Ollie Stone and the Road to Hell

The internet reminds me, this morning, that Oliver Stone will be releasing a 10 part Showtime special that purports to put "Hitler in context." Stone reports that he's "been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view." This effort comes about, evidently, in service of Stone's contention that " Hitler is an easy scapegoat." By Stone's way of "thinking," individual human beings are locked into a social and economic matrix that predicts their actions more accurately than something Stone doesn't seem to account for or even mention-- free will.



Well, kids, let's just leave Ollie up on his stool, wearing the dunce cap for now, convinced he came up with Hegelian Historicism all on his own. He thought he was plowing new ground, but he's really just giving voice to a symptom of our collective sloth: we prefer to study intent and context over outcome. "He didn't mean to do that." "I don't think she intended to do harm." "I think their heart was in the right place." "You don't know what sort of childhood he had, and if you did, you wouldn't be so hard on him." I encountered a strange one a few years ago: "you have to admit that's the way she feels about it. You have to let her have her own feelings." (The offender in question could have been a shoplifter, but the larger offense was not acknowledging how she felt about her shoplifting.)



On the daily level of small, endurable sins,
we tend, thankfully, to engage in this mercy as a way of getting through life. We assume good intentions across the board. Even someone who believes in original sin, and the depraved nature of the human heart, tends to assume that, on some level, we're all trying to yield to a better, "born again" self. Even when someone does something wrong, we reach very hard to acknowledge how they saw their own actions. We want to know "what, in the world, they were thinking" because we have an investment in believing they had a reason for it.



Dale Carnegie, helping us win friends and influence people, observed that even hardened bank robbers
saw their actions in lofty terms. They were merely seeking economic justice, socking it to fat cat bankers, providing food for their kids, etc. One woman told me she thought her divorce was the best thing she had ever done for her kids. (There was no domestic violence or intimidation involved; it was just a matter of not modeling a stale romantic relationship for her children.)



Somewhere in our memory a pastor is preaching, with real conviction, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."



The reason for that is clear: the endless consideration of intent alone produces social and economic malaise on an epidemic scale. We don't drive cars that are merely intended to work. We drive cars that actually work. We don't fly planes that had good intentions. We fly planes that take off and land.



Imagine a basketball game, driven by intent, as opposed to accomplishment:



"What a great 3-pointer he intended! Amazing!"

"That was an awesome defense they were hoping for!"

"We're number one -- in our minds!"



Imagine commerce working on that level:



"We honestly wanted to serve the Alaskan Salmon, but we got too busy. That will be $39.95."

"What do you mean? You didn't serve it."

"But I honestly meant to. That will be $39.95."




Before we're tempted to believe the absurd will always remain absurd, we should remember that we're maintaining colossal prison systems because our obsession with intent is much more acute than our ancestors'. When a New York man murdered an Indian, prior to the Revolutionary War, he was tried and executed within a matter of weeks. No one lamented his "intentions." We maintain leviathan social service expense, because we have chosen to make divorce "no fault." We kill millions of children in the womb, because, honestly, their parents didn't "intend" to become pregnant.



Heck, Oliver Stone can't even call Hitler or Stalin evil.



Be careful, Ollie. Take a look at the roadsign--and the pavement. It's getting hotter and hotter.

Bearded Dragons and the like

For a family with four boys, we arrived at the reptile stage fairly late in the game. I believe I may have grunted approval on the idea of a "bearded dragon" when Mary ran it by me between phone calls and that one act of absent-minded assent led to first one glass aquarium, with a two-light set, (one for day, one for night), along with two hollowed pine logs to shelter the dragons, since there had to be one lizard for Lockton and another for Samuel. Naturally, the red light broke after one day, and it soon became apparent that the two reptiles weren't acting like friendly side-kicks in a Pixar animation. They were acting like reptiles, with one of them looking like he wanted to eat the other. We added an aquarium divider, but that meant too little room for them, so off we went to buy another aquarium and another set of lights and more mealy worms.

"We need more crickets too," Mary said.
"Crickets?"
"They eat crickets. We need to get new crickets every month."

The idea of adding a cricket-run to our routine every two weeks suddenly brought things into that really sharp focus you experience when you get a new pair of glasses.

"We're not doing that," I said. "We need an online cricket source."
"I've tried."
"Try harder. We're not running down to San Bernardino to buy crickets. I'm not going to do that. You're not going to do that. Nobody is going to do that."

So we did eventually find a place that will ship crickets, but you need to be careful about size, since if the cricket is larger than the space between the dragon's eyes, it will just be an uneasy standoff between dragon and cricket -- and the dragon could could actually die if he manages to eat the jumbo Jiminy, by dint of something called 'back leg paralysis.'

The world, I conclude, is a richly complex and detailed place, but in the matter of pets, I strongly urge families to at least consider staying within the same taxonomic class and consider the merits of a friendly, hand-licking mammal whose food doesn't need to be measured, covered in calcium powder, or even kept alive for that matter. A Cocker Spaniel needs no special red light to go sleep, and it could wander just about anywhere in the house, or show up completely by surprise, without setting off a human fire alarm--a sopranic wail of discovery in the far corners of the house.

You can't say that about a bearded dragon .

When Man Measures up to Myth

Mallory gave me a biography on Jimmy Stewart ("James Stewart: A Biography" by Marc Eliot) for my birthday, over the holidays, and between my Adobe Production Suite obsession and various celebrations, I've been checking in on Jimmy every few days. Eliot doesn't appear to understand the faith life of Presbyterians, (and he assumes no one else will either), but the sheer weight of Stewart's life is impressive: two of his grandfathers served the Union in the Civil War, one of them commissioned a brigadier general by Ulysses Grant; Jimmy's dad ran a thriving hardware store business but left it to volunteer for World War I, at the age of 40; Jimmy's introduction to theater was through music, and his first roles were made possible due to a theatrical convention of the time--they needed an accord ian player; Jimmy attended, and graduated from, Princeton, at a time when there were no coeds on campus; he was attracted to theater, not because he saw acting as a career, but because it might have given him a chance to get close to Margaret Sullivan; at first, he was considered too tall and gangly and slow-talking to be a leading man, but there was something about him that stole the show every time; he could be on stage for a single line and he would be remembered, and singled out by critics, as a bright spot in otherwise failed productions. I have not yet reached World War II in the book, but it's common knowledge that he flew dangerous bombing missions over Berlin, and was decorated for his service, at a time when he could very easily have charted a less troubling course and enjoyed the creature comforts of a matinee idol. His humility about his soldiering was well represented in the George Bailey role he played in "It's a Wonderful Life." He had led a life of surpassing accomplishment, and yet he always played someone who was still trying to figure it all out.



They don't make many like him!

Farm News & Planning

Over the last few years, we've made a concerted effort to make sure the public knows we're open, (billboards, radio, hotel racks, internet, magazines, you name it), and we've pursued that course because there has been a perception you needed to be part of a group to enjoy the farm. While we're still committed to public hours, it's a daunting task, financially and emotionally, to open up the old homestead on, say, a Monday in late December. If you ask me, the farm is worthy of a daily habit, but even our most loyal die-hard customers can't manage that, so.. we're going to try a Wednesday through Saturday public hours schedule during the winter. Keep us in mind for great food, historic retail, and live music on Saturdays. We should be really expensive, but we're a pretty cheap date in these trying times, so put us on your calendar, and by all means, tell us how we can better serve you. (Groups love us--our spring tours are up again this year--but we're still searching for that perfect combination of history-magic and dining value that will make you families at least monthly regulars.)



Time to put on the three cornered thinking cap again...