The Bizarre Public Statuary of Jersey…

The Bizarre Public Statuary of Jersey…

It is the law in this place that whenever a new building is put up, the builders must also erect a piece of art outside the building. Or, as one lovely resident has it, “Something that is art to them”.

All my reader knows that I enjoy some statuary- although I have yet to post my survey of the naked equestriennes of Denmark. One day, really.

But for the time being, here is the




naked flying girl of Jersey.

Life size. A day will come when that cable breaks, and the lawyers will have a field day.

Nearby, we have



Toad on a pole.

Pretty good giant bronze toad, as they go. For some obscure reason his/her column is inscribed with the punishments for crime as they were a hundred and fifty years ago.


Which brings a question to my mind. When criminals and their allies/minions/parasites go on and on about the savage punishments of the past. Why are they stuck on England in the time of Walpole?

I mean, I know why. Because they are ethnocentric and have a propaganda goal. They hate to recognize that before then punishments were worse, and that pre colonial punishments outside Europe were far more horrid.

The ones on the post don’t seem bad. Petty theft first time stocks, second time stocks and a beating, third time an ear.

Rape and incest, the rope.

Imprisonment is for weak, rich cultures.

And the requirement that the punishments be carri
ed out in public, and all schools required to take their pupils to watch, an excellent one.

We act like we feel guilty when we lock criminals up.

Speaking of Buses...

Hello, there should be more advice about dealing with depression when you're stupid and worthless, so here is a self help exercise.

Today's assignment is simple. Just go out and get on the bus.

It doesn't matter which bus. Whichever bus comes next. Get on, and just go. You could ride that bus to the very end, thank the driver, and then walk into the woods and just die. Just lay down right there and wait and wait until you were dead. Who is going to miss you?

Really, think about it. If you went out to the middle of nowhere and just sat down in a ditch and cried by yourself until you were dead, who would be the first person to wonder where you'd gone?

Call them up! Maybe they want to get ice cream.

And I have just been informed that today is free cone day at Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream!

In My Continuing Quest...

to compete with Tam in the "crazy gun nut song department:



Bonus, since we used to live in Ney..., uh, Knoxville:

Eagles, Foxes, Horses, Mongolia, a Woman, and Your Taxes...

...and spend the next ten months with a horse and golden eagle pursuing fox across the lonely Altai mountains...

THIS is the way to spend my tax money!

I thought I'd blogrolled Lauren years ago, sorry. Truly amazing life as art as life.

One Of My Very Favorite Hunting Stories...

Someone asked me that question again today. I have maybe five pieces of short hunting literature that really speak to and for me, and this is one of them.

Click on each page to make it big enough to read conveniently:

One reason I like this is that it's very evocative of some early days in my own hunting life. I never went out as young as the narrator of this story, or with family. But the scene and style put me right back in the old Fairfield days. Up at four, loading Tango into the trailer and chugging up to Newtown in that old Matador, getting in first of all in the chill black New England dark. Trying like crazy to be where Rhoda wanted me to be, when she wanted me there, doing what she wanted me to do. Scampering over those big Yankee stone walls in the dawn, and spending the day in a wild blur.

There's cable now, and lots of channels to ghost.

All the other things going on in my life then, all the other dawn experiences- having grown up responsibilities, living far away from home in a very different place, having seriously important friends, happily drowning in a huge (and I then had reason to believe) somewhat reciprocated crush. And doing all those things- having all those successes- as nobody, from nowhere.

Good times. I'm glad I didn't break my neck, but if I had, it would have been with a big old smile.


I'm sorry, Fox. But thanks.

Dramatic Checkout Picture...

No more dog show nonsense, something lovely instead. I thought I'd posted it back when Tam brought up the subject. Here's my nominee for the most dramatic checkout picture ever, Copley's "Death of Major Pierson". Click on the picture for full screen size:

Who'd Be A Sailor?

From "The Arethusa", by Frederick Chamier:

In such moments there are thoughts which steal over us and win us from ourselves; and those who have braved longest the perils of a sailor's life, feel most exquisitely the glory of the calm night, when the stars are reflected in the vast deep, and when the sea "takes the moods, and wears the colours of her mistress—the sky."

He who first perils his existence on this mighty and immense mass of waters experiences a solemn feeling of awe, of wonder —nay, often-times of fear. And yet, lost in the very magnificence of this image of eternity — this throne of the Invisible, man feels himself a prouder being, in the knowledge that the science of his fellow-creatures has taught him to explore its wondrous depths,—to steer uninjured by rocks or islands through its pathless desert, and to draw a higher and a better notion of the glory and divinity of his Maker by the never-ending wonders which are presented to him.

