“But, what has he done for me lately?” is a characteristic New York approach to memorial institutional names commemorating historic instances of philanthropy. Yet, paying off a donor’s heirs to let you take his name off the building so you can sell naming rights all over again constitutes a very special pure-New-York kind of tackiness.

New York Times:

Since its adolescence more than four decades ago, the New York Philharmonic’s home at Lincoln Center has been known as Avery Fisher Hall. Now, as the orchestra prepares for a major renovation expected to cost more than $500 million, the Fisher family has agreed to relinquish the name so the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center can lure a large donor with the promise of rechristening the building.

The unusual agreement, announced on Thursday, is a significant turnaround from 12 years ago, when the family of Avery Fisher, the music philanthropist who gave $10 million in 1973 to support the building, threatened legal action if the concert hall was rebuilt or renovated under a new name.

Lincoln Center is essentially paying the family $15 million for permission to drop the name and has included several other inducements, like a promise to feature prominent tributes to Mr. Fisher in the new lobby of the concert hall.

While the ability to raise money through naming opportunities has become a staple tool for arts organizations, perhaps no event speaks louder to its utility as a fund-raising mechanism than Lincoln Center’s willingness to pay the family of a veteran donor to step away so it can court a new benefactor.

Organizations like the Philharmonic and Lincoln Center cannot hope to raise the sums required for ambitious reconstructions or expansions without being able to dangle the carrot of a donor’s name emblazoned over the door.

“This unties the Gordian knot,” Katherine G. Farley, Lincoln Center’s chairwoman, said of the agreement. She said it was too early in the process to discuss whose name might replace Mr. Fisher’s on the building or what the price tag for such a high-profile philanthropic mantle might be.

Read the whole thing.

Lot 103. Colt Single Action Army Frontier Six Shooter Revolver Owned And Carried By Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan Of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch

Amoskeag Auction Company, Sale No. 104, November 22nd & 23rd, 2014, Lot 103, Estimate: $50,000-75,000.

Harvey Logan, “Kid Curry” originally rode with the Black Jack Ketchum gang, formed his own gang sometime in 1897 and eventually wound up with Butch Cassidy and The Wild Bunch. He was described as “the wildest of the Wild Bunch” and before his career would end he had purportedly killed nine peace officers and two other men in an about 10 year career. While he was described by William Pinkerton (Pinkerton Detective agency) as having “not one single redeeming feature, he is the only criminal I know of who does not have one single good point”, he was evidently always kind to the ladies; in fact would often spend his “take” from the Wild Bunch robberies laying up in brothels with friendly ladies and good liquor, until his share was exhausted. Logan rode with Butch and Sundance until they left for Buenos Aires in early 1901. In July of that year Curry, “Tall Texan” Ben Kilpatrick and “Deaf Charlie” Hanks decided they would rob the Great Northern Railroad Coast Flyer No. 3. This they did on July 3, very professionally and well, Logan commandeering the engine with engineer and fireman intact. The train was stopped a few miles outside of Malta Montana, engineer Thomas Jones was made to disconnect the baggage and express cars from the passenger cars and pull the train forward some miles. When safely away from the other train cars, Logan commanded the mail clerk and express messenger, each a Jimmy Martin and a C.H. Smith, to open the express car doors and jump out telling them he would not hurt them, Logan saying all he wanted was “Jim Hill’s money” (Hill being the president of the railroad). The men did so and, although it took three attempts, the outlaws blew the safe open and gathered their loot, amounting to 800 sheets of banknotes, each with four notes each of $10 and $20 denominations. They also took about $500 in notes from the American National Bank of Helena, a package of watches and a bag filled with silver coins, all told about $40,000. As the trio was leaving express messenger C.H. Smith hollered to Logan that he wanted his Colt pistol. When Logan asked him “what for young fellow” he told him as a souvenir of the day, Logan obliged by emptying the revolver into the air and tossing it to Smith saying “thanks for your help”. Logan would later be captured in Knoxville Tennessee in 1902 and during his trial for the train robbery, eyewitness testimony, from the train’s fireman M.F. O’Neal and C.H. Smith himself both related the incident identically, of the outlaw emptying his gun and tossing it to the young express messenger. … The backstrap is very neatly engraved in small script, during the period of use, showing appropriate oxidation and wear from the years: “This pistol was given to me “C H Smith G.N. Ex. Mess” by Harvey Logan during train robbery July 1, 1901”.

