We have done a couple of pieces on Pogo, our favorite cartoon strip by our favorite cartoonist, the late Bridgeport boy Walt Kelly. Here's another:

The second answer: place a one- mile circumference around the north pole. Start point - one mile south of that:

Re-posted from Aug 29, 2005

Zulu Time, and Weather Bloggers

In the NOAA and other hurricane and weather reports, they commonly notate Greenwich Mean Time with a suffix Z (or sometimes GMT), and spoken as "Zulu". The military, aviation, and commercial shipping commonly operate on Zulu time.

Why "Zulu"?  The story goes back to the great navigator, mathematician, and Salem, MA sea captain Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), author of The American Practical Navigator - also known as "The Sailor's Bible" - which remains in use today. He divided up the world's time zones, one hour per 15 degrees of longitude, assigning each one a letter of the alphabet. Longitude 0, running through Greenwich, England received the Z. That story is here. 

Jean Lee Latham wrote the classic Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which I remember fondly from 6th Grade, and which, along with Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, nurtured my love and respect for the sea and ships.

For weather bloggers, we like Weather Underground, and Stormtrack for big storms.

Take more time if you need it. Answers on continuation page, below.

Ronald Reagan

There are only two locations on earth where you can walk one mile North, then one mile East, then one mile South, and end up where you started.

What are they?  Answers tomorrow (I doubt our brainy readers will need them by then, but it might take a bit of thought).

The architectural origin of the steeple lies in the belltower, and the origin of the belltower in the watchtower.

Medieval watchtowers, like this one in Umbria,

 and this one in San Gimignano, the town of towers,

used bells, guns, and fire to signal each other in time of trouble. Church belltowers, at first identical to watchtowers, were often separate from church buildings through the early renaissance. You had to place those bells up high to send out the sound. Here's a famous one, which is the belltower of Pisa's Duomo (c. 1100):

In time, the belltowers were integrated into the architecture of church and cathedral buildings. Without clocks and watches, you couldn't be called to church or prayer - nor would you know what time it was (except for sundials) without the bells sounding across the villages and fields. And they were a regular reminder of Christ's presence during the day. (But how did the bell-ringers know the time? That's another subject.)

Canterbury Cathedral (c. 1300) has the Gothic integration of tower. It took 63 men to ring its heavy bells; six men alone to ring the heaviest:

More modest English parish churches had bell towers on the roof (Holy Cross, Greenford Magna, Middlesex - much of the building c. 1500):

Puritan (Congregationalist) Meeting Houses in the US typically had no steeples, as part of their purifying their congregations from papistry, vanity, and other fanciness (no bells, no stained windows, no singing, 6-hour sermons, etc). They didn't even want to call them "churches, " and you went to "meeting", not to church, where the God of Grace played second fiddle to the God of Truth. This is the Rocky Hill Meeting House (c. 1785) in Amesbury, MA:

By the early 1800s, steeple bell towers came back into acceptance in the US, along with singing. I can imagine the debates between the stodgy old-timers and the young folks in their Building Committees. Many old New England churches are meeting houses with steeples (and pillared porticos too) added generations later, leading to steeple engineering problems in later years. Here's an example of an added steeple in Alford, MA (c. 1740):

Belfries, containing the bells and their mechanisms (and bats), usually have/had louvers to direct the sound up and away from the church itself. Oftentimes a steeple - the tower which supports the belfry, is roofed by an elegant spire, leading to the stereotypical appearance of the 19th Century New England Congregational church - which has since been copied by all sorts of denominations including Catholics - seemingly unaware of the Puritan, anti-Anglican, anti-hierarchical, and anti-Papist theological origin of the architecture:

We always need to be reminded that a "church" is not a building - it's a congregation of people who seek God through Christ ("whenever two or three of you are gathered together"). The building doesn't really matter, but having a special place never hurts. I think the spires are optional. 

Here's a nice piece on church bells.

