Maggie's Farm

Good spoof. h/t, Gay Patriot

I have been through four cords of firewood in ye olde office this season, and fireplace season is not over yet. Chilly mornings, chilly evenings, in the low 30s (F). 38 degrees with a cold rain this morning. I do not live on Cape Cod (where I was a young lad for a while when my Dad was in the service), but one good thing about the Cape is that you can use a fire every night, even in August. Takes the damp chill off, or seems to.

My wood supply is down to fresh green wood felled by the Nor'easter a while ago. I cut and scavenged it. Mostly Maple of various types. I haven't even had time to split it yet. However, I figured out how to burn green wood effectively and pleasantly. All it takes is to throw a handful of charcoal briquettes into your starter fire. They get the heat up so that your green wood dries and burns at the same time. A nice, slow fire with plenty of wood-steam and an enjoyable hiss. You may have to freshen it with a new briquette or two now and then.

It works great. Sort-of. A hot wood stove will burn green wood just fine, but a fireplace is trickier. Once you have enough heat with a good bed of coals in there, green burns well.

What other blog would offer such a handy tip?

No time to think or write, but I want to clean my tabs up, and get these links out to our corner of the universe:

Is John Le Carre a great novelist? Norm

Kagan is wishy-washy on free speech. What the heck does "balanced with the good of society" mean? Only an arrogant, latent-totalitarian elitist jerk would ever say anything like that, in my humble opinion. Americans don't talk like that: we want everybody to say whatever they want, and let us separate the wheat from the chaff.

AVI: What is love?

Welfare system could cause Israel to collapse, economist warns. Related, Dave Swindle on My Candy Jar. Related, EU Pres says Euro-socialism on verge of collapse.

In praise of shale gas: Carpe Diem

The Union of Concerned Scientists tackles gardening to save the planet. Good grief. What a bunch of sanctimonious putzes those folks are. They have been like that for years. "Ban the Bomb" and "Better Red than Dead" and the whole Global Cooling scare of the 1970s. A bunch of Viagra-deficient kooks and cranks.

Speaking of santimonious cranks, White House: Stop Marketing Unhealthy Foods to Kids. Hey, Washington: Shut the heck up and leave us alone. You can eat what you want, and we will eat what we like: Philly Cheese Steaks, and barbecued short ribs with corn bread, and stuff like that. Bread Pudding for dessert, with a Port or a single malt on the side. Then a cigar.

At Columbia, light on science, heavy on ideology: Sustainability---More Cash and a Softer Side. It's all about Sustain My Grants.

Steyn via Vanderleun:

"We are building a world in which the wealthiest nations on the planet, from Norway to New Zealand, are all but defenseless, while bankrupt dysfunctional squats go nuclear. Even with inevitable and generous submissions to nuclear blackmail, how long do you think that arrangement will last?"

An electoral "reform" deal in the UK?

...Brown's statement appeared to give Clegg's party a viable alternative, and real temptation: join a possibly short-lived alliance, remove the unpopular Brown, and pass electoral reform that could transform their fortunes and even banish the Conservatives to the political wilderness for many years.

Sounds like ACORN. Update: Never mind. Cameron's in, for what it's worth.

 NYT: Florida Suit Poses a Challenge to Health Care Law

“Every decision you can make as a human being has an economic footprint — whether to procreate, whether to marry,” he said. “To say that is enough for your behavior to be regulated transforms the Commerce Clause into an infinitely capacious font of power, whose exercise is only restricted by the Bill of Rights.”

Your Supreme Court, via The Diversity Scam and the Supreme Court :

Kinda makes ya wonder how Ginsberg snuck on there with her sketchy educational resume. My Diversity Meter detects some problems here: Where are the folks from George Mason and Hillsdale, and the folks who say "y'all," and the folks from Montana? It's not as if you have to go to Harvard or to be from New York City to be able to understand the Constitution. It was deliberately written in plain, simple English - instead of legalese - so every citizen of every state could understand what they might decide to sign up for. It's short, and it's not rocket science. The Federalist Papers, however, are more interesting.

This female is being held for banding. If you're stuck, the male is on the continuation page below.

Via Failbook via Things That Are Doing It (h/t, I forget - will link when I remember.)