The poor in pocket and in mind, condemned from youth to age to toil, perhaps in the darkness of a mine, excavating the ore, and returning when oppressed with fatigue to the shed which serves him for shelter ; the mechanic, who from daylight to dark continues his labour in one city ; the husbandman, who ploughs the field and sows the seed, who reaps the harvest and who stacks the hay,— can never have that exalted notion of man, and of man's works, as he whose whole life is one scene of continued change ; who is associated today with the dark, sulky negro of the Gold Coast, —with the gay Frenchman to-morrow; who sees the pigmy race of Mexico or the giants of Patagonia,—much less can he form a just estimate of the power of the Divinity. The wonders of creation are to be seen in the ocean, and in the stupendous mountains of the Andes, or the still prouder Himalayas.

It is in sights like these that man is convinced of his own insignificance, and yet of his own power: it is when standing on the Andes, and seeing a city Like a speck, that he feels his vast inferiority. But he becomes conscious of the greatness of his intellect when he measures the heights above him with mathematical exactness, or looks for the moment — the well-calculated moment, when a comet shall return and be visible.

Oh the delight—the calm delight of pondering on such sublimity, supported by the still ocean! When the mind, in harmony with the scene, calmly surreys the greatness of the works of God.

A pretty song....

One good thing about going to England is that I hear music that wouldn't get any traction in the U. S...

Hey Monday on Thursday!

So Tam sent me to The Pointy Pen where I saw the hilarious

Emo Breakup Video:



Which reminded me I never told all my reader about Fight Fair:



So I started YouTubing, and ended up making my neighbours enjoy Hey Monday!



And, come to think of it, "Should Have Tried Harder With The Lyrics" would be a pretty good song title!

East Cornwall meets the Beaufort...

Wednesday, we went north. A few months ago, Captain Farquhar was saying (at a hound show I think) that his hounds could hunt any country. The master of the East Cornwall took him up on it, and they traveled to Bodmin. Today the favor was returned, and the scrappy little rock crawling provincials trod the sacred soil of Badminton.

The meet was crowded. Some thirty ECH subscribers made the trip- TWO WHOLE HOURS!! There were another hundred and a few Beaufort people to add on. So it was about like one of their typical Saturdays. The ECH hounds were smaller and somewhat more varied than is typically found here, but they looked keen and were well scarred up. As all of my faithful reader know, I tend to like a hound with plenty of dings and nicks from getting in there and drawing. Dogs and bitches hunting together, too.

They found pretty quickly and hunted in a big loop around. Just as we do, they have a freeway right through the country. When it was built, the Duke of that day managed to insure that the wire along the verge was buried in the earth at the bottom. So it’s a physical barrier to quarry and hounds rather than an accident waiting to happen.

Hounds sounded wonderful, plenty of varied cry. It’s striking how after just one day under two hound rules in Somerset how much one misses the sound of a full pack.

So we hunted along some more, including a good long bit in a bog covert near the cross country course. Twice hounds came up to right where we were, but the quarry must have turned back. It was beautiful to listen to, though- the air was heavy and the cry really rang through the forest, that fragmenting and regrouping of sound waves colliding with the trees, the atmosphere, and each other. Just lovely.

When we stopped for second horses, I had the opportunity to meet Martin Scott, who is one of the great hound breeding experts of all time. He talked about the fact that the Beaufort had sent hounds to our pack in the 1930s. “But probably none of that line survive, because I believe there was a terrible distemper outbreak in your kennels a couple of years later.”

Encyclopedic knowledge does not begin to cover such a mind. Here he was in the middle of a field and upon being introduced to some American visitor, immediately upon finding out to which pack he belonged, was able to whip out information connecting the visitor’s pack with his own.

Nor does civility begin to cover his bothering to do that. Just to let a visitor feel noticed.

So at horse change, we stood around and waited among the hounds. They were a bit varied, smaller than the usual English hounds and more lightly built. I pointed out one bitch who was very like the black marked strain in our pack.

There was a girl there, a groom or hanger on, who was just lit up being with hounds. Very difficult to watch.

So off we went, and hounds drew hard into the first covert. Out came the quarry, and we watched it off across two fields into another wood.

Then there was another clear illustration of my pet variability of scent from hound to hound hobby. Hounds came out of covert on the line, and checked at the fence line. They milled and then cast themselves beautifully around the crossing spot. Only a couple of the 20c or so even noticed the line, which was at most 3 minutes old in cool, damp conditions across an empty grass field. (And the leading hound was the black one I had pointed out, thank you.)

And on we went, hounds hunting hard but most of them just couldn’t hold on to anything at all for long. A pity, their cry when rolling was beautiful.

And afterward, a feed in the village hall. The Beaufort was very welcoming and generous, once again defying the stereotype our enemies paint of us as exclusionary aristocrats.