Here's how to butcher a book about early 20th century American classical music

 Now, I'm not a former music critic of the New York Times, unlike Joseph Horowitz, but when I was a Dallas Symphony Orchestra season-ticket holder years ago, I regularly conversed by email with Dallas Morning News critic Scott Cantrell. And, I've read plenty of in-depth books on various specific composers, histories, etc. Plus, I work in the media business myself, and know something about editing as well as writing.

So, I'm not speaking out of nowhere. First, my expanded-from-Goodreads review of "Artists in Exile," then my comments on how, IMO, this could have been made better.

Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts by Joseph Horowitz
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

One of the best two-star books I’ve read, but, it’s a two star book, in large part due to authorial framing combined with deceptive title.

Loses a star for deceptive title if not more. Not all the classical musicians were exiles and a majority of the film actors and directors were not. Started grokking more by page 250. “Artists” turns out to be selective. Other than briefly referencing Thomas Mann and Vladimir Nabokov as one last attempt to prove his thesis that “Russians” were flexible in exile, Germans not,” no authors are included. No painters or sculptors are included at all, besides a fleeting mention of de Kooning and one other. No architects are included. So, that’s really close to two full stars there. (Yes, he says that in his subtitle, the book is about "performing artists." But, he does mention, if briefly, non-performing artists, and again, Mann and Nabokov are dragged in to push a thesis that IMO isn't tenable.)

Some sort of physical-racialist essentialism by talking about a Balanchine body type that is “itself Africanist.” For a Jewish author writing about people who were, when actually exiles, largely Jewish, this seems dangerous territory.

Claims symphony and opera aren’t frequently revitalized in modern America? Really? Never heard of John Adams? (I’m not a big opera buff, to be honest.)

Stravinsky was in Paris before WWI and wasn’t “expelled.” Balanchine may be considered an economic refugee from 1930s Paris, but wasn’t an exile.

Stravinsky didn’t “capitulate” to Schoenberg. Also, why would an alleged “Germanophobe” regularly visit Weimar Germany?

Balanchine seems used as a foil to beat Stravinsky over the head. Insinuating he was unoriginal by being stimulated by Balanchine after Diaghilev and before Craft.

I didn't care for what seemed to be dissing of Stravinsky's later-life composing work in general. (He deserves fire for any antisemitism, and an epic firefight between Craft and Cal-Berkeley music professor Richard Taruskin shows just how bad it was, while at the same time showing that it can arguably be made even worse than it was.) Being an aficionado of both "Threni" (which may have been borrowed from Krenek's "Lamentatio" with its own serial technique mixed with Renaissance counterpoint that would have grabbed Stravinsky's ear — even he says it might have) and "Abraham and Isaac" (see link above) he wrote some good serial music. Maybe Craft gave him a nudge into that, but I think Stravinsky had long been interested in the idea. Craft discusses that more in an interview.

Having read Craft’s bio (or extended biographies) of Stravinsky, and articles about the Craft-Stravinsky relationship and the bio (a good overview here), let’s just say I’m not totally solid on Horowitz’s thesis.

I’m no more sold, if even as sold, on Horowitz's inflexible Germans and flexible Russians thesis. Perhaps that’s why authors are largely left out, and painters, sculptors and architects totally are; they would upset the thesis. In addition, exiles from places like Francoist Spain (Dali, for one) would further muddy the waters. Add in Duchamp (France) and Mondrian (Netherlands, but in France when he fled for Britain, then the US). I'm sure this would upset the thesis. This is just tagging a few names. To tag another, in music? Darius Milhaud.

Varese was clearly even more than Balanchine not an exile. Boris Aronson wasn’t, either. Rouben Mamoulian MAY have been an exile, but it was from Georgia more than Tsarist Russia per se. Don't forget that Georgia in all of its subsections did not become Russian imperially owned until the late 1820s; ditto for Armenia. So, considering Balanchine and Mamoulian "Russian" is a stretch; Horowitz seems to admit this by calling Mamoulian "deracinated." Of course, he also calls Hungarian Jews "German." Again, there's a thesis at work that he's determined to push, true or false.

Most the actors and directors, although eventually forced to remain in the US during the war years, weren't exiles, either. They freely came to the US in the late 1920s.

A few good things?

