October 25, 2010

"The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet..."

Here's a picture of the bleakness of late October for you...

P1040341

UPDATE: The words in the post title come from Bob Dylan's "Ballad in Plain D," which he did not sing at tonight's concert, here in Madison, from which Meade and I just returned.
The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet
The words to say I’m sorry, I haven’t found yet
I think of her often and hope whoever she’s met
Will be fully aware of how precious she is

IN THE COMMENTS: Clyde said:
I'll never look at those bucolic hay bales the same way again after ELO cellist Mike Edwards' unfortunate fate last month.

Now they look a little bit... Menacing.
Chip Ahoy responded:



Meade said:
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can eat your cake and have it too
Yes, Bob did correct the classic expression when he sang "Lay Lady Lay" tonight. We both noticed and love all the cake....

IMG_0046

... Thanks, Bob.

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

[Are comenters allowed to bump comments? I guess we'll see]

The storm clouds gather:

[as the Federal Reserve Bank starts] the process of inflating our way out of the deficit and stalled economy.

A little thing we call quantitative easing, or in other words printing money.

The very thing banana republics used to do to keep the peasants happy and the rulers rich, has now become a key policy of this administration and its fed enablers.

traditionalguy said...

Meade House has morphed into Bleak House. Is it time to watch Fargo again and see what snowed in Badgers go through every winter.

Anonymous said...

I can't help but feel sorry for the GOP and the Tea Party. Yes, October is bleak. But, it is not for everyone. We in the Democratic Party are very happy. Our world is bright, cheerful, and positive. At our house, we celebrate every hour, minute, and second till Nov. 2 end of the voting period. And then, and then, we will really jump with joy. Oh yes, we are most happy in October.

N.B.: The next time we will have this feeling will be in 2012.

Clyde said...

I'll never look at those bucolic hay bales the same way again after ELO cellist Mike Edwards' unfortunate fate last month.

Now they look a little bit... Menacing.

Anonymous said...

"Oh yes, we are most happy in October. "

I think you'll be manic come December.

Unknown said...

I suppose you have to be of Celtic descent to look at that picture and not feel bleak, but glory in the embrace of the stiff, chill sting of the breeze and smile at a light, bracing rain and fill your lungs and stretch out one's arms at the power and glory of Autumn.

garage mahal said...

Poor cows can't even get a square meal anymore.

Anonymous said...

President Obama today.

Now that progress has been made, he said, "we can't have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back."

Tyrone Slothrop said...

We're having autumn here in southern California. Rain, rain, then partly cloudy, then rain. This never happens in October, or ever. Being of good Celtic stock (ht edutcher), I personally revel in it. I get so damned tired of sunshine.

Clyde said...

Oh, come on, Tyrone! We all know that It Never Rains In Southern California.

Peter V. Bella said...

Looks like good bird hunting fields.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

@edutcher:

Celtic not required, but Vermonter is.

Fall is the season for getting big projects done. The cool breezes make it possible to work outside. At least in my slice of the world, the skies are never clearer than they are in the fall.

Fall is the lead-in to the season that makes or breaks wannabe Vermonters (as I'm sure it does for Madisonians). This is a winter state. Oddly enough, it's he one season where I don't think that Nature is trying to get me. Cold & snow is in our genes [/handwave] and I have the affliction.

Chip Ahoy said...

Exposure increased for menacing hay bale. Or maybe just silly.

Meade said...

Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can eat your cake and have it too

Ann Althouse said...

@Chip LOL. You know, we talked about you when we were there, because we were remembering this thing you did using a photo I took in the same place.

Titus said...

I took that same type of picture today commenting to my mother that those farmers are incredibly neat when forming those hay balls. I said balls.

My pop said, with all the warm weather, the hay and corn will easily be cut and stored for a long winter.

Thankfully, I will be heading to Bangalore on November 30 and not returning until April.

I will though, think of all you kindly and lovingly when I am traveling by train throughout India. No TAX for Trax!

