Sterry Butcher has a very nice piece in Texas Monthly on the romance of the railroad in West Texas.

It began this summer, when we slept with our windows open. The first time it happened, I awoke in the middle of the night not knowing what I’d heard. It sounded like loony laughter from a dozen different souls, some of them clapping weird noisemakers, before their demented hilarity abruptly ceased. Moonlight streamed into the room. The Catahoula at the foot of the bed listened too, eyes shining and ears pricked. The train’s horn blew from the tracks a mile away, a winsome four-blast call: “I’m here; I’m here; here, I’m here.” Immediately the party erupted again, but now, with my wits about me, I recognized the troublemakers. Coyotes. Coyotes howling and yipping in answer to the train.

Why these coyotes accompany the train’s wail, I do not know, but they’ve continued in the months since, always in the gloaming or cloaked by night, sometimes quite close to the house, which sets the Catahoula to lift a lip and rumble meaningfully. A strange, long string of interspecies communication has thus evolved: the train warning people of its approach, the coyotes calling to the train, the dog cautioning the coyotes that home, this place, is off limits, while I lay a comforting hand on the dog’s paw in the dark.

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Tyler Durdin tells us that looking poor is hip this year, but looking poor can also be expensive.

A pre-soiled, distressed pair of Gucci sneakers will set you back $870.

This kind of building would produce that kind of decision.

The Independent:

The Home Office has refused asylum to a Christian convert by quoting Bible passages which it says prove Christianity is not a peaceful religion.

The Iranian national, who claimed asylum in 2016, was told passages in the Bible were “inconsistent” with his claim to have converted to Christianity after discovering it was a “peaceful” faith.

The refusal letter from the department states the book of Revelations – the final book of the Bible – is “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence”, and cites six excerpts from it.

It then states: “These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a ‘peaceful’ religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge.”

When contacted by The Independent, the Home Office said the letter was “not in accordance” with its policy approach to claims based on religious persecution, and said it was working to improve the training provided to decision-makers on religious conversion.

Daguerrotype of Renty, 1850.

If you are on the Left, no story, however implausible, can be subject to skepticism if it serves the interests of the right people.

AP:

Harvard University has “shamelessly” turned a profit from photos of two 19th-century slaves while ignoring requests to turn the photos over to the slaves’ descendants, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Tamara Lanier, of Norwich, Connecticut, is suing the Ivy League school for “wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation” of images she says depict two of her ancestors. Her suit, filed in Massachusetts state court, demands that Harvard immediately turn over the photos, acknowledge her ancestry and pay an unspecified sum in damages.

Harvard spokesman Jonathan Swain said the university “has not yet been served, and with that is in no position to comment on this complaint.”

At the center of the case is a series of 1850 daguerreotypes, an early type of photo, taken of two South Carolina slaves identified as Renty and his daughter, Delia. Both were posed shirtless and photographed from several angles. The images are believed to be the earliest known photos of American slaves.

They were commissioned by Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz, whose theories on racial difference were used to support slavery in the U.S. The lawsuit says Agassiz came across Renty and Delia while touring plantations in search of racially “pure” slaves born in Africa.

“To Agassiz, Renty and Delia were nothing more than research specimens,” the suit says. “The violence of compelling them to participate in a degrading exercise designed to prove their own subhuman status would not have occurred to him, let alone mattered.”

The suit attacks Harvard for its “exploitation” of Renty’s image at a 2017 conference and in other uses. It says Harvard has capitalized on the photos by demanding a “hefty” licensing fee to reproduce the images. It also draws attention to a book Harvard sells for $40 with Renty’s portrait on the cover. The book, called “From Site to Sight: Anthropology, Photography, and the Power of Imagery,” explores the use of photography in anthropology.

Among other demands, the suit asks Harvard to acknowledge that it bears responsibility for the humiliation of Renty and Delia and that Harvard “was complicit in perpetuating and justifying the institution of slavery.”