Arthur Farwell? Had never heard of him. Through the miracle of YouTube, I played Navajo War Dance No. 2.

Beyond the efforts of WRR every January, had not heard of one-third or more of Black composers mentioned.

That American modern classical music has suffered due to failure to follow Dvorak’s urging to ground itself on Black music is has a fair amount of truth. 

That said, I am not as big of a Dvorak fan as Horowitz appears to be. His American Suite, for example, has some generic descending fourths "American Indian chants." And, I don't think it's as "little-known" as he claims.

Also, jazz, its roots ultimately but not solely African-American, DID have some effect, of no little means, on American classical composers. So, too, in smaller degree, has the blues.

Going beyond Dvorak to the literary, calling James Fenimore Cooper an "Indianist"? Mark Twain is laughing in his grave.

Update: With further thought, I also think Horowitz's sub-thesis, that the "cult of the performer" is purely an American thing, is also overstated. Paganini comes immediately to mind. Joachim, for whom Brahms wrote his violin concerto, next. Liszt, even though composer first, certainly played on the cult of the performer when younger.

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OK, now, to make this better? 

First, drop the "Exiles" title. Sometimes, it's an editor or publisher that suggests a book title after not liking the author's, but in this case, I'm sure it was Horowitz.

Second, change that title to something about music, because it's clear that's what it's about.

Third, drop the Germans vs. Russians schtick.

Fourth, simply focus on the development of American classical music from the time of Dvorak's and Mahler's visits on, looking at "native" development, European visits, interactions or lack thereof and more. 

Film, to the degree it involves music scores, and the theater, with musicals and incidental music, comes along for the ride. You semi-ignored literature and totally ignored art and painting, so nothing lost.

Expand by 50 pages. Trim the Balanchine, as that's ballet first. Expand on American-born composers.

Utah no longer Mormon majority

 The LSD Church continues to claim it is, but religious sociology surveys, per the Religious News Service, paint a massively different picture, with the gap between Mormons' own claims and social response surveys having doubled, by percentage points of difference, over the last 30 or so years.

Even more interesting? Utah has dropped to just No. 3, if that, per the RNS piece, in fertility rate. Mormons not making more! The Dakotas are highest, it says (but no link). Guess without any search? American Indian fertility.

Wiki has South Dakota No. 1 as of 2022. Then, Alaska, Nebraska, Louisiana, Utah, North Dakota. Alaska, North Dakota, and probably Nebraska also American Indian births. World Population Review has the two Dakotas, then Alaska and Nebraska, then Utah for 2024. Of note? New Mexico, despite its large American Indian population, is in the bottom one-third of states.

Add to that massive in-migration of non-Mormons and hence the current state of the state.

Catholic Fort Worth Diocese enshrining Padre Pio

Rome loves to talk about how it will "follow the science" on something like evolution by natural selection (with a theistic evolution carve-out for us humans, of course).

It doesn't always.

Ensoulment is of course one biggie.

Then, per the header? This:

Bishop Michael Olson of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth announces the dedication of a permanent chapel which will house a first-class relic of Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina who lived a life of deep humility and prayer while performing miracles.

The Saint Pio Chapel dedication will take place on September 18, 2024, at Saint Peter the Apostle Catholic Church, 1201 South Cherry Lane, Fort Worth, Texas. A first-class relic, consisting of a bandage stained with blood from the wound on Saint Pio’s side, will be on display in a reliquary at the parish./

Well, OK now.

 As with John Paul II and other recent cases, the Vatican's sainthood verification process is set up to allegedly allow skeptical questioning, but the results of said questioning then get ignored.

The actual Padre Pio?

Just working off that Wiki link for starters. Stigmata are not supernatural. And such bodily changes aren't limited to Christian intense devotion. There's also the question, per Wiki, about whether he actually had the stigmata or not. And, if he did .... er, why?

There's also the fact that the Vatican itself was skeptical of him for some number of years. He wasn't fully rehabilitated until Pope Paul VI.

Add in, per the book "Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age," that Pio himself, per an uncovered letter, once asked for carbolic acid, which can, of course, be used to create "stigmata."

