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 refuse to eat or buy anything with an "organic" label. It's just stupid, Gwyneth Paltrow stupid. Well, I have smoked some organic weed, but only when the good stuff wasn't available and, anyway, I didn't inhale it - and it didn't make me stupid enough to want Ben & Jerry's.
Rise and Fall of the Pocket Protector - Designed to keep shirts clean and tools handy, this ubiquitous invention declined into a social stigma but rebounded as a symbol of nerd pride
When Doctors Ignore ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ Orders - Over 88 percent of physicians don’t want to be kept alive in a situation where doing so only prolongs their existence. So why aren’t they listening to patients who ask for the same?
At Maggie's Farm, we believe that politics has become too important in life because government has become too large and powerful. Perhaps it has always seemed thus to regular people, through all history.
It's a provocative article, and I'm not sure that I agree with it. It makes it sound as if people were nothing but victims of the "powerful." Today, as in the past, people have to construct their own lives. It must be true, though, that there are fewer "good, steady jobs" in the US for the semi-skilled (factories, farms, offices) than there once were. Most people do not aspire to a big career, just honest work and a nice family life.
Mint is a weed if you let it loose in your garden. It needs to be grown in pots, or out loose in a field but it is also one of the most pleasant flavorings which exist.
In the eastern Med, it's a major herb. In Turkey and environs, they mix it with yoghurt for a sauce for roast meat and fish. In Sicily, they served boiled taters with chopped mint. Quite pleasant, and an improvement on parsley. No recipe needed.
An occasional Mint Julep is pleasant, too, and I like to dry the leaves coated with sugar for treats on top of ice cream. Have to give those arabs credit for what they added to Med cuisine - but even more credit to the food explorers of the Americas: tomato, potato, squash, maize, avocado, peppers, beans, cocoa, etc., etc. These things were worth more than the gold, in the end, from a culinary standpoint. What the heck did they eat without those things?
Good friends have a daughter who will be starting at the University of Alabama this fall. The brilliant (math, physics, dance, violin - not Asian but with 800s.) kid would only apply to southern state colleges. South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. She wanted a cultural change, a complete change of pace from Yankeeland. Good for her. Each one she applied to offered her a full scholarship to go, but the parents honorably refused any scholarships, feeling that they should go to those in need. (This family was all set to pay for Harvard, so they got a windfall even without the scholarship offer.)
Mom told me that the kid had already lined up her roommates via facebook, that she had already found sponsors for the sororities she wanted, and that she had already gotten her football package online. Mom told me she said something like "Honey, this is supposed to be school. Are you planning on studying anything?" This was not the kid she knew.
"I'll worry about the details when I get there, Mom. I'm gonna be a physics major and a performing arts minor. I know what I'm doing, so don't worry about me."
Tuscaloosa. I enjoy seeing what kids will do. It will change her life, probably for the better.
Change is good, or people get in ruts. Over many years, I think we finally found our right rut. It's about friends, interesting activities, a comfy-enough home to sleep in and in which to hang some pictures, a couple of horses and a barn, and a church home. It takes many years, many adventures and a few failures, to find one's right happy rut for the long haul. Even then, who knows what might come next? For me, I plan to work until I cannot.
The irony is that Core proponents’ overall objective—to get schools teaching more necessary and important things, and to encourage intellectual coherence in what is taught—is not bad, but good. Why they thought the answer was federal, I mean national, and not local is beyond me. Since patronizing people you disagree with is all the rage, I’ll have a go. The Common Core establishment appears to be largely led by people who are well-educated, well-meaning, accomplished and affluent, and who earnestly desire to help those in less fortunate circumstances, but who simply don’t know enough about normal people—how they live, how they think—to have made a success of it.
Also they don’t seem to know that intelligent Americans, exactly the kind who quickly become aware of and respond to new federal schemes—sorry, I meant national ones—have become very, very wary of Washington, and the dreams of its eggheads. How they could have missed that is also beyond me.
It's not as if the country had been begging Washington to tell them what to teach in school. Nobody asked for that. If the federal gummint thinks that we the people are retarded, then they should consider their own election.
There is something deeply wrong with all of this domestic spying. America is not China or North Korea. Are we supposed to love our government? What's going on?
Can somebody explain to me why it so much resembles the global warming crisis graph? H.L. Mencken claimed that governments create a sense of crisis to justify their existence and their growing powers.
Critics suggested not only that I be fired for my views but that I should be prosecuted for them, and that the government should ensure that such views are not published. Live-and-let-live is not the Left’s way, never has been, and never will be. It is not sufficient that transsexuals should be free to act on their delusions — the rest of us are expected to participate in them with unreserved enthusiasm, and the Left is willing to use the state to compel us to do so. To simply believe otherwise and to share those views in print is in the minds of many on the Left not only a social transgression but something that should be a crime. The belief that members of minority political tendencies should be jailed for their views is very much in vogue for the Left at the moment. Democrats in the Senate are seeking to repeal the First Amendment. All of us — conservatives and whatever traditional liberals there still may be on the left side of the spectrum — should fully appreciate the sobering fact that there is a nascent, popular, authoritarian movement among members of the Left that supports everything from censorship to literal, non-metaphorical gulags in which to imprison people for their political beliefs.
It's necessary to be fearless in the face of these jerks and lunatics. On further thought, "fearless" is not the word. The right approach is mockery, not courage.
...liberty is not an economic good, but an existential one. The economic good is a mere bonus. The argument that liberty is good for economic activity or for growth of the system feels lowly and commercial (an argument used by consequentialists). If you were a wild animal, would you elect to be in a zoo because the economy is better over there than in the wild? Liberty is my raison d’être.
I'm not a huge fan of food truck cuisine. I know it's all the rage, though. There are even movies being made about them, trying to cash in on the obvious: food truck popularity and James Gandolfino.
I will grab at least one dirty water dog in the Spring, just so I remind myself that this staple is what it's always been - a nice reminder of life in New York City. The only other food I eat on the streets is the falafel or gyro made by Falafel King over by Lincoln Center. Good food at a reasonable price.
I was unaware that food trucks had a long history in the streets of New York, though. Here's another brief history.
VDH: 
It's still Spring trout season in the northern hemisphere.
Update 
Mint is a weed if you let it loose in your garden. It needs to be grown in pots, or out loose in a field but it is also one of the most pleasant flavorings which exist.