YouTube of Dylan doing All Along the Watchtower here. (with JJ Jackson, Winston Watson, and Bucky Baxter)

Hostas are often viewed as a junky plant. They are not. When they are in a small clump in the sun in front of a bank, they look awful.

They need to be massed, and in the shade - minimal to no direct sun, and humusy soil. The variety available these days is remarkable. Some people (not us) remove the blooms, preferring them only for the simple and understated foliage.

Once known as the Plantain Lily, their origins are in Northeast Asia. One of their virtues is that they shade out all weeds. Another is that they now come in all sizes, from miniature to giant.

Here's the Hostamania site.  Here's the Hosta Forum at Garden Web. Another good one - My Hostas.

Some very cool Hostas at this nursery. Image is of their Bright Lights. Wayside has a good selection too.

Every type of garden plant has its fans and afficionados. As hobbies go, it's as pleasant and harmless as gun collecting...but cheaper. And guns, alas, do not reproduce.

The dog days of July and August are
slow times for bloggers; reader  numbers are usually down a tad, and often writers feel less inspired, or are busy outside trying to do real life.

Our threat is this: If other bloggers don't blogroll us, and throw us a pity-link once in a while, and if our readers don't forward our blog with a hearty recommendation to all of their friends and colleagues and relatives and enemies, we will go on a Hunger Strike until Labor Day, limiting our diets solely to beer and pizza.

That includes breakfast.

We do make make such threats lightly - so be forewarned. Maggie's Farm is our name, and passive-aggressive is our game. No negotiating: Do what we demand - or else we will damage our health!

Look - I know we aren't the best blog in the world, but we are all proud to be listed in Harmons' World Weblog Review (Copyright 2006) as:

"Pretty good, with a varied and appealing front page. Sometimes interesting and informative, but basically intellectually lightweight and unfunny. Politically centrist, and thus dull. Pedantic at times. Occasional surprises. Plenty of links. A bit Jesus-oriented, but not over the top. They like Dylan, too, but offer little insight.  Highly reliable output, but quantity does not make up for quality.  Minimal T&A; no hunks. Quirkiness and odd interests a strong point. Thinking talent: C-. Research: D. Writing talent: B- to C+. Blog branding quality: B+ (unpredictable and eclectic aspect is good, but lack of focus, and lack of expertise and IQ might be a major flaw)."

If we find this hunger strike to be effective, we just might decide to continue it until war is eliminated from the earth, and all people find happiness. (Hope you enjoyed the Elevator piece - interesting basic info.)

From Nathan, re the battle deaths yesterday:

7-27-06  Two weeks fighting   

A little country counts its dead heavily.   Below Maariv's banner (our N.Y. Times) today runs the photos and names of all nine killed in the fighting over the border: Yiftach, Ohed, Alex, Asaf, Shimon, Idan, Shimon, Ro'i ("my shepherd"), and Amichai ("my naiton lives"): dead. I wish I could show you their photos, these non-soldier soldiers.

A trick one of my soldiers teaches me.  Before each major action, they take a group photo, an odd one. They stand in a row, at arms's length, a good bit apart from each other, unlike the usual group photos of soldiers, crowded together, hugging and mugging.  Once, a mother spied this "group photo" and asked about it.  Here is what he did not tell her:  they stand apart so that should one gets killed, they can cut out his  photo to give to the news.  Practical fellows these are. Death is not that far from their ken.

They make up preliminary teasing obituaries. They know about all the nice things said at the funeral, so they make up their own teasing obits.  For a lapsed Orthodox buddy, who thusfar has hidden his cheeseburger trespasses fromhis  family, they will say at his funeral that he ate tref and looked at Playboy magazine.  He insists that if they tell his parents this now, they will kill him first.  For another, they will state solemnly that they will miss the unique aroma of his feet in the tent.  And another, that they won't notice that he is missing.  Dark humor for dark moments.  In fact, they adore each other, watch each other's back.  Literally.