Now, to world-class skeptic Joe Nickell. He notes that things like "bilocation" claims are all anecdotal. Ditto on claims of healings, which, if they happened, would be easily explained by psychological placebo effect anyway. (See "Rasputin, Grigorii" and "Tsarevitch Alexei.") And, he notes that others have faked stigmata — and later confessed in at least some cases.

Aeon ignores that Walter Kaufmann crushed John Rawls

 At Aeon, John Lefebvre has a paean to Rawls, apparently an extract from his new book "Liberalism is a Way of Life," which is mentioned and linked in the tagline for the author at top left.

Lefebvre ignores that Walter Kaufmann crushed Rawls in "Without Guilt and Justice." Kaufmann doesn't say that's exactly why he wrote the book, but it basically is. Although rejecting both retributive justice and distributive justice, at least as Rawls framed them in his liberal political science ethics, as ultimately being Platonic ideas (which I didn't think of when I read the book the first time) Kaufmann might actually agree with Rawls that life needs to be "graced" or "redeemed," words that clearly come from the Judeo-Christian ethos, even though Rawls became a secularist.

Let's start with Lefebvre:

This raises a tricky question. If you, like me, are unchurched and don’t draw your values from a religion, then where do you get them from? From what broad tradition do you acquire your sense of what is good, normal and worthwhile in life, and – if I can put it this way – your general vibe too?

When I’ve asked my non-religious friends, colleagues and students this question, they’re almost always stumped. Their impulse is to say one of three things: ‘from my experience’, ‘from friends and family’ or ‘from human nature’. But to this I reply, as politely as possible, that those are not suitable answers. Personal experience, friends and family and human nature are situated and formed within wider social, political and cultural contexts. So I ask again: ‘What society-or-civilisation-sized thing can you point to as the source of your values? I’m talking about the kind of thing that, were you Christian, you’d just say: “Ah, the Bible,” or “Oh, my Church.’’’

OK, he's essentially arguing for something transcendental, if not specifically Platonic.

And, then he presents liberalism as just that.

In my book Liberalism as a Way of Life (2024), I argue that the unchurched in the Western world should point to liberalism as the source of who they are through and through. Liberalism – with its core values of personal freedom, fairness, reciprocity, tolerance and irony – is that society-or-civilisation-sized thing that may well underlie who we are, not just in our political opinions but in all walks of life, from the family to the workplace, from friendship to enmity, from humour to outrage, and everything in between.

Oy.

And, yes, I think Lefebvre is presenting liberalism as something Platonic, even if he doesn't recognize that he's doing just that.

It's made worse that the last half of the piece is an extended essay on Rawls' "A Theory of Justice," which is the core of what Kaufmann was refuting. Above all, Kaufmann crushes the Rawlsian ideas of an "original position" and "a veil of ignorance." And, he does so by looking at N=1 or N=2 ethical situations, not classwide or society-wide ones.

Per my long review of Staeley Corngold's bio of Kaufmann, it's called "moral naturalism," Mr. Lefebvre. And, as a philosophy professor, I know that you know that it exists. Moral naturalism is the non-rhetorical answer to the rhetorical question. And yes, your question to your students is rhetorical.

And, given that I'm a streak of reading semi-crappy to crappy philosophy books (of course, Little Bobby Sapolsky's was by choice, knowing it was crappy in advance and wanting to see the train wreck) I have no need of yours, Mr. Lefebvre.

'Catastrophe Ethics': In retrospect, wrong from the title

 I have been hitting a string of cropper and semi-cropper books in touted new philosophy books recently. (Sorry, Little Bobby Sapolsky and determinist fanbois, "Determined" is not a philosophy book, being Not.Even.Wrong, based on a category mistake and more.)

The latest? "Catastrophe Ethics." As usual, what follows is an expanded version of my Goodreads review.

Catastrophe Ethics: How to Choose Well in a World of Tough Choices by Travis Rieder
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book became fairly disappointing fairly early, contra the hopes I had from the title. In fact, reading backward, in a sense, at the end of the book, I realized the title itself was highly problematic. Even more is it problematic with the expanded review. Let’s start there.

