Maggie's Farm

Our friend Nathan, whose Aliyah Diary you may recall on this site and who now is based in Jerusalem, gets around. He sent this email note to us yesterday:

Who'da thunk that in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the Region VII meeting of the American Guild of English Bell Ringers would meet today?  Sioux Falls, ground out by the Sioux River well after the Permian-Triassic, has quartzite boulders that churn-up the river waters which were unable to wear them out 10,000 years ago. Pipestone, used for peace pipes, and cordovan-tinted quartzite remain here. You can go to the remains of the Falls just south of downtown to stroll and be sprayed by the Falls. Best to go when the wind is Southerly, as a Northerly summer wind will suffocate you with the stench of carcasses from one of the largest packing plants in the US. While levees are undermined or overflowed in bordering Iowa and Missouri, the quartzite here holds up to the tumultuous torrents.

But bell ringing? I slipped into the rehearsal last night around 830, after they had heard a performance by the group from England. The night before, the hotel manager revealed to me, the Brits had gathered for tea around 10 pm in the cafe at the base of the Hyatt-like atrium. Then, they burst into music, filling nearby empty wine glasses with carefully aliquoted water, then rim-ringing the glasses.  A glass harmonica they transformed into. This high-pitch rose in the atrium and arose the other denizens of the Sioux Falls  Sheraton, who generally dress cowpokey. The manager, a sliver-coiffed Mr. Russo, who dresses in stylish Italian silk and tassled loafers, quietly grumbled that he has had to toss rowdy drinkers from the atrium. But, tea-drinkers, Tea? Russo was incredulous.

Nevertheless, by Thursday night, the bellers were gathered in the nearby conference center, which, in fact, is an indoor sports stadium with signs for "Ticket Purchase" or Ticket Pick-up" and "No Outside Liquor Permitted" guarding the entrance. I was porting my J. Lohr Cabernet, which I could not finish at dinner and no one challenged me. But, there was no booze being served here. Perhaps tea later.

Here are just a few of my observations and thoughts about our trip to northern Italy:

1. There must be a law that, in settled areas, there can be no spot from which one cannot hit a Gelateria with a stone.

2. Essentially no American visitors up there. Lots of Scandinavians, Germans, Swiss and Brits - and Italians from the south. Plus some French and Japanese. A small handful of American honeymooners. All of the trattorias have some German stuff on the menu, like wiener schnitzel with French fries.

3. Never eat a pizza in Italy, except maybe around Naples. The Italians make terrible pizza. Domino's is far better, and Domino's ain't so good. The Dyl says that the California Pizza chain is the best, California Pizza Kitchen or whatever it is called. They should open some in Italy.

4.  The driver who drove us to the airport in Milan (who had been a sous-chef in London in a previous life and who is planning a trip to Montana in September) brought us up to date on the Wall Street arrests. He said that the Italians were mightily impressed. "Here," he said, "businessmen and politicians never get arrested. That is why we have no trust in our institutions."

5. The microclimate around the large lakes of the Piedmont permits the growing of palms and citrus within view of snow-capped Alps. Quite unique. You can grow anything there, hence all of the famous gardens.

6. Internet access there is a major pain. They don't seem to have wireless anywhere, and the hotels charge you between 15-22 Euros per hour to use their half-assed and temperamental connections.

7. It was great fun to hang out with the Dyl. He has big energy and a strong sense of adventure, and his Italian came in handy at times, too. He beat me at chess on one of those outdoor giant-size boards you can walk on, on the edge of Lago Maggiore. I played White: my attack was overly aggressive and I stubbed my toe with my bishop. He knows how to exploit somebody's error.

More observations to come over the next week or so...and more photos, including ones from our side trip into the Italian Alps.

Here's one of the albino peacocks that inhabit the Borromeo islands, perched on an urn in the rain in the incredible gardens of Isola Bella. The cliche "proud as a peacock" is not without merit. The baroque style Italian gardens of Isola Bella are among the most famous gardens in the world, and parts of them are reminiscent (I think) of the hanging gardens of Babylon.

More photos of Isola Bella below:

A video tribute to the guys (and gals) in harm's way, from Theo

Why are they sending me this advt? "You may qualify for Medicare to pay for your powered wheelchair." Sheesh. Not quite yet.

The Caracas-Jihad connection. NY Sun

The train wreck of single-payer medical care in California.

Same thing happens in China: Being a baby girl in India is a bad deal. The multiculturalist cult demands that we respect this, however.

Ten interesting facts about kissing

The Left takes on Toyota and the Prius. They can whine all they want, but I won't listen until a communist country builds a car anybody would chose to buy.