Della Moore with Harvey Logan

ObamaCare Architect Jonathan Gruber admits Obamacare was passed only because America was intentionally deceived. “…call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever…”

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Fox News Megyn Kelly reports on the scandal resulting from Professor Gruber’s remarks, and find that this was not the first time Jonathan Gruber publicly gloated that American voters are “too stupid to understand” how democrats were flimflamming them.

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Ian Tuttle observes that no one should be surprised by any of this. Progressives commonly fail to conceal their sense of moral and intellectual superiority based upon being progressive.

Jonathan Gruber is smart. He is an economist. He teaches at MIT. Do you teach at MIT? Of course you don’t. He is also the architect behind Obamacare. He is really, really smart. Did we mention that?

Of course, when you are as smart as Jonathan Gruber, it is difficult to resist the temptation to pull your light out from under the bushel on occasion; thus every once in a while there comes an embarrassing revelation. The conservative group American Commitment recently unearthed one such moment. During an interview at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2013, Gruber revealed that

this bill [the Affordable Care Act] was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO [the Congressional Budget Office] did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. . . . Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass. . . . Look, I wish . . . that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

One could call it an “admission” or “confession,” but Gruber does not seem particularly conflicted. The ends justified the means. That is something the millions of people who have been forced from their insurance plans

When a different economist, Thomas Sowell, quipped that “the road to Hell is paved with Ivy League degrees,” he spoke more truth than he realized. Indeed, smart people often have bad policy ideas. But Hell is not about mistakes; it’s about sins. And despite its pragmatic, do-what-works rhetoric, the progressive Left is convinced not only of its own intellectual superiority but of its accompanying moral superiority. Among progressives, stupidity is sin.

Gruber’s comments are a perfect illustration of this belief. The “stupidity of the American voter,” of which he is obviously disdainful, is not an ignorance of facts. If Obamacare proponents had believed that was the case, they would simply have sought to explain the legislation, trusting that more information would be persuasive. The obfuscation in which they engaged would not have been necessary.

No, Obamacare proponents were certain that Americans could not be persuaded, no matter how much information they absorbed. The voters were incapable of recognizing that Obamacare was in their own best interests — or, to put it another way, they were (and remain) morally deficient, a failing impervious to reasoned argument. Their stupidity was a sin, against themselves and each other. Gruber and company were the messiahs they did not know they needed.

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Breaking: University of Pennsylvania tries to suppress the Gruber video.

The Tin Man out with the Worcestershire Foxhounds

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Ebay lot 381041066398 was sitting there at $230.00 on Saturday as the auction drew toward its close at 8:27 pm. I had just bought a rifle on Gun Broker, so I was feeling a need for some restraint, but I certainly was not going to let this sell for $230.00 without bidding a bit higher. So I left an Esnipe bid somewhere near $300.

It’s impossible to tell what some auctions are going to do in their final moments, when all the snipers open fire. You can bid double the current bid sometimes and still find that you came in too low. I had no idea what this dagger would fetch. It was obviously worth a great deal more than $230, but beyond that I hadn’t a clue.

It sold, as things turned out, for $599.90, and I still think it was worth much more than that.

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The seller described it as an “Old antique Italian Hunting knife/dagger SUPER NICE RARE.”