One BIG problem? Nuclear weaponry is never discussed. Given the nuttery of US-Chinese saber-rattling, even to a new US nuclear strategic plan:

(T)he Biden administration has approved a highly classified nuclear strategic plan—the Nuclear Employment Guidance—that seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from Russia, China, and North Korea

failure to discuss this issue is ridiculous. Even atomic energy gets only mention in passing under climate change. And, the dirtiness of cobalt mining for batteries is discussed later; that of uranium mining is not. Beyond nuclear issues, looking at the weapons side, militarism in general is not discussed, other than a passing reference to threats to Ukrainian power plants by Russia. (Dimona, and the possibility of an Iranian missile hitting it, are not. And, I wonder if further political mindset is behind that. See below.)

Nor, even though we are emerging from a global pandemic and the author is a bioethicist, are pandemic catastrophe ethics discussed in detail. Drug addiction problems are touched on, scatteringly, throughout the book; the war on drugs and related issues are not. I just thought of this at the last chapter of the book, but realized that itself would probably knock it down a star.

And, that relates directly to the book’s title. And, since this is a book of matters philosophical, we’re going to get into linguistic philosophy. What IS a “catastrophe” to Rieder? We’re never given a clear definition, let alone a justification that one would expect to accompany such a definition. Another “missing example”? He talks about consumption behind climate change but never thinks about possibly including current capitalism in general as a catastrophe. Related? The ethics of the developing world wanting to live like the developed world and how that might affect climate change aren't discussed.

Now, Rieder might argue back that the book isn't intended to be comprehensive. If so, theoretically, he still owes an explainer on why he chose the particular catastrophes he did as illustrative.  And, in actuality, we never get that.

His "puzzle," in his details, might be parsed and teased out differently if he used different, or more, disasters to background it.

Chapter 2? The big problem is scientific. Most scientists who are honest climate scientists and not neoliberals say that the degree of temperature change by 2100 will be at least 3C if not more. (Michael Mann is in Rieder’s bibliography but James Hansen is NOT. I have written about this in various ways, including some of the recent study in general and about Hansen vs Mann (and Katharine Hayhoe).) Indeed, per that first link, there's a good chance we hit 4C, and a non-negligible chance we hit 5C, by 2100. And, while I may be gone, if that's the case, there's good chance that Rieder himself, not his child, experiences 3C, and an outside chance of 3.5C, before he passes away.

 Second problem is this is the first, but by no means the last place where he takes individual actions out of collective context. The “joyguzzler” inspires others; the philosophical argument that it’s not problematic becomes weaponized. And, minor harm is not the same as zero harm. And, here, as in chapter 9, there’s a self-conflict over not discussing virtue ethics more here, let alone going beyond the West in a search for philosophical ethics. He finally gets to this, on virtue ethics, in Chapter 11, but that then means we have poor writing and editing; this isn’t a murder mystery where head-faking is not only acceptable but encouraged. It’s logical argumentation. There’s another problem behind that, even more the case in Chapter 12 than in Chapter 11.

Chapter 3’s thoughts on public health did not follow from Chapter 2 on climate change or Chapter 3 on meat. The three have different ethical angles. There is no public health equivalent of “big polluter them” nor an equivalent of big ag’s stranded/marginal costs on factory farming.

Chapter 4 gets us on the beam of good philosophizing. For a chapter.

Chapter 5 is hit and miss. Rieder kind of pulls punches on the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, the horn of ethics existing outside of god. So, by not philosophizing about how that, in and of itself, is as wrong as the first horn, the larger picture is a bit short, because the left hand is Kantianism, to put that in more modern terms — command theory without the divine. He also misstates why the post-Peloponnesian War Athens put Socrates on trial. In blunt modern terms, Socrates was a traitor.

Chapter 6 nails “the myth of tolerance.”

Chapter 7: Contra Rosalind Hursthouse, with Rieder missing this? Her definition of virtue ethics by identifying virtuous people is circular. Otherwise, he comes down correctly that trolley problems are as much ethical trick as ethical reality. (And, this is why the r/philosophy subreddit is nutters.)

Chapter 8. Problems with Singer? First is the assumption that happiness is the maximum good, or even, in more stark presentations of Singer, the only good. Second, what is happiness? And, is the hedonistic calculus for measuring that calibrated to the moment? A short term after the moment? A longer term after the moment? I mean, if momentary, then Huxley’s Fordist government passing out soma is the height of good ethics. Doesn’t delve into the “nowhen” issue that parallels the “nowhere,” as in utilitarians cannot have a view from either nowhere or nowhen.

