We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Winter is made for outdoor fun of the strenuous type. I call the cold "God's air conditioning." Time to do things that make you sweat like a pig when it's cold as hell.
When the kids were young, we focused on family skating, skiing and sledding. Wonderful times, and all of my kids have mastered these things while accumulating the scars and broken bones that are an essential part of a vigorous childhood. My family does vigor, avoids "relaxation" - our theory is that you can lie around and relax when you're dead.
I used to like a ten mile road run in the morning in 10 degrees, but I don't do that anymore even though I should. (I prefer my wake-up cigar and a large Dunkin.) My relatives and friends like Paddle, cross-country skiing, Frostbiting, snow-shoeing, and skiing of course. My elderly Mom still likes to get her cross-country skis on and go out in the woods and hills and fields for a couple of hours in 10 degrees (F). Never was a wimp. She does appreciate a hot toddy on her return, a warm fire, and somebody to listen to her tell what she saw ("I saw a Goshawk on the ridges and flushed a grouse out of the briars by the river. Bear tracks on the mountain trail.").
I told her we might find her dead frozen body someday halfway up Tim's Mountain, and she said that was OK with her.
What do you like to do for outdoor cold-weather fun?
That's the title of an opus by Vanderleun. (Bosch's image from his post which I am pleased to add to my image library.) He says:
These days it would seem that the 7 deadly sins are now the 7 cardinal virtues of the progressive left.
I had been having similar thoughts lately, especially regarding government avarice. It's a topsy-turvy world we live in, with Wonderland twists of language and meaning. Glad he wrote the piece.
Here’s the quote: “If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line,” President Obama told the Chamber of Commerce on Monday morning.
Really, Barry? And what if the company fails, do they share in the loss?
If an employee wishes to share in the risk of profits and losses, he can buy shares like anybody else.
I'm sure readers have surmised that we are not big on fake things here at Maggie's Farm. We are sort of stuck on that 1960s authenticity thing.
However, we will make an exception for a few fake candles. Mrs. BD used them over the holidays for decorating tables and pine-strewn mantles, and I had to confess that they were quite pleasant and realistic with a waxy look and feel, and have the benefit of not burning down your house on Christmas Eve while you are busy carving the goose.
Real is better, but there's a role for these fake things. They seem to come in all shapes.
I think she got her collection of them at Bed Bath and Beyond the Budget, but they can be found all over the internet now.
Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”
No functioning government, no functioning police force, no sanitation, crime rampant, no jobs, Baby Doc back and Aristide returning. What could go wrong?
The shortage of skilled workers is the No. 1 or No. 2 hiring challenge in six of the 10 biggest economies, Manpower found in a recent survey of 35,000 employers. Skilled trades were the top area of shortage in 10 of 17 European countries…
I don't recall doing anything to change my camera settings, but I guess I did. Perhaps I can term this my brief Ohio Highlands Blue Period and try to make an artistic virtue out of a tech accident:
In the end, Gwynnie kindly managed to salvage some of my pics, and to restore the world to its proper tones:
God knows how many lawyers have built their retirements in West Palm Beach or "the Tampa area" on slip 'n fall cases in New York City. It's a major industry there, feeding mostly off the deep pockets of the city government. They settle promptly.
There is an entire category of inattentive person which seems to be slip and trip-prone. Perhaps their moms never told them "Watch what you're doing." They trip over curbstones. The overlap of that set of people with the set of greedy litigious persons are the key to the jackpot for both the lawyers and for the lucky jerk who didn't watch where he was going and has the personality type to cash in.
In the past, such people would win the Darwin Prize which eliminates their genes from the gene pool, but, in the new world, they win the big bucks.
Winter must be a windfall for these lawyers. Everybody slips on ice, and everybody knows that Gomers Go To Ground.
Admittedly the design is meant to be as much to invent an aesthetic rus in urba experience rather than a practical one, but how could anybody design anything in which some litigious person might not be able to find something to trip over? Aren't there rocks to trip over in Central Park? There are rocks and roots and ice all over my town paths where I like to take my dog - each one, I would suppose, with dollar signs all over it. I have slipped and tripped and fallen many times in my life, broke an arm, tore a shoulder to shreds, etc., and it never occurred to me to sue anybody.
I thought the litigation risk of the High Line would be drunks falling off the sides. Maybe I am out of sync with this new way of life. How do you design a litigation-proof anything other than a padded cell?
I snatched this clip of 'Family Feud' from Neal Boortz's site this morning. It's wonderfully entertaining on a number of levels, not least of which is the great job the host does with what could have been a rather awkward situation for a family show.
