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.
I home, and there we to bed again, and slept pretty well, and about nine rose, and then my wife fell into her blubbering again, and at length had a request to make to me, which was, that she might go into France, and live there, out of trouble; and then all come out, that I loved pleasure and denied her any, and a deal of do; and I find that there have been great fallings out between my father and her, whom, for ever hereafter, I must keep asunder, for they cannot possibly agree. And I said nothing, but, with very mild words and few, suffered her humour to spend, till we begun to be very quiet, and I think all will be over, and friends, and so I to the office, where all the morning doing business.
Plus sa change, plus c'est la meme chose. Sam is frequently figuring out how to deal with Mrs. P's complaints and discontents. He liked to hang out with jovial, cheerful folks between business or government deals, often returning home late from the theater or from taverns in a well-lubricated condition.
One can spend many enjoyable hours keeping up with Sam's diaries, which are more interesting - and better-written - than any Tweets or Facebook posts you will ever read. He did love life, and entered fully into it with a sense of fun and with enough discipline to make it work.
Anti-Semitism is an escape from reality, misdirecting attention to real problems by inventing another cause as coming from Jews or Israel. We’re familiar with this behavior in the Middle East but it is also evident elsewhere, as in Greece. When history isn’t known, constructive futures cannot be built as the old hatreds and sins are blithely repeated.
A memorial to one of the major heroes of Greece’s victory against the Italian invasion in 1940 – Jewish Colonel Mordechai Frizis -- stands outside the National Military Museum in Athens. Many leaders and members of the Greek resistance during World War II were Jews.
Today, except for scant history writing (see Jewish Resistance In Wartime Greece), they are forgotten. A few weeks ago I corresponded with a knowledgeable gentile Greek-American friend who was surprised at the extent of Greek Jews’ involvement in the WWII resistance. This isn’t unusual. As Andrew Apostolou, a Senior Program Manager for Freedom House, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year:
Instead of the Holocaust being treated as a moment for moral and historical reflection, it is portrayed as an opportunity for national self-congratulation because of the rescue of a small number of Greek Jews. The genuine heroism of Greek Christians who saved Greek Jews from the Nazis in such places as Zakynthos and Athens is used to obscure the collaboration and indifference that helped condemn tens of thousands of Greek Jews to death in Salonika and northern Greece.
Instead, today’s Jews in Greece are scapegoats (a person or group made to bear the blame and suffering for others’ actions) among many Greeks for the economic implosion of their welfare state. Remaining synagogues or newer memorials are vandalized and swastikas painted on them. (Latest instance.)
Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, which includes the famous line, “We hold these truths to be revealed after careful study by Ivy League-educated people, that all men are in need of constant care and supervision, that they are endowed by the highly-educated intellectual class with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are free Health Care, strict and expansive Regulations on all activities, and the pursuit of Big Government.”
From Fleming's The Real Story of America’s Founding - "Give me a large government telling me what I can and can't do while spending most of my money, or give me death!"
Boskin: Five Lessons for Deficit Busters - A recent study of successful deficit reductions found they averaged more than $5 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes.
If you saw a dozen al-Qaeda terrorists approaching your location, who would you rather have by your side? A squad of lawyers like me (even with my sidearm and M4 that I carried downrange) or one of Fox Troop (2/3 ACR)’s Bradley Fighting Vehicles, chain gun at the ready?
Note the surrealism of the European unrest: who are the “they” who “stole” the money that is now no longer there to fund socialism? Did not the socialists at last get what they wanted? The “they” who used to fund it by expanding the economy disappeared a long time ago and now are in the graveyards of Europe.
Don't Know Much About History- The popular historian David McCullough says textbooks have become 'so politically correct as to be comic.' Meanwhile, the likes of Thomas Edison get little attention.
Interestingly, NYC's Broadway was an old Lenape Indian trail into the Bronx and Westchester, later extended by the Dutch to run up to the Dutch settlement of Albany (the current Rte. 9).
We now call the North River the Hudson River. The road along the wall is Wall St. That canal, now filled in, is Broad St. Another Dutch canal further uptown, long filled in, is now Canal St.
Father's Day dinner last night with the in-laws at the Red Hat restaurant in the charming riverfront village of Irvington, NY (pop 6000). Was the town named after Washington Irving? Yes. Re-named after its distinguished resident. In fact, the hamlet of Sleepy Hollow is just north of there.
Now mainly a bedroom town, it once housed the Lord and Burnham Co. which built greenhouses and conservatories, including those of the NY Botanical Gardens. In fact, Red Hat is housed in the back of one of the old Lord and Burnham buildings. (Mrs. BD knows Irvington as the location of the home office and shop of Eileen Fisher.)
If you look south from the water's edge, you can see Manhattan 20 miles in the distance. My pic, looking north up the Hudson, has the Tappan Zee bridge. Gal in the foreground looks like Botticelli's niece - angelic, but with a sadness.
Mrs. BD cannot stop talking about this week's WAFA show in Boston. The exhibits blew her mind - and she knows about these things.
For flower art, the WAFA is the World Soccer competition. Competitive sculpture, really, but ephemeral. Four days, then it's all in dumpsters.
She said New Zealand, Pakistan, Japan, Russia, and South Africa were well-represented by designers. Even a highly-talented mother-daughter team from Zimbabwe.
Mrs. BD and her pals had nice chats with an exhibitor from Wales and one from Pakistan. They also chatted with a priest from Northern Ireland who is a famous designer, and a guy from Russia who won his division, who was there with his blond bombshell girlfriend.
I would post pics but Mrs. BD lost her iPhone right before she went. Some pics are here.
Today is the last day of the show, and it probably won't be scheduled back in the US for a decade or more. People come to the WAFA events from all over the world, and filled up Boston's hotels.
This world is full of so many interesting things to see and do that it is a wonder that anybody finds time to look at the internet.
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
"If you have a Dad who didn’t beat or molest you, didn’t embezzle money from you or your family, and kept his whoring enough on the down-low that he has never had to address it in a press conference, you better be getting that man a present.
Dads who manage to avoid all of the things mentioned in the previous paragraph are hard to find, and deserving of praise."
It's a sad and difficult thing to grow up without a father.
My rather good post about our visit to Norcia showed a road sign to Cascia. We did not visit Cascia, but friendly folks at our Abbazia hotel later informed us that St. Rita is the saint of hopeless causes.
I thought to myself, Hmmm. Maybe a saint for Maggie's Farm, if her soul is willing.
Now back to farm work, then we're going for special celeb dinner with my Dad-in-law. Tomorrow, lunch with my own Dad and the entire family, while in-laws go to celebrate their cousin's retirement after 27 years as a beloved parish priest in Pennsylvania.
Kentucky Bourbon Distilleries 
It's been quite a while since we've had a Pepy's Diary post, but this piece of 
Seemed to me, today, that our economy is stuck in a great molasses spill, but this time the molasses is from the government. 
The Official Maggie's Farm
Mrs. BD cannot stop talking about this week's
My 