It's Clint Eastwood on a miniature pony in 1970.

(Just something random from the past, that is, something from Retronaut.)

"Heh, great stuff, Althouse. Cf. Derrida on Nietzsche's umbrella."

Says Yashu, in the comments on "The word 'umbrella' appears exactly once in Obama's 'Dreams From My Father.'" And that was after I'd read rhhardin, commenting on "Sigmund Freud on the meaning of the umbrella": "Derrida in Spurs on the umbrella that Nietzsche wrote he had forgotten."

I'm spurred to read "Spurs," but "Spurs" is not an ebook, so I'm off the hook. Still, here's some text visible in Google books. Derrida is playing with the the possible meaning(s) of "I have forgotten my umbrella," found (in quotation marks) in Nietzche's unpublished manuscripts. Excerpt:

The umbrella's symbolic figure is well-known, or supposedly so. Take, for example, the hermaphroditic spur of a phallus which is modestly enfolded in its veils, an organ which is at once aggressive and apotropaic, threatening and/or threatened. One doesn't just happen onto an unwonted object of this sort in a sewing-machine on a castration table. 

"Unwonted" is not a typo. Unlike "unwanted," it's not commonly heard/seen. It means: "not commonly heard, seen, practised." So says the OED, which tells us that Charlotte Brontë used "unwonted" in "Jane Eyre": "Difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks." Are there umbrellas in "Jane Eyre"?

I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the inn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance....

The Freudian symbolism is too blatant to need pointing out. The umbrella, the man, and the horse. And the muff, the inn-passage, and the open door. That's more than dimly seen.

"Apotropaic" is also unusual. The OED says it's "Having or reputed to have the power of averting evil influence or ill luck" and gives this earliest example from the 1883 Encyclopedia Brittanica:

The sacrifice of the ‘October horse’ in the Campus Martius..had also a naturalistic and apotropaic character.

Wikipedia says the "October horse was an animal sacrifice to Mars carried out on October 15, coinciding with the end of the agricultural and military campaigning season." There were chariot races and "the right-hand horse of the winning team was transfixed by a spear, then sacrificed." So did the ancient Romans have umbrellas? Yes. They were used by women and "effeminate men." Used against the sun, of course. How much Latin do you need to see the "umbra" in "umbrella" and to know we're talking about shade.

We law folk know "umbra" from the "penumbras" in "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights [that] have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance," a very glaring phrase written by Justice William O. Douglas, trying to explain how in the lamp-lit street he dimly saw the right of privacy.

But it was really Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who got that word started in its U.S. law usage, the OED tells us: "The use of the penumbra metaphor in American jurisprudence appears to date from the late 19th cent. and is associated with Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935), legal scholar and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court."

1873   O. W. Holmes in Amer. Law. Rev. 7 654   It is better to have a line drawn somewhere in the penumbra between darkness and light, than to remain in uncertainty.

I suspect no one will ever Heh-great-stuff-Althouse-Cf. me again. Here I am, writing expectantly, hoping for the circle to finally close, as it did for young Obama, crying over his father's grave, when he realized that the masculine needed to be leavened with femininity and that who he was, what he cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words, and then it started to rain and suddenly his brother Bernard was squatting beside him, sheltering him with a bent-up old umbrella. 

"Are you ready for me to read it?" Meade asks, and I say, "It needs one more thing, and I don't know what it is."

"Madison Mayor Paul Soglin walks with his wife, while observing the crowd control at the annual Mifflin Street Block Party in Madison, Wisconsin."

Meade messages me that and says "That's your caption." Here's the photograph.

The local newspaper reports: "Mifflin Street: A peaceful day in the neighborhood."

“Certainly, we’re very pleased with the way things have gone,” [said the spokesman for the police]. “What we’re seeing today is not the Mifflin Street party of two years ago. We worked hard over the last year to get the word out to people as to what our expectations were for this day and, by and large, people have been keeping the peace and policing themselves.”

Of course, if they had failed to do so, there were plenty of Madison police officers and Dane County Sheriff’s deputies around to help them out. Instead, they spent more time posing for photos with students, than arresting them. And by late afternoon, officers were already being sent home, DeSpain said.

Brian Figueroa, a UW-Madison senior from New Richmond, could’ve told them that the show of force at the start of the day wasn’t necessary. “It’s like a wasted resource,” said Figueroa, enjoying his fourth and final Mifflin Street bash. “Just take a look and see how many cops there are for how many students. It’s such a waste. Nothing bad is happening. It’s just a lot of people having fun, drinking and enjoying a sunny day that finally came. It’s good to let loose and have fun. We’re just celebrating a mess of hard work.”

We drove by a couple times in the mid and late afternoon and the place was loaded with police — including police horses. There were lots of students mostly standing around on porches and balconies. Presumably, everyone was drinking beer, but nothing looked rowdy. There wasn't even any audible music. It looked like a beautiful spring Saturday happened and everyone simultaneously came outside, but just outside — young people, like very old people, coming out only as far as needed to be outside. But here is — a much awaited festivity, consisting of the most mundane, low-energy activity: having a drink on the porch. 

Purchase of the day.

From the April 17, 2013 Amazon Associates Report:

Bruder Toys Jeep Wrangler Unlimited W. Horse Trailer Incl. 1 Horse

By using the Althouse portal, you can buy things you want, pay nothing extra, and make a contribution to this blog. We notice. We appreciate it. And only if you clue us in will we know it's you.

The Althouse Amazon portal: great for use indoors, outdoors, and while riding on double-decker buses and trains featuring Wi-Fi. Recommended age range: 116 years and under.