I love it when he actually leaves the podium to 'walk off the shock'.
MORE ON THE FAILURE OF STATE MULTICULTURALISM. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are basically unemployable in productive fields have chosen it as their rice bowl.
But Nick Cohen writes in The Guardian that appeasement may be over. “I am not sure the prime minister understands that he is taking on a sensibility as much as a political platform. Because Britain was never invaded by the Nazis, and never suffered from any of the other versions of 20th-century tyranny, there is an unforgivable frivolity about our dealings with totalitarianism. Dilettante bureaucrats, journalists and intellectuals play with extremists and their ideas with the insouciance of men and women who know that they will never have to suffer the consequences of coping with extremists in power. The best gift the British can give the world in this moment of crisis is to imitate the crowds in North Africa and say enough of all of that. It is time to break away from a shameful past.”
Back last night from a quick visit to a snowy and frigid central Ohio. Naturally, we had breakfast at Bob Evans'. Stupid not to:
This was my "be fit" breakfast. Yum:
But look how the outdoor shot is washed out and blue, and the indoor shots were not. I think I fiddled with my settings, but I don't know what I did wrong. It's on full auto, I think.
Every outdoor shot I took, unless there were some lights in the photo, did the same thing.
For another example, this shot (while snow falling from a grey sky) should have been pretty nice, but it's blue:
This problem is new to me. Don't tell me to photoshop it. I don't do that.
All of us at Maggie's Farm enjoy a Bloody Mary at brunch. Extra horseradish, please. Some of us prefer it made with Spicy Clamato, or sometimes as a Bloody Bull (with beef bouillon - canned beef broth, added, which is the way Bill Buckley liked it).
At a nice restaurant at Sugarbush they make something that is new to me for apres ski - a Hot Bloody Bull. They make a Bloody Bull, then stick that air-heater thing they use for making cappucino into the mug to heat it up.
I have always liked a few beers after skiing in 5 or 10 degrees all day, but this is a good find. It's almost a complete meal, too - vegetable, protein, and alcohol. Two of these beverages are perfect as a medicine to combat the growing public health crisis of frostbite.
It happens every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembles a giant orange and is starting to dip into the blue ocean. Old Ed comes strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand is a bucket of shrimp.
Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now. Everybody's gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts....and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier. Soon, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, "Thank you. Thank you."
In a few short minutes the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn't leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place. Invariably, one of the gulls lands on his sea-bleached, weather-beaten hat - an old military hat he's been wearing for years.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away and old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like "a funny old duck," as my dad used to say. Or, "a guy that's a sandwich shy of a picnic," as my kids might say. To onlookers, he's just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant ....maybe even a lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida.
That's too bad. They'd do well to know him better. His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero back in World War II. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane, and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger. By the eighth day their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were. They needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft.
Suddenly, Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap. It was a seagull!
Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of it. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait......and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued. (after 24 days at sea...)
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first lifesaving seagull. And he never stopped saying, "Thank you." That's why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.
(Max Lucado, In The Eye of the Storm, pp.221, 225-226)
According to Rickenbacker, each person on the rafts converted to Christianity after the experience.
PS: By 1910, Rickenbacker was racing cars. Touted as the first man to drive a mile a minute, he received the sobriquet "Fast Eddie" (giving rise to a nickname borne by many men named Edward since his time). Eddie raced in the 1912, 1914, 1915 and 1916 Indianapolis 500. His only finish in the race was in 1914 when he finished 10th. In the other three races, he did not finish due to car failure. Notably, in the 1916 race, he started on the front row in 2nd place. Eddie was also an Ace in WW I with 22 enemy planes to his credit and started Eastern Airlines back in the 30's. Eddie left us back in 1973, but he was a pilot in two wars, an Ace, and received the Medal of Honor. He was also on the overseas air mail stamp some years ago. And he never forgot his debt.....
5:13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
5:14 "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
5:15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
5:17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
5:18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
5:19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
We Americans turn every major crisis into a morality tale in which the good guys and the bad guys are identified and praised or vilified accordingly. There’s a political, journalistic, and intellectual imperative to find out who caused the crisis, who can be blamed, and who can be indicted (either in legal courts or the court of public opinion) and, if found guilty, be jailed or publicly humbled. The great economic and financial crisis that began in 2007 has been no exception...
I'm sure readers have surmised that we are not big on fake things here at Maggie's Farm. We are sort of stuck on that 1960s authenticity thing. 
A Great Story (1973)