A researcher at a Harvard museum rediscovered the photos in storage in 1976. But Lanier’s case argues Agassiz never legally owned the photos because he didn’t have his subjects’ consent and that he didn’t have the right to pass them to Harvard. Instead, the suit says, Lanier is the rightful owner as Renty’s next of kin.

The suit also argues that Harvard’s continued possession of the images violates the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

“Renty is 169 years a slave by our calculation,” civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, one of Lanier’s lawyers, said in an interview. “How long will it be before Harvard finally frees Renty?”

Lanier says she grew up hearing stories about Renty passed down from her mother. While enslaved in Columbia, South Carolina, Renty taught himself to read and later held secret Bible readings on the plantation, the suit says. He is described as “small in stature but towering in the minds of those who knew him.”

The suit says Lanier has verified her genealogical ties to Renty, whom she calls “Papa Renty.” She says he is her great-great-great-grandfather.

If given the photos, Lanier said she would tell “the true story of who Renty was.” But she also hopes her case will spark a national discussion over race and history.

“This case is important because it will test the moral climate of this country, and force this country to reckon with its long history of racism,” Lanier said at a news conference outside the Harvard Club of New York City.

Crump, her attorney, added that the case could allow Harvard to “remove the stain from its legacy” and show it has the courage “to finally atone for slavery.”

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The genealogy of African Americans is notoriously difficult to document, since Antebellum census records failed to record the names of slaves at all. But Tamara Lanier, we are to believe, has successfully documented her connection with a 1850 photographic subject, known only as “Renty.”

Not only that, she knows all sorts of interesting things about her alleged ancestor. (Hyperallergic)

How ironic it is to know that the black African chosen by a scientist to be the symbol of ignorance and racial inferiority was truly an educated and self-taught man,” Lanier told The Day. According to her family’s verbal history, Renty taught himself to read, and taught other slaves using a book called the Blue Back Webster. “My goal is to correct history and to share with all that … Renty was an educated and exceptional person.”

“Papa Renty was a proud and kind man who, like so many enslaved men, women, and children endured years of unimaginable horrors,” Lanier told the Boston Globe. “Harvard’s refusal to honor our family’s history by acknowledging our lineage and its own shameful past is an insult to Papa Renty’s life and memory.”

But, her actual familial connection to Renty, we are then told, is, after all, not that important.

A number of experts expressed to the NYT that they believe Lanier’s case may not hold up in court. Intellectual property lawyer Rick Kurnit says he believes she will have a difficult time proving ownership over the images, referencing the infamous “V-J Day in Times Square,” which belonged to the photographer rather than the sailor or the nurse who are kissing in the image. However, the NYT notes, the “V-J” image was taken in a public space.

Gregg Hecimovich, chairman of the English department at Furman University, believes Lanier’s claim to ancestral history is shaky, but Molly Rogers, the author of a book called Delia’s Tears, posits, “It’s not necessarily by blood. It could be people who take responsibility for each other. Terms, names, family relationships are very much complicated by the fact of slavery.”

Appropriately enough, she is being represented by Benjamin Crump, an African-American attorney specializing in representing racially-based claims.

Algonquin J. Calhoun was clearly unavailable.

Benjamin Crump, one of Lanier’s lawyers, calls the case “unprecedented in terms of legal theory and reclaiming property that was wrongfully taken. Renty’s descendants may be the first descendants of slave ancestors to be able to get their property rights.” In 2012, Crump represented the family of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager murdered by George Zimmerman while walking home.

Elin McCoy, of Bloomberg, reports on her six-course dinner with lots of vintages tasted at Chateau Lafte-Rothschild.

The intimacy of the evening was reflected in the cuisine familiale menu. We took our seats and soupe VGE arrived—individual tureens filled with delicate broth, winter vegetable, and truffles covered in puff pastry—the first of six courses. To accompany it, Eric picked an intense, truffle-scented 2005 Château L’Evangile from the Rothschilds’ Pomerol estate. Also poured was a smooth, seductive, and rich 1989 Château Duhart-Milon, the neighboring fourth growth that the family purchased in 1962; it was astonishing how well it aged. If anything at the upcoming auction could be considered a bargain, this is it, with an estimate of $1,000 to $1,500 for a case of 12 bottles.

