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.
PhD in Physics, speaks 6 languages, legal immigrant. Looks pretty good, too. Too good? Maybe women resent women who are too accomplished, too fascinating, too elegant, or too beautiful. I get that. I hate men who are taller or smarter than I am.
Multiple Editors At Random House Broke Down In Tears After Hearing The Company Will Publish Jordan Petersen’s Next Book…These people are not well in the head.
On January 20, 2021, the media will cease reporting on the coronavirus. The stories will then all be about the great recovery engineered by Joe Biden in the first hours of his presidency.
... after 37 weeks of pandemic, too many American parents are too tapped out. Decades of research has definitively shown that the presence of a responsive caregiver, especially during early childhood, when the brain is extremely plastic, is the crucial ingredient in healthy development. This stable adult attention is exponentially more meaningful when children are growing up in persistent adversity: environments of neglect, abuse, deprivation, or poverty that medical and psychological professionals call “toxic stress.”
At the turn of the century, the Eastern Wild Turkey was nearly eradicated by hunting and habitat loss, and was entirely absent in the Northeast.
By the mid 1800s, the woodlands of New England had disappeared for farming, charcoal production, and lumbering.
But the woodlands have returned as farming moved west, and the wierd gobble now can be heard even in residential areas.
Thanks to dramatically successful conservation and transplantation efforts, there are now estimated to be 7 million of these huge iridescent birds, which Ben Franklin felt to be so quintessentially American that he wanted one on the US Seal. (Video of the turkey's comeback here.)
There are six species of wild turkey in the New World, and none elsewhere. (The domestic turkey is likely a descendent of the large Mexican species.) It is the Eastern which we feature here which has, in recent years, been transplanted successfully west of the Mississippi, and elsewhere.
As a sought-after game bird, the turkey's habits have been much studied. They are wary and cautious. In most areas, there is a spring and a fall hunting season for turkey, and they are pursued with bow or shotgun. It is the one game bird which it is sporting to shoot on the ground.
I have hunted them on a couple of occasions. Never managed to shoot one, though. Had a good time however, sitting at the base of a tree in camo, watching the other wild critters pass by.
Does the wild turkey taste different from a supermarket bird? Yes - the wild turkey tastes like turkey and the supermarket bird tastes like a supermarket.
The tail-fanning? That's part of the male's mating strut. The CLO page here, and the website of the worthy National Wild Turkey Federation here.
For the few of our readers who are even bothering with cooking for 3 or four people (I know it's a beloved tradition but sheesh - at least just get take-out or go to the diner if you don't have a jolly crowd), Grandma's Corn Pudding is delicious and easy as pie.
Thanksgiving supper is not about gourmet. Grandma made pudding out of cans.
Joe Biden won crucial swing states fair and square — despite getting blown away in bellweather Ohio and Florida, despite being down by hundreds of thousands of votes until the mysterious shutdowns in counting, despite Trump outperforming Biden campaign’s own expectations, despite underperforming Hillary Clinton everywhere else in the country, despite not campaigning, despite having no ground game, despite having zero enthusiasm, despite losing support among minorities, despite pushing policies at odds with the desires of the public, despite aligning himself with BLM and Antifa. And despite having trouble executing a coherent sentence.
I suppose I had forgotten that only 23 of the 200 people on that boat were religious pilgrims, separatists. I had a separatist ancestor on that ship, but what does that mean? When you go back that far, how many hundreds of equal ancestors do you have?
Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
LOURY: It started a movement, didn’t it? The events that happened in Ferguson, Missouri had deep political resonance for the country as a whole. If it wasn’t Selma, what was it then? What exactly is the difference in your minds between the classic—the iconic—narrative of African-American struggle against oppression on the one hand, and what unfolded in the wake of Ferguson on the other?
S. STEELE: It’s not like Selma. You and I grew up in segregation. I know about segregation. I lived the civil rights movement, saw those noble fights against an enemy that was everywhere in the world I grew up in. So no one had any doubt about the moral integrity of Selma’s protests. But in Ferguson, Missouri, what was the argument? That because one cop killed a black that somehow racism is systemic? It seems to me that the elephant in the room is that racism is so minimal now, that it couldn’t really, in and of itself, get any movement off the ground. There’s not enough of it around. There’s not enough injustice. And what we had instead was a generation looking for power and looking to see how guilty white America would respond. And, in that sense, the movement was cynical. It mimicked the real movement—Selma and the civil rights movement in the ’50s and the ’60s and so forth. It was mimicry. It was theater. It wasn’t real.
Seriously: “Accountability” for what? A booming economy? Peace in the Middle East? Record-fast Covid vaccines? Well, the real sin is being a Republican, and worse yet, not one of the Gentry Class. As Obama showed, any sin is forgivable so long as you’re a Democrat and have sharply creased pants and an Ivy League pedigree.
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At the turn of the century, the Eastern Wild Turkey was nearly eradicated by hunting and habitat loss, and was entirely absent in the Northeast. 
On a reader's deck in CT this week
One travel job that is booming during the pandemic is 