Part III

Chapter 9 His attempt to differentiate between “statistical harm” and “actual harm” seems cavilling. We use insurance actuarial tables to talk about harms all the time and nobody bifurcates them this way. To make this VERY personal given Rieder’s past, insurance actuarial tables will talk about the “statistical harms” caused by driving a motor vehicle while stoned on opioids. To go beyond that to physics? Statistical mechanics is exactly that. Doesn’t make it any less real. And, perhaps with protesting, we as a society accept actuarial norms — until, to riff back to climate change, “we” get bent out of shape when we’re in rural California or the Florida coast and our homeowner’s insurance skyrockets, if it gets renewed at all. Next, he seems to ignore virtue ethics on this issue, looking only at consequentialist and deontological stances. This seems a HUGE fail, and, unlike friend Massimo Pigliucci, I’m not in general a touter of virtue ethics. It’s weirder yet because his farmer friends in Chapter 11 are walking, talking virtue ethicists. Also, Walter Kaufmann, or thoughts similar to “Without Guilt and Justice,” are missing on other angles of individual vs collective justice. See here for a few thoughts on that book.

Chapter 10: Sex is not gender. So says me. So said the late Frans de Waal. So says biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci. Outside of evolutionary biologists, so say some political leftists. This is also, in this case, a linguistic philosophy issue. As a public policy issue, that doesn't mean that both transsexual and transgender persons don't have certain civil rights. Whether they are 100 percent the same in 100 percent of issues? Possibly not.

On duty, obligation and intimacy, his riff on Maggie Little misses another point. We seemingly evolved biologically to be in maximum group sizes of 150. In the modern world, which is “controlling” on my “sphere of intimacy” — biological or cultural evolution? And, his use of Little misses that ensoulment personhood will simply reject this framing a priori. That’s not to say it’s wrong. It is to say that it relies on presuppositions that some would say are not in evidence. Third, claiming Little’s POV on abortion is “complex” medically or ethically is a reach, and it’s also PR, trying to “sell” this precisely because of alleged complexity, as I see it.

Next: No, “reasons” are not a small-granular unit of moral measurement. They MAY be, when purely moral, and later you seem to go back to that, but? You just admitted that reasons often have no moral attachment. There may be plenty of aesthetic good to getting fresh coffee; there is ZERO moral good unless I have some weird disease requiring coffee ingestion.

I agree with him on rejecting duty and obligation on many cases, at least within INDIVIDUALIST ethics. That, too, as well as rejecting Rawlsian liberal versions of political ethics, is something I learned from Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice.” See more below.

And, by this point, I realized I was sorry I recommended this book to Massimo Pigliucci and that, while it might not fall below three stars, it was quite unlikely to rise above it.

Chapter 11: Uses a farming husband and wife, neo-traditionalist farmers, as a “hook” for turning us back to virtue ethics and an intro to the next part. Not bad, but not failing to talk about the hook in advance is bad non-fiction writing. Also, re the purity ethic in Chapter 12? Are there issues with neo-traditionalist farming that he doesn’t discuss? As in, it’s an “out”? As in, the modern world couldn’t exist with only neo-traditionalist farms? As in, where do all of their customers get their money to pay its higher prices? To put it more bluntly, does this, like planting trees as alleged carbon offsets, act as a sort of environmental penance that doesn’t really do anything? Also, given conversation earlier in this book, would he protest, even raise his hackles, at such thought?

PART IV — finally, after bad editing in Chapter 2 and failing to put a “hook” in either it or Chapter 8 to point forward to Chapter 11.

Chapter 12: Problems with the purity ethic and its similarity to utilitarianism are good. But, there’s a larger problem that Rieder misses, and that’s a problem with **Western** philosophy. Confucianism, for example, has no problem talking about things that would be best called, in the taxonomy of Western ethics, “corporate duty” and “corporate obligation.” Virtue ethics to battle climate change just doesn’t get there. It doesn’t get there on other things. By not looking beyond the Western tradition, in essence, Reider is hamstrung. Also, by looking at duty and obligation as an on/off switch, rather than in terms of degrees, he's further hamstrung. 

