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 Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.
II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.
III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.
V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after.
VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause.
VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you?
VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know.
IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles.
X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply.
XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds.
XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.
XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.
Readers know that we Farmers are not Gaia worshippers or fanatics. We are old-fashioned Conservationists, mostly outdoor people, with respect for God's creation and its critters. We don't just talk the talk, we walk the walk when it comes to protection of land.
We burn carbon, too, in all forms. Good stuff to burn. Wood stoves, fireplaces, tractors, boats, furnace, etc.
With an Irish father-in-law, the boiled dinner is de rigeur around here on, or close to, St. Paddy's Day. I'll make up a big pot this weekend even though he is still in lovely San Diego, slowly on the mend and eager to get home.
I happen to be one of those people who love that New England Boiled Dinner, aka Irish Boiled Dinner, aka (per reader) "a greasy, one-pot slopfest."
The real traditional Irish St. Paddy's dinner is Bacon and Cabbage. Why is the New England dinner associated with the Irish? Read all about it here.
Cook the heck out of the meat, for hours, until it almost falls apart. Lots of whole peppercorns, Allspice, cloves, bay leaf, and garlic in the pot.
The carrots are optional, in my view - and the cabbage is the best part. For a large volume of food with generous leftovers for all, I am using 2 packaged corned beefs, 6 turnips, a small bag of carrots, a couple of giant onions, a small bag of parsnips (yum), a bag of potatoes, 2 or 3 large cabbages. That's all that will fit into our largest stewpot.
We're gonna need a bigger stewpot.
A large pot of hot mustard on one side, and a pot of beer on the other side. Great peasant eats, and the spices perfume the entire cabin.
Update: Had to do it in multiple batches but reusing the water from cooking the meat.
What scares the new atheists - The vocal fervour of today’s missionary atheism conceals a panic that religion is not only refusing to decline – but in fact flourishing
Of course loans of any sort should be discharged in bankruptcy. That's why lenders have loan officers. Lenders are responsible, and count on their debtors to do what they say they will.
I oppose any sort of government-guaranteed loans, whether mortgages, student loans, loans to solar companies, or loans to car companies. Also, the SBA loans. Government is not a bank. Government-guaranteed loans put taxpayers on the hook for things they would never lend to, including dumb and unmotivated kids.
Usually we begin to see the first flocks of northward-headed blackbirds in New England around Feb 15, but in recent years their arrivals are later and later. This year, the first wave arrived here yesterday.
"Blackbird" isn't a species - it's a category. Around here, it is mainly Red Wing Blackbirds and Common Grackle, who have spent their winter in the southern US and are headed for the marshy breeding grounds in the northern US and Canada. Very early migrators, they don't seem to mind nasty weather as long as it does not persist. (In the midwest and west, there are other species of Blackbirds.)
Photo below of male Red Wings. The females are an inconspicuous brown. In spring, the males get up on a branch, flash their red epaulets, and crow, in their territorial ritual, while the drab females skulk around and build nests in the rushes.
From its inception, progressivism has posed a threat to constitutional government. It has sought to replace limited and decentralized governance with dynamic, centralized authority in order to force some arrangement of equality on the nation. Because the world has a way of upsetting abstract designs, progressivism depends on empowering administrators to impose its frameworks while disempowering citizens from resisting these coercions. The Obama administration’s push for unilateral presidential authority to disregard the law is thus the logical extension of the progressive program. Opposition to this program requires nothing less than a rededication to our Founding ideals: our nation must be governed by the rule of law, not the rule of an elected monarch or of a legally privileged aristocracy.
The Millennial’s Guide To Reaching Adulthood - Here are seven ways millennials can reach adult milestones such as paying off student loans, getting married, buying a house, and starting a family.
The Greatest (Party) Generation - Raising children wasn’t always an all-consuming job. Humorist Dave Barry on his parents’ wild parties and the grown-up escapades of the ‘Mad Men’ era
Professor Judith Hall, of Northeastern University in Boston, said: ‘Benevolent sexism is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing that perpetuates support for gender inequality among women.'
I hold doors for both ladies and gentlemen. Some women can never be happy
It was what kept coming to mind as she stood before the cameras once again, under fire once again, aggrieved once again by Americans’ refusal to see and simply trust how well intentioned and virtuous and good for the country she is:
I received an email from my alma mater, the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University. It was a request to join a social media campaign about professing what you believe citizenship is. The idea is to download a 'thought bubble', write your view in the bubble, take a picture of you holding it, then add the picture to a social media outlet with the #ToMeCitizenship on it. For those of you unfamiliar with hashtags, this is the social media equivalent of joining a discussion in a somewhat indirect fashion.
At first I considered joining, if only to share a slightly different viewpoint than the ones I'd seen posted (click and take a look). I saw comments like "Serving people & Loyalty to government" (loyalty to government? Why is this always absolutely necessary? What would Jefferson and Washington have said?). Or "Respect for Authority" (this is so wrong, I can't even think of where to begin. I'm not sure 'authority' is generated from winning a popularity contest). Then there are some really bizarre ones like "Identity, Belonging, Altruism" (not sure when being a citizen provided me an identity, helped me feel like I belonged and don't get me started on the concept of altruism).
So I figured, I'd start my own here and find out what Maggie's visitors consider citizenship to be. Here was my stab at it, the one I never posted:
To me, Citizenship is loving my country and the rights of the individual which are protected by the Constitution while questioning the nature of human authority. Acknowledge and respect individual rights while exercising individual responsibility which strengthens those rights. #ToMeCitizenship
A New Life for Dead Malls - Developers have had to to get creative when it comes to salvaging America's failing shopping centers, turning them into hospitals, churches, and even parks.
Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches I'll recruit my army from the orphanages I been to St. Herman's church, said my religious vows, I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows
I've got the pork chops, she's got the pie She ain't no angel and neither am I Shame on your greed, shame on your wicked schemes I'll say this, I don't give a damn about your dreams.
Let's face it. The Clintons are pond scum. Not even genuine Lefties, just opportunistically left-ish. No core, no integrity, nothing. Neither has held an honest job in their life.
We support Bernie Sanders as an honest Democrat-Socialist candidate. Would not vote for him, but honest at least. I think the Dems will soon decide they have had enough Clintonian slime.
People talk about how the shrinks are making all sorts of normal variants into diseases, but how much insanity are they now regarding as normal variants?
A Wellfleet beach this week. Proof of global warming, I'd say. The warming makes it colder. I understand that part, but it's a little too nuanced for most people.
Since renowned philosopher Roger Scruton has a place in the Maggie's Farm pantheon of thinkers, I suspect that it will be good: 
Missing 
Department of Corrections: Those Carville boxed quotes which we linked to yesterday were not real - but they are truthy
A book by a fellow blogger, Robert Stacy McCain: 