Another one, also safe for work, below the fold -

The New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social, and, above all, the power relationships within the nation. It was not a revolution by violence. It was a revolution by bookkeeping and lawmaking. In so far as it was successful, the power of politics had replaced the power of business. This is the basic power shift of all the revolutions of our time. This shift was the revolution.

Whittaker Chambers (h/t, Dr. Bob)

The Vela (1957). Story at Babalu

At Pajamas: War, Pestilence, Famine: That’s Climate Change … When It’s Cold.

Somebody actually told me today that it was so cold this morning because of man-made climate change. I prudently held my tongue, and just smiled. 

A reader introduced us to Theodore Roethke's 1957 "Last Class," an amusing rant about teaching literature to rich girls at Bennington College. 

I cannot find the whole thing, but here's the first page. Roethke wrote it under the pen name of Winterset Rothberg.

Trailer for the documentary about lotteries for good schools. h/t, Betsy:

Hey, Northeast gardeners. If you have been too eager to get your tomatoes, etc. in the ground, watch out.

Freezing temps predicted tonight and tomorrow night. Cover them with something. Plastic milk cans or sheets of plastic or whatever. Global cooling, ya know.

As a rational skeptic on the subject, I have fortunately not planted any tomatoes or cucumbers or peppers yet. The guaranteed safe date for putting out uncovered tender plants in New England has been May 31 for over 200 years, and it still is. That is peer-reviewed data: My Mom says it, and my Grandpa said it.

With Grappelli. Beryl Davis is the chanteuse.

In a chat with an Italian guy from Torino with his two little kids and wife on the flight to Milan, he said "You are only visiting for ten days? In Italy, we have 8 weeks of vacation. We have been in the US for a month, two weeks in New York."

In a chat with a Brit on a ferry on Lake Como: "When you travel with a wife, you see villas and gardens. That's just what you do." They were on a one month trip around Italy.

When do these folks ever work? We talked with plenty of friendly people on our trip, including a Swiss gal who had come down from Bern to the lakes with her dog (travel in Europe is very dog-friendly) for a long weekend.

Some more Italy photos - a cafe in a pleasant piazza in Stresa with a bottle of our staple - the local Barbera:

 Another shot of the Isola Bella gardens:

A view from the funicular which connects Stresa with the ski village of Motterone. In the "Borromean Gulf," the left island of the triangle is Isola Pescatore, the far one is Isola Madre, and the one on the lower right is Isola Bella:

More photos on continuation page -

I was a bit of a nerdy, introverted kid, with a strong naturalist, conservationist, and hunting bent which has continued into my so-called adulthood.

I owe my Mom (and my Dad) gratitude for introducing me to these interesting things. They are both curious people who do not like to not know about things around them, in whatever depth they are able to pursue.

The energetic curiosity of parents, as of teachers, must surely be a good inspiration for growing rugrats. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

While an expert in nothing, I have learned enough over the years to see and understand more of what's going on outdoors than the average bear. As our readers know, I am interested in the geology, the geography, the wildlife, the plants, the seas, and habitats in general.

I have been birding since I was around 10, when I started with weekend groups from the local Audubon Society, but I remain a novice. Female warblers can drive me nuts, and Fall warblers - forget about it.

Birding can be challenging, physically like hiking and mentally like Organic Chemistry: birds have seasonal plumages, and many vary during their first couple of years of life. Like hunting or fishing, it provides a mission for one's expeditions to the Great Outdoors. I am not one of those obsessives who pursue a Life List: I just like to see what is around in whatever corner of Creation I happen to find myself.

Even when hunting, I tend to have my binoculars with me.

From Birding popularity is flying high, report shows. One quote:

Using data from 2006, a new report, "Wildlife Watching in the United States," found that expenditures for watching birds and other wildlife were equivalent to the revenues generated from all spectator sports, including football, baseball and NASCAR; amusement parks and arcades; nonhotel casinos; bowling centers; and skiing facilities -- combined.

Photo is a tough diagnosis for amateurs, especially when among flocks of Herring Gulls. Sometimes seen on the coast in the Northeast in winter: Glaucous Gull. A big, tough denizen of the high Arctic.

Mary Cassatt's Breakfast in Bed, 1896.