I have long thought that the three schools of ethics in Western philosophy fall short. And, this book sharpened that belief, in part because all three schools, while they talk about how an individual's actions affect others, still ultimately are about individualist ethics and nothing more. Virtue ethics is a good example. Aristotle focused on individual flourishing; Master Kung, on that of societal groups.

Let us not forget that the Western world did NOT “invent” philosophy. India’s Charvaka skeptics, for example, existed by or before the Greek pre-Socratics. The Ajnana started about the same time. Beyond the scope of my original review, I realize that, as I get older, this comes more and more forward in my mind. Unfortunately, even a decent-sized public library, while it might have books on the evolution of Hinduism and Buddhism, and maybe even Jainism, won't have books about Indian philosophy. The closest it will get is talking about Philostratus talking about Apollonius of Tyana visiting the "naked philosophers" of India.

Chapter 13: I think it’s too harsh to call Schopenhauer a cynic for his “antinatalist” views. Ditto on David Benatar, whom I’ve also read. Also, to riff on Schopenhauer and Benatar, there’s the question of whether one should stop with one child, whether one’s own progeny or adopted, or go on to a second once that bridge has been crossed, on the grounds that only children may be less happy. Or other things. At least Rieder eventually somewhat softens his view. The only good argument against antinatalism is a selfishly utilitarian one of that it minimizes the happiness of the currently living, especially in developed countries where social safety nets for senior citizens depend in part on youth paying in.

Chapter 14: Racism is horrible. It’s arguably not a catastrophe. See top of this review for more on that issue. And, per books like “Conspirituality,” there are plenty of people who can be environmentalist but racist. Look at the German Völkish movement for 20-30 years before Hitler. Given my note at top about actual or potential catastrophes with ethical issues that Rieder doesn’t discuss, this chapter was a cropper. I’m also NOT a fan of Kendi, among listed authors of Rieder.

Beyond that, as a good non-liberal leftist, talking about racism without talking about classism falls short. Related to that, beyond Western philosophy? The book in general is presented from a Western perspective. The exploitation of Congo over its cobalt is mentioned, but plenty of "developing" nations are exploited for plenty of resources not related to climate change. There's also, again, the issue of the ethics of developed nations saying, "do as we say, not as we did in the past," but offering insufficient help on that.

There’s other things not mentioned on the “participatory” issue. On political action, I assume Rieter is a good Democrat by some of his angles. I’ll venture that he even thinks third-party voters like me waste our votes on climate change. Or nuclear tensions in particular and militarism in general. He might concede this is personal purity ethics but would probably still reject it as good social participation.

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De gustibus non disputandum on natural beauty

A couple of weeks ago, while on vacation, I was hiking the Grove of Titans trail at Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park. I was coming back to the trailhead, when a young lady, I'm guessing early 20s, perhaps late teens, asked me, "Isn't this the most beautiful spot in the world?" or something very similar.

(My photo from a different spot on the trail.)

It was quite a nice spot. And, since the various state parks in the Redwood State and National were created before the national park, they arguably have the best lands within the system.

That said, per the old Latin phrase, de gustibus non disputandum, this is to some degree a subjective question. Having stared at Lake Louise as well as hiked to one of those tea houses at Banff National Park, I'd offer that as one option off the top of my head. Or Bear Lake and nearby at Rocky Mountain National Park, especially when the lotus pads are in bloom. Or a sunset on the ocean strip of Olympic National Park. Or, outside of national parks entirely, one of the aspen groves and surrounding land on Grand Mesa. Or, speaking of sunsets, one out over the ocean at Big Sur.

Or inland, a sunset at a national wildlife refuge 30 miles away.

Author photo, Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge

Those are just off the top of my head.

So, what does constitute the best of natural beauty?

Savannah-like areas are definitely pleasing to the human eye, perhaps in part due to evolutionary heritage. But, none of the places I mentioned above, nor others that flit into my mind like Painted Rocks National Lakeshore, are close to savannah in nature. Well, I'll modify that. Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge is fairly close. 

Is it that they are that much different from savannah that makes them beautiful? What about the presence of water? That redwood grove didn't have it. Bear Lake does, and of course, there are many cataracts and falls in Rocky. Obviously, the Pacific Ocean and Lake Superior are covered. But Grand Mesa is similar to the land of the redwoods. That said, both sites have fairly large meadow areas that intrude into the forest. Neither one is the Black Forest on steroids.