You are bidding on an antique Italian hunting knife. This is an exceptional example well made and well preserved. It probably dates from the first half of the 19th century. It is large 15-1/2 inches long, solid blade 11 inches long with two decorative fullers and mirror engraved images as well as a small section of brass inlay, the blade is 2 inches wide at the base. The handle is made from wood with two decorative brass side grips and a very interesting tang section that can be seen on the back. Nice file work on the mid section. Super nice knife.

But, what was it really?

I looked through George Cameron Stone’s A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times, Together with Some Closely Related Subjects, and my conclusion is that it was an anelace aka anelec aka anlace, a long dagger variation of the cinquedea featuring a triangular double-edged blade tapering sharply to a point: used from the 13th to the 16th centuries. This weapon was often carried at an angle at the small of the back and would be the only weapon carried in cities, at court, traveling on horseback or riding during the hunt, also used to slide between the plates of platemail armour.

It does not look old enough to me to be 16th century. It has an 18th century look to me. But, I suppose, it might have been an extremely high quality 19th century reproduction.

Sir William Quiller Orchardson, The First Cloud, 1887

lol bye< /em>

In 1953, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a plaque commemorating the discovery of America by Prince Madoc on the shores of Mobile Bay, Alabama. The plaque was removed by the Alabama Parks Service in 2008 and put in storage.

Roads and Kingdoms notes the rediscovery of the pre-Lewis-and-Clark Western journey of discovery by John Evans in search Welsh-speaking Indians via Evans’s descendant Gruff Rhys’s book, album, film and “investigative concert tour.”

In 1792 John Evans, a 22-year-old farmhand and weaver from the village of Waunfawr in the mountains of Snowdonia, Wales, responded to a plea from the great Welsh cultural mischief-maker Iolo Morganwg to settle, for once and for all time, the quandary of whether there was indeed a tribe of Welsh-speaking Native Americans still walking the Great Plains, descendants of Prince Madog, who was widely believed (especially by Welsh historical revisionists) to have discovered America in 1170. With the aid of a loan from a gullible friend, Evans set sail to Baltimore to begin the greatest of adventures, whereupon he set off on foot and disappeared into the Allegheny Mountains with one dollar and seventy-five cents to his name, in search of the lost tribe.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.

—this post is repeated annually—

WWI came to an end by an armistice arranged to occur at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The date and time, selected at a point in history when mens’ memories ran much longer, represented a compliment to St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, and thus a tribute to the fighting men of both sides. The feast day of St. Martin, the Martinmas, had been for centuries a major landmark in the European calendar, a date on which leases expired, rents came due; and represented, in Northern Europe, a seasonal turning point after which cold weather and snow might be normally expected.

It fell about the Martinmas-time, when the snow lay on the borders…
—-Old Song.

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:

St. Martin, the son of a Roman military tribune, was born at Sabaria, in Hungary, about 316. From his earliest infancy, he was remarkable for mildness of disposition; yet he was obliged to become a soldier, a profession most uncongenial to his natural character. After several years’ service, he retired into solitude, from whence he was withdrawn, by being elected bishop of Tours, in the year 374.

The zeal and piety he displayed in this office were most exemplary. He converted the whole of his diocese to Christianity, overthrowing the ancient pagan temples, and erecting churches in their stead. From the great success of his pious endeavours, Martin has been styled the Apostle of the Gauls; and, being the first confessor to whom the Latin Church offered public prayers, he is distinguished as the father of that church. In remembrance of his original profession, he is also frequently denominated the Soldier Saint.

The principal legend, connected with St. Martin, forms the subject of our illustration, which represents the saint, when a soldier, dividing his cloak with a poor naked beggar, whom he found perishing with cold at the gate of Amiens. This cloak, being most miraculously preserved, long formed one of the holiest and most valued relics of France; when war was declared, it was carried before the French monarchs, as a sacred banner, and never failed to assure a certain victory. The oratory in which this cloak or cape—in French, chape—was preserved, acquired, in consequence, the name of chapelle, the person intrusted with its care being termed chapelain: and thus, according to Collin de Plancy, our English words chapel and chaplain are derived.

