem Al-Faisal declared that the settlement of America was “one of the most thorough and extreme genocides in history.” She has no idea what she’s talking about. The Indians were not helpless victims; they fought tooth and nail against the European settlers and their independent American descendants for control of North America. Indians gave as good as they got. The Americans won, in the end, because they had technology, social and political organization, and most important perhaps, demographics, on their side. Again, it was Andrew Jackson who said it best:

Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country, and Philanthropy has been long busily employed in devising means to avert it, but its progress has never for a moment been arrested, and one by one have many powerful tribes disappeared from the earth. To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another. . . . Nor is there anything in this which, upon a comprehensive view of the general interests of the human race, is to be regretted. Philanthropy could not wish to see this continent restored to the conditions in which it was found by our forefathers. What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

Jackson’s sorrow over the fate of the Indians may have been contrived and hypocritical. His words show that in 1830 white supremacy was taken for granted. Yet most Americans, then and now, would endorse Jackson’s analysis without reservation. The truth is that most nations (including Muslim nations like Reem Al-Faisal’s Saudi Arabia) came into being through long histories of invasion, conquest, bloodshed, exploitation, persecution, and dispossession. Most don’t give it a second thought today. When all is said and done, history is about winners and losers. One cannot deny that the Indians have been the biggest losers in American history. As Ian Morris observes, “European germs, weapons, and institutions were so much more powerful than Native American ones that indigenous populations and states simply collapsed. . . . Native Americans could no more resist European imperialists than native European hunter-gatherers could resist farmers seven or eight millennia earlier.” (Why the West Rules, p. 430.) But again the tragedy of the Indians made possible the creation of the greatest concentration of economic power and human potential in history, institutionalized in a democratic republic, and embodied in a culture devoted to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And the United States has contributed more to the sum total of human happiness and liberty than any other nation in history. America’s sins are those shared by all nations. Her triumphs are uniquely her own.

Princess Reem would have done better to look at the sins and shortcomings of her own country. Slave traders from Arabia were plying their trade in East Africa hundreds of years before European slave traders swooped down on that continent’s west coast. African slavery continued in Saudi Arabia long after it had been abolished in the United States. The American people fought a Civil War in the 1860s, which turned our land red with blood, to put an end to the evil of slavery. Africans toiled as slaves in Saudi Arabia until 1962. And let’s not forget the high value placed on women in Saudi society. Female virtue is so important that it must be protected at all costs, including letting 15 schoolgirls die in a fire in 2002 because they did not have proper Islamic attire. Nor did the princess see fit to acknowledge that without the support of the United States military, Saudi Arabia could well have been invaded by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990, once he finished with Kuwait. Princess Reem denounced America’s wars in Iraq as colonial wars of conquest. Who knows, without the sacrifices made by America’s young men and women in uniform, her royal highness, instead of pursuing her career in photography, might have found herself residing in one of Uday Hussein’s infamous rape rooms.

All of this goes to the point that Saudi Arabia is the source of the radical Islamic jihadism that threatens the world today. Reem Al-Faisal’s family, the House of Al-Saud, which now rules as a corrupt oligarchy, rose to power as the champions of the radical Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. Wahhabism is the ideological source of Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and other radical jihadist groups, whose ultimate objective is the creation of a worldwide Islamic caliphate. Saudi oil money has bought favor with Wahhabis by funding a network of madrassas (religious schools) worldwide; the Wahhabi madrassas of Pakistan were the incubators of the Taliban. Until recently, Saudi policy in the “war on terror” has been decidedly two-faced: suppressing jihadist terror at home while encouraging it abroad. Private Saudi donors are the most important source of funding for Al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorist groups. The Al-Saud family made a corrupt bargain with the jihadists, allowing them to raise the funds to spread their poison and attack infidels outside the kingdom, so long as they left the family and its interests alone. We have seen the results in the nightmare that was Afghanistan under the Taliban and in the ruins of the World Trade Center. Princess Reem’s family and nation have much to answer for to the world.

While I have been quite critical of her vicious tirade against America, I find Reem Al-Faisal to be a compelling artist. Her photographs, all in black and white, cover many parts of the world and reveal a mythopoetic sensibility. Much of Princess Reem’s work documents the practice and rituals of Islam in different lands. She is especially concerned with evoking Islam’s central ritual, the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, in all of its mythopoetic grandeur and sublimity. Reem Al-Faisal has also studied the subtle interplay of light and shadow on the landscape in a series of breathtaking portraits from all over the world.

Guilin II. Landscape portrait of rural China. By Reem Al-Faisal.

“I’m generally an extremely shy person, especially in crowds,” Reem Al-Faisal observed in an interview. “But when I have a camera I can stand in front of a huge group, get up on a table. I do things that I would never do without the camera. It’s like I’m someone else.” Art has often been a tool of self-transformation. The princess has used her art to engage the mystery of the Divine.

I like to define myself as a Muslim artist, sprung from my native Saudi culture and history. In my art I am seeking to show signs of the Divine in nature and in Man. For me, light is one of the many manifestations of God. Which He casts in our path through life to remind us of His constant presence in ourselves and in every place. Every photograph is a pattern of light and shade. For me, my photography is a way to praise God's glory in the universe.

Princess Reem’s pursuit of her artistic vision has at times put her in some dangerous situations. Traditional Islamic Saudi society still sees photography as taboo and so tends to be suspicious of photographers. While she was photographing the Haj, a number of the pilgrims in the crowd, believing the princess was an apostate, tried to attack her. Even with bodyguards, she found that she had to run to avoid harm. That Reem Al-Faisal has been able to pursue such an artistic career is all the more remarkable given the restrictions imposed on women in patriarchal Saudi Arabia. Then again, royalty does have its privileges. What is really sad is that such a gifted artist would choose to exacerbate the already toxic levels of hatred in the Muslim world.

President Obama bows to King Abdullah, great uncle of Reem Al-Faisal, April 1, 2009.

It is in response to critiques like Princess Reem’s that President Obama has issued an unending stream of apologies for American power and American history (and bow to Reem’s great uncle King Abdullah). The princess expresses the resentment felt by many, especially in the Islamic world, at America’s success in the pursuit of happiness, which leaves them feeling humiliated. But Americans also have to take note that our attempts to export liberty, democracy, tolerance, and free markets, have provoked the wrath of those, such as the jihadis, who see them as a threat to their vision of God’s society. This does not mean that we should retreat from or apologize for our values and our way of life. But as Jacksonians have long understood, American exceptionalism means that America’s culture and institutions of liberty are exceptional; they are not easily exported to societies with their own ancient cultures and traditions.

© 2010 Michael Kaplan