What about deserts? For whatever reason, a place like Artist's Palette at Death Valley didn't spring into mind when I talked to this young lady, and I pondered about it even now.

Artist's Palette, author photo.

There's also the matter of personal background and experience. The young lady was from Los Angeles, where any site with that level of lush greenery would flash "beautiful." Someone from Washington State or British Columbia might have a more subdued, while yet interested, feeling.

That might be even more true in places in Redwood State and National where redwoods don't predominate.  As in, walking along Prairie Creek, in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

One will notice I mentioned one place above that not only is not a U.S. national park, it's not even a part of the National Park Service. That's of course Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park.

Well, others I mentioned aren't part of the national park service. Hagerman NWR is US Fish and Wildlife Service. Grand Mesa, or another great area, land north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, is US Forest Service. So is "the Bob," the Bob Marshall Wilderness beloved of Montanans.

Jedidiah Smith isn't US government land at all of course, but California State Parks.

Big Morongo Preserve, beloved West Coast birding Mecca, isn't even state land; it's county-level.

While not denigrating US national parks, or those in other countries, nor trying to get into a philosophical demarcation issue of what should constitute a national park, as well as what should constitute an idea of beauty, I personally don't fetishize national parks.

A few more r/AcademicBiblical tidbits — Jesus burial stupidity, Paul naming, more

 No, contra ZanillaMilla in this post, "Saul" was not a Greek signum, then Paul a Roman cognomen he later switched to, namely because Paul wasn't a Roman citizen, as I told Naugrith the Nazi 2 years ago, along with others.

Contra other commenters there, the one verse in Acts that's mentioned is way too slender a reed to lean on for any particular interpretation of "Luke's" comment.

The Sergius Paulus idea otherwise is "tenable" but likely? 

To me, the interpretation that does the least violence to the text and the most support to Luke's thought as we know it is that this is a deliberate wordplay, with Paul as a cognomen, as foreshadowing Luke's later claim that Paul was a Roman citizen.

Paul himself, of course, only identifies himself as Paul. Was that his actual name? Per other comments in that thread, maybe Paul changed his own name. Maybe, per my link, he was, without actually claiming Roman citizenship, trying to imply he had the "Latin right." (That would be like a "stolen valor" move today, claiming to have served in combat but staying vague on details.)

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Jesus' burial would have been held for both midrashic reasons on passages in the Tanakh and for New Testament theological reasons of refuting the normal Roman treatment of a condemned criminal, contra this post. Contra the one commenter at the time I first saw it, why does Ehrman think his "mass grave burial" is a minority view among critical scholars? (I assume that's that the "minority view" references and doesn't also include fundagelicals.)

And, no, the idea of Jodi Magness and another of James Tabor that Jesus was buried twice, also at that post, is even stupider, especially Tabor. He, of course, ties this to his Jesus Dynasty schtick.

The last commenter there, noting that Acts and apocryphal materials support an alternate tradition of a "hostile" burial is indeed interesting, but the commenter doesn't carry it further. It, too, would ultimately be apologetic, to explain away the lack of bodily resurrection evidence. (Maybe, because the family of Dives in the Lukan story, that's the ultimate point: Behind Abraham telling Dives that if his family won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't listen to him from the dead, is maybe another twist on Jesus' "no sign shall be given.")

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An interesting and generally informative Ask Me Anything with James McGrath, mainly about John the Baptizer. That said, was the John movement and the Jesus movement both part of the same "Way" at the time of Acts? Since I believe McGrath has early datings on NT books in general and the gospels and Acts in particular, that should be looked at critically. (I have had run-ins with him on Facebook about datings before.)

He also probably could have gone into a bit more detail about how close, or distant, Mandean thought is from that of John, and was from John by, say, CE 400, but he does later postulate multiple social and theological "flows" creating Mandeanism.

I used to think it was closer to the Johannine movement myself, but have read works in the past few years leading me to reassess that.

As for John's alleged "cosplay" as Elijah? Who says that he was doing that? Only Christian scriptures midrashing.

And, with that, and noting that McGrath, a conservative critical scholar, calls his biography/history of John "Christmaker," I stopped reading.