The canons of St. Martin of Tours and St. Gratian had a lawsuit, for sixty years, about a sleeve of this cloak, each claiming it as their property. The Count Larochefoucalt, at last, put an end to the proceedings, by sacrilegiously committing the contested relic to the flames. …

The festival of St. Martin, happening at that season when the new wines of the year are drawn from the lees and tasted, when cattle are killed for winter food, and fat geese are in their prime, is held as a feast-day over most parts of Christendom. On the ancient clog almanacs, the day is marked by the figure of a goose; our bird of Michaelmas being, on the continent, sacrificed at Martinmas. In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox is called a mart, clearly from Martinmas, the usual time when beeves are killed for winter use. In ‘Tusser’s Husbandry, we read:

When Easter comes, who knows not then,
That veal and bacon is the man?
And Martilmass beef doth bear good tack,
When country folic do dainties lack.’

Barnaby Googe’s translation of Neogeorgus, shews us how Martinmas was kept in Germany, towards the latter part of the fifteenth century

‘To belly chear, yet once again,
Doth Martin more incline,
Whom all the people worshippeth With roasted geese and wine.
Both all the day long, and the night, Now each man open makes
His vessels all, and of the must, Oft times, the last he takes,
Which holy Martin afterwards Alloweth to be wine,
Therefore they him, unto the skies, Extol with praise divine.’

A genial saint, like Martin, might naturally be expected to become popular in England; and there are no less than seven churches in London and Westminster, alone, dedicated to him. There is certainly more than a resemblance between the Vinalia of the Romans, and the Martinalia of the medieval period.

Indeed, an old ecclesiastical calendar, quoted by Brand, expressly states under 11th November: ‘The Vinalia, a feast of the ancients, removed to this day. Bacchus in the figure of Martin.’ And thus, probably, it happened, that the beggars were taken from St. Martin, and placed under the protection of St. Giles; while the former became the patron saint of publicans, tavern-keepers, and other ‘dispensers of good eating and drinking. In the hall of the Vintners’ Company of London, paintings and statues of St. Martin and Bacchus reign amicably together side by side.

On the inauguration, as lord mayor, of Sir Samuel Dashwood, an honoured vintner, in 1702, the company had a grand processional pageant, the most conspicuous figure in which was their patron saint, Martin, arrayed, cap-à-pie, in a magnificent suit of polished armour; wearing a costly scarlet cloak, and mounted on a richly plumed and caparisoned white charger: two esquires, in rich liveries, walking at each side. Twenty satyrs danced before him, beating tambours, and preceded by ten halberdiers, with rural music. Ten Roman lictors, wearing silver helmets, and carrying axes and fasces, gave an air of classical dignity to the procession, and, with the satyrs, sustained the bacchanalian idea of the affair.

A multitude of beggars, ‘howling most lamentably,’ followed the warlike saint, till the procession stopped in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Then Martin, or his representative at least, drawing his sword, cut his rich scarlet cloak in many pieces, which he distributed among the beggars. This ceremony being duly and gravely performed, the lamentable howlings ceased, and the procession resumed its course to Guildhall, where Queen Anne graciously condescended to dine with the new lord mayor.

Everybody is reading Noam Scheiber’s piece in the New Republic on Valerie Jarrett.

Even at this late date in the Obama presidency, there is no surer way to elicit paranoid whispers or armchair psychoanalysis from Democrats than to mention the name Valerie Jarrett.

Party operatives, administration officials—they are shocked by her sheer longevity and marvel at her influence. When I asked a longtime source who left the Obama White House years ago for his impressions of Jarrett, he confessed that he was too fearful to speak with me, even off the record.

Even at this late date in the Obama presidency, there is no surer way to elicit paranoid whispers or armchair psychoanalysis from Democrats than to mention the name Valerie Jarrett.

