Maggie's Farm

A tribe of hornets have built a nice house on my eaves. Fortunately, the house does not need painting this year.

When I was a kid, and if that nest had been on the barn, it would have been a great BB gun target. I will leave them alone to enjoy their hornet life.

As of this afternoon, my parents' house is empty of everything. Even the dumpster has departed.  The Steinway Baby Grand was happily delivered to our parlor today and sounds pretty good there. My Mom's Victorian cast iron bird bath with four herons is in the driveway, waiting for me to show it some love with a power-wash and some Rustoleum. My Dad's Danish-style double bureau is in my bedroom. I've needed one forever, never saw one I liked. The drawers are cedar, so it smells good. Plus it was my Dad's for many years. He liked Danish design.

Funny thing about my parents. They never owned many clothes, but they always looked perfectly appropriate, and modestly-elegantly-attired, whether for weddings, beach club parties, dinner parties, fancy cruises, country clubs,  hiking in Europe, opera, funerals, yard work, etc. I don't know how they did that. Mrs. BD opined that they did it by owning a very few perfect and very fine things, and were careful to never over-dress. They were not shoppers but seemed to have excellent Yankee taste. They had very little clothing for Good Will to take away.

Their dining room table is now against a wall in our living room, for the moment, where the piano mover guys were kind enough to lug away our old upright that my kids learned on. We might want to keep that Danish slate-topped table and use it as our kitchen dining table, as the wonderful one we use is quite large. Huge. Or save it for a kid. Mom's jewels - the few which I obtained thus far - are stashed in my safe.

After I do some clean-up, I'll post some pictures of it all. Life in Yankeeland goes on. An empty family house is eery, and left me feeling troubled and disoriented. I was already away at boarding school when they built it, but it became home even though I never really lived there. Somebody prosperous will love it, paint it, and raise some fine batch of kids there (it has 6 bedrooms). It's a lovely dwelling. Or maybe they will decide to do a demolition and start fresh. We are gone now.

Clean and wax the floors, wash the walls, then an open house asap. It's a short walk to the Congo church on the hill. It's only worth around a million, for the land. The lovely, large, but 1960s-era home itself does not seem to factor in its value at all. Small bathrooms, lots of big windows with no thermopane. People expect more comforts, nowadays, even though it is entirely sufficient and functional, modestly elegant and comfortable.

My parents were not interested in modern conveniences. Instead of a/c, they just planted trees to shade the house. No sound systems. Radio with WQXR.

Dad, I believe, was proud to have designed and built it for his big family of five kids. A place to read and talk, entertain, eat, and sleep. Never a TV until all the kids left, and always dogs until they got too old to take good care of them. Springers.

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Sonnet 41

I thank all who have loved me in their hearts,
With thanks and love from mine.
Deep thanks to all
Who paused a little near the prison-wall
To hear my music in its louder parts
Ere they went onward, each one to the mart’s
Or temple’s occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice’s sink and fall
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art’s
Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot
To harken what I said between my tears, . . .
Instruct me how to thank thee!
Oh, to shoot My soul’s full meaning into future years,
That they should lend it utterance, and salute
Love that endures, from life that disappears!

A "Cape" is short for a Cape Cod - style house. This was a common architectural style in the Colonial period, especially on Cape Cod but in New England generally. Common also in the Colonial Revival period (1930s-1950s). More about Capes in Wiki.

Here's an original one, in Wellfleet.

Well, as close to an angel as I have ever identified.

Like most angels, she just looked like an ordinary middle-aged person. Unremarkable, unmemorable.  Angels are simply messengers, aren't they? They aren't gods, and they don't have wings. The wings in angel images are symbols.

Tuesday morning at 10:30 I was sitting in the Maggie's HQ between meetings and conferences, with all doors and windows open to the soft summer breeze and enjoying a nice Partagas - I'm the boss so I do what I want - when I hear a knock on the open outside door. "Hello."

"Come on in," I say. "Pardon my cigar smoke. What can I do for you?"

"Nothing," she said tentatively. "I've never done anything like this before, but I felt had to. Are you (my name)? "Yes, I am. Who are you?" She gave her name to me.

I was pleasant, she was too. She said she hoped I did not mind, but the Lord had asked her twice, in prayer, to pray for me by name and to remind me that God loved me. She had no idea who I was, but googled my name, located me, and walked in my open door on the chance I would be there.

I told her that, far from intruding on me, she was like an angelic apparition. She had driven 20 miles to deliver me a message. I told her that I had lost both of my parents in the past few months, was grieving in my various ways but was not feeling disconnected from God.

She gave me a light hug, said "The Lord wants you to know that he loves you", and walked back out to her car. A silver Camry.