"How Roger Ebert Embraced Black Beauty" — another headline I misread.

I'd forgotten I had the page open to "The Root." An hour ago, I'd clicked from the front page of The Washington Post on a teaser that read "Time for Jay-Z to set down the mike?" and I'd opened a tab that had the more stolid headline "Jay-Z Is More Interesting as a Mogul Than as a Rapper," which I didn't feel like reading. So a person I'm not interested in is more interesting one way rather than another. The teaser made me think Jay-Z had said something that might be bloggable.

(By the way, I notice that on The Root page, the spelling "mic" is used, though on the main WaPo page, they use "mike." We've had this spelling discussion on the blog before — more than once. And I noticed a few days ago, Rush Limbaugh weighed in on the subject: "We in broadcasting spell the abbreviation for microphone 'mic,' m-i-c. We don't say m-i-k-e.")

Anyway, a tab was open — among many open tabs, things I hadn't clicked off and might get around to — and — without realizing I was at The Root, the WaPo offshoot that specializes in issues relating to black people — I glanced at that headline in the sidebar:  "How Roger Ebert Embraced Black Beauty."

I know that Roger Ebert was married to a black woman. Here's a nice Buzzfeed piece: "Roger And Chaz Ebert's Beautiful Marriage, In His Words."

But in my experience, "Black Beauty" is the title of the book that lined up next to "Heidi" on the bookcase in my sister's childhood bedroom, which made it seem to me like one of the 2 most famous and revered books of all time

I grew up thinking everyone idolized the girl Heidi and the horse Black Beauty. Whatever else I have learned over the years, that's how my brain is wired.

How Roger Ebert Embraced Black Beauty...

Wrong image!

From the "Black Beauty" link above:

Black Beauty is the prettiest young horse in the meadows, and spends many happy days under the apple trees with his friends Ginger and Merrylegs. But this easy life comes to an end when Beauty is sold and goes from farm to inn to cabhorse in London, enduring rough treatment from foolish and careless masters. Beauty remains faithful, hardworking, and full of spirit despite his trials, and through him we learn that all horses and humans alike deserve to be treated with kindness.

Oddly enough, Black Beauty sounds like the Uncle Tom of horses.

"There is a statue outside the Federal Trade Commission of a powerful, rambunctious horse being reined in by an extremely muscular man."

"This used to be a metaphor for liberalism. The horse was capitalism. The man was government, which was needed sometimes to restrain capitalism’s excesses."

Wrote David Brooks, getting just about everything wrong.

Oh, well, we all get distracted and lose our minds when gazing upon extremely muscular men, do we not?

"I’m just going to come out and say it: I love horsemeat."

"It’s lean, yet tender, it is flavorful but not gamy; it’s delicious...."

I was first introduced to it in the Uzbek restaurants of Moscow, where they serve kazy, the horse sausage eaten across Central Asia, with translucently sliced onions and warm, naan-like bread. I was skeptical at first, but eating kazy is a conversion, that first moment of doubt melting away into a long “mmmmm” as you chew. But this was no mere staple of exotic Central Asia. By the time I got to Zurich, I was totally ready for the horse steak my hosts ordered for me. For the sake of comparison, we got one steak steak and one horse steak, and both slabs of raw meat came out on hot stones that sizzled and cooked the meat to the degree you wanted. And you know what? It wasn’t even a contest. Compared to the sweet richness of the horse, the cow tasted bland and dry. If I ever come across horse a menu again, I would order it: I still crave that horse steak.

Hippophagy.

What's so bad about hippophagy?

Blood donor dogs and cats.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital:

To do that, the hospital has its own Animal Blood Bank with a dedicated core [sic] of 12 dogs and 11 cats who serve as regular donors, many of them the animal companions of students or staff members at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “We actually have a waiting list of pets to become new donors,” notes Bach.

The typical canine blood donor is a healthy, larger dog — more than 50 pounds — that has been screened for blood borne parasites and diseases that affect the qualities of blood. Importantly, the dog donor possesses a good nature.

“We don’t sedate the dogs,” explains Bach, who says a typical blood draw from a dog takes about 7 to 10 minutes. “Cats are certainly different than dogs. Cats are a little more reclusive and sometimes have a little higher stress level in the hospital. They are sedated.”

Cats also need a more compatible blood-type cross match when they are getting transfusion.

They also do horse and cow transfusions.

Their most recent resident donor horse, Drive Thru, retired this fall after seven years of donating blood and serving as a calming presence and companion for any skittish equine patients at the hospital. In the hospital’s large animal practice, Drive Thru was a star, getting presents and mail from the children of clients and visitors and occasionally popping his head into the waiting room for peppermint candy, his favorite.

The resident cow donors are Maxine and Natalie, "beautiful and pampered Holsteins." How much blood goes into a cow getting a transfusion? 6 to 12 liters.

"If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

Justice Scalia is out and about, antagonizing — antoninonizing — students, this time at Princeton, with "a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd.'"

Scalia said he is not equating sodomy with murder but drawing a parallel between the bans on both.

Then he deadpanned: "I'm surprised you aren't persuaded."

[The student] said afterward that he was not persuaded by Scalia's answer. He said he believes Scalia's writings tend to "dehumanize" gays.

Actually, he's humanizing you by crediting you with the capacity to comprehend rhetoric and engage in an on-the-fly verbal interchange. But it is easier to dehumanize your adversary. Afterwards.

What do they teach you at Princeton?

ADDED: Jaltcoh has 3 thoughts about this.

AND: David Lat reminds us about what Judge Posner said about horse meat: "a state is permitted, within reason, to express disgust..."