This is not as irrational as it sounds. Obama has said he consults Jarrett on every major decision, something current and former aides corroborate. “Her role since she has been at the White House is one of the broadest and most expansive roles that I think has ever existed in the West Wing,” says Anita Dunn, Obama’s former communications director. Broader, even, than the role of running the West Wing. This summer, the call to send Attorney General Eric Holder on a risky visit to Ferguson, Missouri, was made by exactly three people: Holder himself, the president, and Jarrett, who were vacationing together on Martha’s Vineyard. When I asked Holder if Denis McDonough, the chief of staff, was part of the conversation, he thought for a moment and said, “He was not there.” (Holder hastened to add that “someone had spoken to him.”)

Jarrett holds a key vote on Cabinet picks (she opposed Larry Summers at Treasury and was among the first Obama aides to come around on Hillary Clinton at State) and has an outsize say on ambassadorships and judgeships. She helps determine who gets invited to the First Lady’s Box for the State of the Union, who attends state dinners and bill-signing ceremonies, and who sits where at any of the above. She has placed friends and former employees in important positions across the administration—“you can be my person over there,” is a common refrain.

And Jarrett has been known to enjoy the perks of high office herself. When administration aides plan “bilats,” the term of art for meetings of two countries’ top officials, they realize that whatever size meeting they negotiate—nine by nine, eight by eight, etc.—our side will typically include one less foreign policy hand, because Jarrett has a standing seat at any table that includes the president.

Not surprisingly, all this influence has won Jarrett legions of detractors. They complain that she has too much control over who sees the president. That she skews his decision-making with her after-hours visits. That she is an incorrigible yes-woman. That she has, in effect, become the chief architect of his very prominent and occasionally suffocating bubble.

There is an element of truth to this critique. While aboard Air Force One at the end of the 2012 campaign, Jarrett turned to Obama and told him, “Mr. President, I don’t understand how you’re not getting eighty-five percent of the vote.” The other Obama aides in the cabin looked around in disbelief before concluding that she’d been earnest.

Still, Jarrett’s role is far more textured than this narrative would suggest. She has served as a teller of hard truths, urging Obama to clean up his initial remarks about Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates’s arrest in 2009, which, she worried, sounded disrespectful to police. She is an all-wise interpreter of the president’s thoughts. When the White House began taking flak for its man-cave sensibilities, senior officials consulted Jarrett to figure out where Obama stood. “The White House counsel Greg Craig stopped by,” recalls a former Jarrett aide. “He was like, ‘Hey, is the president worried about this?’” (He was.) Jarrett even plays the role of advance dining scout for the Obamas, locating restaurants discreet and exacting enough to serve the first family. (Fiola Mare in Georgetown has become a standby.)

So adept is Jarrett at catering to the president’s needs that Michelle Obama has, at least on one occasion, chafed at the portrayal of their relationship. Late in the 2008 campaign, Vogue published a long profile of Jarrett titled “Barack’s Rock.” According to a senior campaign aide, Michelle sniffed about the magazine bestowing a title that she considered hers.

Jarrett’s job may be nothing less than to reflect the most authentic version of Barack Obama back at himself. “My speculation has always been, when you are any president or Democratic nominee, at the pinnacle of American political power, you are necessarily surrounded by layer and layer of bureaucracy,” says a former White House aide. “You’re completely disconnected. For someone to come to you and say, ‘I am going to be the person who is your connection to the real you’ … is very attractive.”

And Jarrett is, in turn, our connection to the real Barack Obama. A decade after his ascent, there is still a basic unknowability about him, a puzzling gap between his talents and the public’s enthusiasm for his years in office. No wonder Jarrett inspires such fevered theorizing. She is the closest we have to a human decoder ring—the only person who can solve the mystery of why this president has left so many feeling so unfulfilled.

Read the whole thing.