RIP Tim Russert. NYT

Psalm 17

¹Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry; give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.
²From you let my vindication come; let your eyes see the right.
³If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me; my mouth does not transgress.
⁴As for what others do, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent.
⁵My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped.
⁶I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me, hear my words.
⁷Wondrously show your steadfast love, O savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand.
⁸Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings,
⁹from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me.
¹⁰They close their hearts to pity; with their mouths they speak arrogantly.
¹¹They track me down; now they surround me; they set their eyes to cast me to the ground.
¹²They are like a lion eager to tear, like a young lion lurking in ambush.
¹³Rise up, O Lord, confront them, overthrow them! By your sword deliver my life from the wicked,
¹⁴from mortals—by your hand, O Lord— from mortals whose portion in life is in this world. May their bellies be filled with what you have stored up for them; may their children have more than enough; may they leave something over to their little ones.
¹⁵As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.

Nice trip. Saw a lot. Nice to be back, too. Will share some thoughts about it shortly, and some photos, but I don't have time to do that right now. Many thanks to Dr. Merc for pitching in to help Team Maggie.

Also, on this trip I think I managed to persuade our Dylanologist (by plying him with Barbera D'Asti and plenty of food) to post, in the near future, some pieces about 1) The historical white slave trade in Africa 2) The new questions about Continental Drift theory and 3) The final days of the Roman Empire (with special attention to the last chariot race in the Circus Maximus and to the day that the aqueducts ceased to carry water to a dying Rome). The Dyl has a wide range of interests - as we all do, here on the Farm, and the catastrophic collapse of Roman civilization in the West is of great interest to all of us.

But, first, this unique and historically symbolic photo which demonstrates my successful delivery of the Skippy Peanut Butter (one Extra Crunchy, one Smooth) to the Dyl and his peanut butter-deprived friends in Italy, from my hotel balcony overlooking lovely Lago Maggiore. Where else would you find such an odd photo except here at Maggies?

The Amazing Rhythm Aces (1976) - h/t, Reader

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

A re-post from the archives:

It feels very bad to me to know that the fate of the Everglades is in the hands of the notoriously and historically disreputable Miami-Dade County Commissioners.  I'd like to hope that their bad days are past.

It's tough to be an ideological purist in real life. I've known Libertarians who went nuts when a neighbor put in a tennis court too close to his property line. And it is true that we all have a stake in the land. Developers, and the folks they sell to - homeowners and stores and businesses - will always want more if there is profit in it; conservationists will always want more of which to be good stewards; farmers - and I don't mean small family farms in Fla - will always want what they need. So it's always a battle for conservationists. (I don't mean environmentalists, whatever they are.)

My solution tends to be to urge groups to assemble themselves to buy up land, or to buy up the development rights to land, if they want to protect and preserve it for the future. States, land trusts, conservation groups, ad hoc groups with an interest in a specific piece of land. This can be done without a sacrifice of property rights.

BUT it is best done BEFORE there is economic pressure on the land. Unfortunately, people tend to be of the Big Yellow Taxi school: "You don't know what you got til it's gone. You take paradise, put up a parking lot."

I have no doubt that one of my literary heroes, Carl Hiassen, is on the story. I missed him on 60 Minutes last week, but was told that he is as funny in person as he is in print. If you haven't read him, especially his early handful of books, they are absurdist, black humor mysteries set in South Florida, with memorably strange characters, many of them deeply depraved, corrupt, and plain evil.

Carl cares about conservation and he loves Florida, and, bless his heart, he remains a reporter in Miami, so I will count on him to take care of this story, and this problem.

This is the Fin-Duck Sauna Cruising Boat. It's probably a bit large to function as a decoy:

I did promise that I would pre-post some interesting things while I am away.

If you read this piece, you get a sense of how little that part of the Middle East has changed.

Shorpy's comment: "Washington, D.C., 1920. 'Penn Oil Company, Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol.' National Photo Company Collection glass negative."

I like the 1920s-era a/c.

A fairly common Eastern woodland migrant and breeder, but often missed, despite the male's dramatic color, because they often forage up high in the oaks, way above eye-level. 

Read more about this handsome bird:  All About Birds

Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette.

Leonard Bernstein's acclaimed 1973 lecture series at Harvard, The Unanswered Question, was directed towards a general audience rather than towards musicians.

You can buy the DVD at Amazon, or ask your library to buy them.

Here's a sample:

Our post on how flies manage to land on ceilings a while ago was such a hit that it inspired me to do another fly post.

In the fall Cluster Flies head for houses to spend the winter in dormancy. When you turn on the heat, they wake up and clamber around disgustingly, often in clusters around windows.

When that happens to us, we get out ye olde vacuum cleaner.

You can read about their natural history here (they leave their winter shelter and lay their eggs on earthworm holes at this time of year. Their maggots live on earthworms).

An official distinction between formal and informal essays.

We mostly do the informal, here.