The main course was a simple boeuf a la ficelle—beef filet with a tangy, minty green sauce, surrounded by tender leeks, scallions, carrots, and turnips—and with it, Lafites from both 1989 (estimate: $4,000 to $6,000 for 6 bottles) and 1959 (estimate: $3,000 to $4,600 for one bottle). The former was gulp-able and voluptuous, with layers of spice, cassis, and cedar. And the latter? Deep-colored and concentrated, with notes of mint, cedar, truffle, and tobacco, the 1959 is the greatest Lafite I have ever drunk; the epitome of harmony and velvety elegance. This is its moment, but it seems like it could live on this plateau for decades. Wais Jalali, the CEO and Chairman of private equity firm Cerebrus LLC and whose cellar includes 48,000 bottles, declared it “the wine of the night.”

Cheese appeared, and with it came the biggest surprise of the evening: the delicate 1905 Lafite (estimate: $3,000 to $4,800 for one bottle). At 114 years, it showed the kind of longevity Lafite is known for, demonstrating why perfect storage conditions are so important when buying old wines. With its silky texture, ethereal scents of plums and currants, and a long finish, it suggested to me a long-ago world.

The meal ended with a creamy lemon mousse, paired with an apricot-scented, opulent 1989 Château Rieussec, which unfortunately will not be available at the upcoming auction.

Afterward, we settled into the small, cozy, adjoining salon, where several guests puffed on Cuban cigars and we sipped an old Mirabelle and Lafite’s private label of Tres Vieille Reserve Cognac. I reflected on the pleasure of decades-old wines.

“Every wine has its moment, but you have to choose the right moment,” the baron had explained on the cellar tour. Each of the wines poured demonstrated that perfectly. Most of these vintages are available in the upcoming auction, but only the single bottle of 1868 (estimate: $13,000 to $20,000) includes dinner at the château. I’d happily pay that much for dinner alone.

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It’s a rough life being a wine journalist, but Elin is clearly bearing up bravely.

HT: Bird Dog.

Babylon Bee:

A number of Democrats have proposed changes to the structure of government that they think would help them win, such as lowering the voting age to 16, abolishing the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, and changing how Senate seats are allocated. Now, though, some of the Democratic presidential hopefuls are attacking the heart of the matter: what they call an “outdated Constitution” that sometimes “allows Republicans to be elected.”

“The election of Trump exposed a fundamental flaw in the Constitution,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said at a campaign rally. “Everyone said Hillary was supposed to win, but she didn’t. And we’re afraid that in the future, maybe Democrats won’t win again. We can’t allow that.”

Warren and numerous other Democrats have proposed an amendment to the Constitution that will state that only Democrats are allowed to win elections, a proposal they say will increase election “fairness.”

“When I think about someone other than a Democrat being elected,” said Senator Cory Booker, “it makes me so mad.” He then raised his fists and shook them, a gesture indicating he was mad. Candidate Beto O’Rourke also spoke out for the proposed amendment, though all he got out was, “It’s a great–” before skateboarding into a tree and quickly fleeing the scene of the incident.

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Atlantic puffin, Fratercula arctica.

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Yuval Levin, in NR, explains why the old WASP elite was really more meritorious than the modern Meritocracy.

For much of American history .. [t]he apex of American political, cultural, and economic power was largely the preserve of a fairly narrow white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant near-aristocracy, centered in the Northeast and exercising power across generations. This was never an absolute barrier to others’ rising, of course, but it was a major obstacle.