I told Mrs. BD that I had had a visitation from an angel. No, I am not insane. As I thought about it over the past couple of days, I began to realize that grief had indeed distanced me from God - not out of anger or anything stupid like that, but just by preoccupation with my own feelings, self-involvement.

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NYC:  If Giuliani, like Alexander, had run out of problems to conquer, Bloomberg never had any to begin with.:

 Republicans still believe in being the party of good government, while Democrats, under lefty influence, believing in being the party of moral government. The more pragmatic authoritarianism of the good government party only paves the way for the moral authoritarianism of the left.

The cycle ensures that the left will always have a right to clean up their messes and to rebel against. They need their Nixons to get them out of Vietnam, try to make their social welfare policy disasters seem workable, and act as the father figure that they can pull down and destroy. They need the Reagans and Giulianis and Eisenhowers to denounce as authoritarian conformists, thoughtless buffoons who prevent progress, because the alternative is the eternally stultifying rule of the left whose existence in a country destroys the left as a meaningful moral force in human affairs.

The authoritarian cycle allows the right to claim credit for cleaning up the messes and the left and allows the left to claim credit for cleaning up the messes of the right. The left blames the right and its "budget cuts" to social welfare programs for causing the mess. The right blames the left's flirtation with criminality and its hostility to the solid citizen. The dynamic is a familiar one from elections.

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The Vietnam War, via chopper

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Be there or be square. Evening ice cream at Mac's on the town dock. One of the very few places on earth I know where standing in a line is sorta fun. Fleece or sweater required.

A couple more pics below the fold -

but it still reminded me of the song. In five months, both parents dead and final child moved out to NYC this week. That's a big life change for me and the Mrs., but we still have the dog. All 3 kids living and/or working in NYC now. It's a good thing for the youth to do: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. They don't have to stay there forever.

What makes it even better is that they get together there sometimes, and sort of network socially. They all have lots of friends and associates from prep school, college, and work. Interesting, attractive, proper, and ambitious kids, and they all want to be in NY where the action is. Meet people, make friends, build a life. Fun, plus social capital. They all have nothing at all to complain about except income, and when you're young in Manhattan, you don't really care. When I lived there, I had no clue that I was a pauper. Life was fun and fascinating, I could afford a beer, and I even met the future Mrs. BD there. Man, that was a random meet but it clicked.

To cheer me up and to distract me from all of the family death and all of the memory tape loops that keep running through my mind with no "pause" button that I can find, Mrs. BD is treating me to a little trip later this summer. Carpe diem in the face of death.

She thinks physical effort will help me feel better. Usually works for me. I love physical effort as long as it doesn't require brains. It's a birthday present for me too, I guess. Or for both of us. She is a world-class trip-planner. It's hiking in the Dolomites above Lake Garda, then a few days banging around the Veneto (with no Venice, thankfully. I hate that tourist trap. We fly into Milan and then drive right out in a rental sports car. I don't care for Milan either.). I intend to rent a little speedboat on Lake Garda and to try to act Italian. In the upper Veneto, some speak German, some speak only Ladin, some speak Italian in public but Ladin with family.

For her birthday, what shall I offer the gal who has everything she needs (except perfect financial security - still waiting for Powerball - however, her material wants and expectations have always been minimal but her cultural, relational, and spiritual desires are considerable. And I have lotsa life insurance...)? Ah, I know just the thing. Tix for Rigoletto at the Arena di Verona.

She can hum a lot of it and recite the details of the tale, but has never seen it live.

Got 'em. Don't tell.

We took the pup for a long off-leash walk two Saturday mornings ago. We ran into a 92 year-old Norwegian neighbor and friend on his daily morning hike. He has climbed the Matterhorn, Mount Blanc, some of the Himalayas. We asked him about the Dolomites. He knew every town, every mountain. Had climbed the Five Fingers. "It's soft stone, Dolomite. Easy to climb." Well, I'll hike all day but I don't climb mountains. Heights have a bad effect on me.

Then, as we head back to the HQ, a car pulls over. A relatively new neighbor and new friend just stopping to say hi. Our dogs are friends too. He's on the way to the airport. We ask where they are going. "Dolomites. Hiking, some rock climbing. Then a couple of days on Lake Garda. We'll have supper and fill you in when we get back."

Life is good, despite it all.

12 years without sex

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U.S. Congress wins relief on Obamacare health plan subsidies

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Economic Forecasts Are Bad, Budget Forecasts Delusional

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Another piece from this large set of ?china?

A bowl of some sort, art deco influences.

What the heck is this material?

Found a large set of these cups, with saucers, bowls, etc. in my parents' storage room. I know they were via my great-grandmother in Connecticut. I have no idea what they are made of, or by whom.

Any ideas? Appearance is of gold or gold plate, but what do I know?

I will have a jeweler look at them this week.

Thanks to Gerard for forwarding this:

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He's back to being Don again

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