This last weekend, I actually went out of my house/neighborhood and did something different. Something interesting and out in the real world, or something that resembled the real world, out there, beyond the keyboard and computer screen. I had a table for my books at a cultural event, the Folkfest in New Braunfels. Historically, New Braunfels was one of the German Verein-founded towns in the Texas Hill Country, one of those that I have written about in my historical series; the main reason that I was invited to the bash under the oak trees at the Heritage Society’s campus on the northern edge of town. The Adelsverein Trilogy touches on the circumstances and reason why more than eight thousand German immigrants ended up on the wild and unsettled Texas frontier in the 1840s. A consortium of German noblemen and princes hoped to make a tidy profit and to do a good deed for their struggling countrymen by taking up an entrepreneur grant in the independent Republic of Texas. They were honest in their hope to make the venture advantageous economically for them, which distinguishes them from many other ostensibly charitable enterprises of late. That the Adelsverein went broke within two years had more to do with the princely gentlemen overselling their program to eager potential immigrants and badly underestimating the costs in transporting them to Texas. That it resulted in a godly number of able, educated, independent-minded and patriotic new citizens turned out to be a bonus. It also resulted in Kendal, Gillespie and Comal counties being almost completely German-speaking for better than a hundred years, which explained the prevalence of dirndls and lederhosen worn with cowboy boots at the Folkfest.
Something Light from Ukraine
Netflix is streaming Servant of the People; we’ve been enjoying it. A sit com juxtaposed with the daily news of death and destruction is trivial, but few cultural artifacts are more interesting than those that reveal what a nation laughs at, what it likes. The series satirizes corrupt government but also reflects daily life and asserts values that attracted its public.
The charismatic Zelensky we see on the news has a touch of the honorable, naive history teacher he portrayed just a few years ago; we’ve only seen the first few episodes, but the ghost we might most want to represent our own history – Abraham Lincoln – appears to advise him as he nervously goes over his inaugural speech.
Some of you may be (quite understandably) opposed to Netflix, but I’m not sure if this is streaming somewhere else. If anyone knows of other outlets or where the second season or the film produced between the two is showing, please comment.
Erasing Women
Well, it’s really kind of sad that erasing biological XX-chromosome no-kidding 100 percent female women seems the ultimate endpoint of early 21st century popular prog-thought, as mad and illogical as that might seem as an ambition, or rather an idée fixe. The ancient jape of a fox hunt described as ‘the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the inedible’ comes to mind, only this is the deranged in pursuit of the unachievable. As little as I think of the long-time and loud professional Feminists-with-a-capital-F (or LT&LPF(F) as I call them), and their tendency to view all men as potential rapist and abusers, I would have expected them to be assiduous in protesting for the actual physical safety of biological women in women-only spaces like restrooms, locker rooms, battered woman shelters, hospital wards and prisons. Alas, they would seem to have fixated on the availability of reproductive health or as the rest of us call it, abortion, as the great fight for the LT&LPF(F); the hill upon which they wish to see fetal humans die. I mean; what the hell, LT&LPF(F) you look away from the physical safety of real, no-kidding vulnerable women … and focus on the rights, ways and means of killing fetal humans. Good job, sisters. (Not.)
Industrial Distribution in the Covidian Era, Continued…
For those of you who may not know, I own a HVAC distributor, which is a subset of industrial distribution. I have been writing of the many toils and tribulations of our industry during the Covidian era. What follows is another super exciting update on how it’s going in “my world”, as requested by many (well, actually nobody, but if interested, it is below the fold).
Shannon Love
Shannon Love, who passed away in 2021, was a popular and always interesting contributor to this blog between 2004 and 2013.
He was a great guy with a brilliant mind that saw connections other people missed and generated an endless stream of insights on all kinds of topics.
Shannon’s daughter, Ripleigh Degenhardt (rdvirtualsolutions@gmail.com), recently contacted Instapundit about her father and about her project to collect stories about COVID hospital stays and deaths.
Shannon published more than 900 posts on Chicago Boyz. You can find them all here.
RIP