The claim to power of this WASP elite, like that of most modern aristocracies, was a mix of heritage and rearing. They possessed their privileges by virtue of their birth, but they were raised and educated in ways intended to prepare them for responsibility and authority. And they were—at least in principle though in many cases also in practice—expected to subject themselves to a code of behavior, a commitment to public service, a degree of personal reticence, a regard for the rules of fair play, and a sense of responsibility that was rooted in the implicit recognition that their power was an inherited privilege, not an earned achievement. …

This new aristocracy is in some important respects less reticent about its own legitimacy than the old. Because each of its members must work to prove his merit—to pass the key tests, and clear the key hurdles—today’s elite is more likely to believe it has earned its power, and possesses it by right more than privilege. Because our elite as a whole has inclined to this view, it tends to impose fewer restraints on its own uses of power, and generally doesn’t subscribe to the kind of code of conduct that sometimes characterized past aristocracies. Even when today’s elites devote themselves to public service, as many do, they tend not to see it as fulfilling an obligation to give back for an unearned privilege but as further demonstrating their own high-mindedness and merit.

A meritocracy naturally assumes its authority is merited. But rather than prove its worth by its service to the larger society, the idea of merit at the core of our meritocracy is radically individualistic and dismally technocratic. The sort of elite that results implicitly substitutes a cold and sterile notion of intellect for a warm and spirited understanding of character as its measure of worth, and our society (including some elites themselves) increasingly cannot escape the intuition that this is an unjustifiable substitution. But rather than impose tests of character on itself, our elite inclines to respond to these concerns with increasingly intense displays of its ideal of social justice. It doubles down on the logic of meritocracy, adopts the language of privilege in its critiques of the larger society, and pushes for even more inclusive criteria of admission to elite institutions—all in an effort to make its claims to legitimate authority more persuasive.”

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I was at Yale during two different eras.

In the short-haired, jacketed-and-tied all-male Yale of 1966, we hung our overcoats and left books and other personal property in the coatroom without a thought. No one would steal. There were silver water pitchers and sugar bowls engraved with the respective residential college arms in the dining halls.

In the long-haired, informal, coeducated and triumphantly meritocratic Yale of 1971, everyone left their coats and books on chairs in the Common Room within sight of the Dining Hall. If you left them unobserved, someone might walk off with them. The silver water pitchers and sugar bowls were all gone, stolen by the meritorious. I myself saw, on separate occasions, groups of undergraduates walking out of both the Skull & Bones tomb and the Berkeley College Common Room, carrying away expensive oriental rugs. The common rooms gradually emptied down to the very large leather couches, which were too big to fit in undergraduate rooms. Students had appropriated for personal use the common room lamps, chairs, and side tables.

And, personally, I don’t think the Meritocracy of that time has changed a lot over the years.

Wikipedia:

Émile Darl’mat (1892–1970) was the creator and owner of a Peugeot distributor with a car body business established at the rue de l’Université in Paris in 1923. In the 1930s the firm gained prominence as a low volume manufacturer of Peugeot-based sports cars. Business was interrupted by the Second World War, but at least one prototype was kept hidden throughout the period and directly after the war Darl’mat returned to the construction of special bodied Peugeots, although in the impoverished condition of post-war France business never returned to the volumes achieved during the 1930s.

The best remembered of the Darl’mats is a sports car based on the Peugeot 302: the engine was taken from the 402. Several Peugeot-Darl’mat 402 “spécial sport” models raced at Le Mans with success in 1937 and 1938. The cars were built in very limited numbers and three models – a roadster, a coupe, and a drop-head coupe – were offered.

32,000 yrs ago an Arctic ground squirrel cached some fruit in its burrow, which was later sealed by sediment & frozen. In the 2000s scientists unearthed the fruit & cultivated its tissue. It grew into this: a Pleistocene ancestor of the narrow-leafed campion (Silene stenophylla)

Some of the excavated squirrel burrows contained *hundreds of thousands* of ancient fruit & seeds. All that genetic information—the ungerminated generations, the apparitions of Ice Age Earth—frozen in time & place, preserving the possibility of resurrection.

Es muy raro verlos, pero están.
2 aguará guazú en la Provincia de Corrientes, en plena cosecha de arroz.
Caricias de la Creación. pic.twitter.com/c59M4W6Kwx

— Juanjo Madero (@MaderoJuanjo) March 17, 2019

He calls it: aguará guazú (meaning “large fox” in the Guarani language). It’s the rare Maned wolf, Chrysocyon brachyurus, caught by camera in Corrientes Province, Argentina.