I will at least be able to cast my vote for Russ Feingold, who, to be honest with you, I did not know much about until returning to Wisconsin. God he is hot and smart and very cool-for a politician-and I generally hate politician's of all stripes.

I am six degrees of "Russ". Mrs. Erpenbach was my first grade teacher at Waunakee, her son is in government and her daughter is the x of Russ. It's all so jewish and shocking that the state of Wisconsin has two jewish senators. I mean hello, we are not talking New York or Massachusetts where you can't swing a cat without hitting a jew beanie on Friday afternoon.

What is Wisconsin doing with two jew liberal senators anyway? That is just wrong. Ron (the name alone is so Wisconsin) will undue this travesty, as will Needy.

Namaste

Titus said...

BTW Needy lost her freedom. That is just sad.

amba said...

What else did he sing??

Ann Althouse said...

Other songs of particular note:

Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat
Highway 61
Visions of Johanna
Ballad of a Thin Man
Like a Rolling Stone

Ann Althouse said...

He sang "Visions of Johanna" in such a silly way that Meade and I were both laughing.

Meade said...

Hi amba. Here's the setlist from the show we saw.

And from the early show.

jungatheart said...

Althouse, did you buy his Christmas album?

Fred4Pres said...

I do not find that picture bleak. The alfalfa is bright green. The hay is storred sunlight and summer. Yes it is fall, winter is coming, but things look prepared. Spring will eventually come.

Clyde said...

Nice animation, Chip Ahoy!

Re: Last night's Dylan set lists, no "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"? Batten down the hatches up there.

Unknown said...

Glad you enjoyed it.

Clyde said...

On Drudge this morning, the lead is a picture of Obama with the headline: Republicans "Gotta Sit In The Back." Great. Do they now get separate water fountains, too?

jungatheart said...

Wow. That's just stupid.

ndspinelli said...

I hope Meade didn't get a nosebleed in those cheap seats.

AllenS said...

Obama said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, "we can't have special interests sitting shotgun."

No, you fucking idiot, you should have said riding shotgun.

The man is dumber than Joe Biden.

Known Unknown said...

That field is way too green to be bleak. Get back to me in November.

Or worse, February.

paul a'barge said...

I always cringe when I see round bales of hay not properly arranged. They should be tootsie-rolled tightly and aligned North-South.

They guys who invented round bales and the machines that bale them had this in mind early on.

These bales are going to rot much faster aligned this way.

rhhardin said...

Melanie Safka Lay Lady Lay.

rhhardin said...

Duluth bottomed out at 28.36 inches pressure; not quite hurricane league pressure but pretty low, windwise.

rhhardin said...

Haystorm.

Wince said...

"The thing speak for itself..."

A founding member of ELO has been killed in a freak accident when a giant hay bale rolled out of a field and landed on his van.

Res ipsa loquitur, an important form of circumstantial evidence, may be relevant to a plaintiff's efforts to establish the defendant's unreasonable conduct. In most negligence cases, the plaintiff specifies what the defendant allegedly did unreasonably. Res ipsa loquitur is most important and has its greatest impact in cases where the plaintiff is unable to make specific allegations about what the defendant did wrong.

The case of Byrne v. Boadle [2 H. & C. 722, 159 Eng. Rep. 299 (Exch. 1863)], in which the plaintiff was seriously injured when a barrel of flour fell on him, is credited with adding “res ipsa loquitur” to the legal lexicon. In Byrne, neither the plaintiff nor any of the witnesses testified as to anything done by the defendant that could have led to the barrel falling. Yet the court allowed the case to proceed because of the nature of the harm-causing event and the defendant's relationship to it. Since Byrne, courts and commentators have refined the doctrine and its proof requirements.

The conditions traditionally required for the application of res ipsa loquitur are: “an accident that normally does not happen without negligence; exclusive control of the instrumentality by the defendant; and absence of voluntary action or contribution by the plaintiff.” In order for the plaintiff to have the benefit of res ipsa loquitur, she must convince the jury that each of these factors more likely than not exists.