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.
It doesn’t take long, though, for a visitor to discover St. Aloysius’s most powerful asset: the rich content of its classroom instruction. St. Aloysius exemplifies the old-fashioned notion that school is a place where children learn about our civilization’s shared knowledge and values and where teachers remain the undisputed authorities in the classroom, imparting that knowledge and those values through a coherent grade-by-grade curriculum. This traditional approach has stood the test of time and is still proving itself today in many inner-city Catholic schools, in the “no excuses” charter schools operated by the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), in schools that have adopted E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum, and, to some extent, even in run-of-the-mill Massachusetts public schools that adhere to that state’s back-to-basics curriculum reforms (see “E. D. Hirsch’s Curriculum for Democracy,” Autumn 2009).
Teaching writing is a difficult task, if not a nearly impossible one. Eliminating standards and propagandizing is so much easier. So easy, any idiot can - and does - do it.
The thing is, you don't have to know a damn thing about the craft of writing to propagandize. This is truly appalling: Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years. Crazy, for sure, and utterly out of reality and out of usefulness.
You have to either laugh or cry.
It sounds like going to writing class today is like going to shop class and learning about the oppression of the worker instead of how to use a lathe. Might be useful if you want to become a Community Organizer, but not if you ever want to make anything.
Saturday morning, a stroll around the shrubby areas of the Olde Farm revealed a big movement of migrants overnight.
Towhees, calling and scratching in the ground cover:
Flocks of noisy Blue Jays - who do move south in the fall, leaving us in New England with the Canadian birds during the winter. You know what they look like.
Two flocks of about 20 White-throated Sparrows, scratching for bugs under the rose bushes and in the overgrown dead vegetable garden, singing their Spring song:
And a Sharpie buzzed past, doubtless following, and feeding upon, the tasty, tender little migrants:
Good morning, World!
Most images and links from/to the fine CLO bird info website.
In four days, this post is almost outdated. I heard Parula and Palm Warblers singing this morning -
What a fine distraction from the hassles of life. They can swallow good-sized bones now. They just devoured a crow, and it's sorta cool the way they know how to shoot their poops off the edge of the nest:
In my experience, most people do not spend much time thinking about policies or politics. That was fine, before government intruded into every area of our lives.
The O was born in Hawaii. I think the O is toying with the Birthers, playing them for fools. As for his grades, they probably did suck because he was a stoner. But graduating summa from HLS means something.
...deluded about what can be accomplished through mere professions of powerlessness, and advertising their fears as if they were virtues, those who guide the fortunes of the world’s only superpower have embarked upon an experiment in virtual demilitarization.
Serious gardeners in New England, especially food-gardeners, build coldframes to extend the growing season. Properly done, you can add at least a month to the growing season for some things.
I used to mess with things like that, but I don't bother anymore. If I lived in Maine, though, I'd definitely have a coldframe full of spinach, leaf lettuces, etc.
I've even tried putting tomatoes out in late April here, but it never works out. Milk jugs, polyurethane, etc. Big hassle. Fact is, around here, if you put them out in late May they quickly catch up to the early birds, and even exceed them because they have endured no cool weather stresses. Tomatoes do not really put on growth without warm nights - above 55 F. We are still in the 30s on some nights.
If you have money to burn, the best thing is a good-sized real greenhouse. I would attach one to the house, with interior and exterior doors, so you could just open the door and let the rich earthy and flower and herb and plant smells infuse the house. Home-grown Beefsteak tomatoes 12 months/year.
Pic is Beefsteaks, the only tomato I truly enjoy eating, especially when hot from the sun. We usually only get a few weeks of them ripening, mid-late August-early September. Is it worth the trouble? For me, it is. It is especially pleasant when you can find a big ripe one that a squirrel or chipmunk has not taken a bite out of.
I had to run home this afternoon to meet with my chimney guy. Actually, not my chimney guy, but my semi-local sheet-metal guy.
I never had a sheet-metal guy, but I'm glad to have one now. He can make whatever you need in his wood-heated shop in an old mill building in CT, and he will install what he makes, too. Cheerfully.
Our old farmhouse has three fireplaces. We needed some new flashing, new collars, caps, etc. to keep the rain and the animals out. That was a piece of cake for the good old guy. He promised me that his patch-up job would outlive me, which isn't saying much. In olde Yankeeland, everything is a patch-up job.
I chatted up his 20-something black assistant. He said "Man, we have a beautiful shop. We can make anything - copper, aluminum, stainless, plain steel - whatever you want. Ducts, flashing, roofs, gutters, whatever. Square ducting, round ducting, whatever you need. We have the technology. We built our own wood stove too."
"What do you do for wood?" I asked.
"Oh, our tree guy friends just dump it off for us. Saves them a dump fee. We cut and split it ourselves. We load the stove up at night, and it's as warm as toast when we come to work in the morning."
The latest Marxist trick, cloaked in virtue but a wolf in sheep's clothing: The Sustainability Agenda.
Watermelons: Green on the outside, Red on the inside. They want my money, and to control my life. It ain't going to happen because She Who Must Be Obeyed would not permit it.
In 1882, Klein imagined sewing two Möbius Loops together to create a single sided bottle with no boundary. Its inside is its outside, it contains itself, and you can almost do it yourself… but not quite because you’ll need a fourth dimension to get the surface to pass through itself without making a hole.
Well, if you can’t make one, you can always buy one, at Acme, of course, http://www.kleinbottle.com/. Yep, no doubt about it: Your Acme's Klein Bottle is a real Riemannian manifold, just waiting for you to define a Euclidean metric at every point.
Because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly;
Because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape;
Because in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion;
Because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience;
Because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don't want to waste the trip;
Because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters;
Because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness;
Because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there;
Because maybe one day I will catch a mermaid;
And finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant - and not nearly so much fun.
Robert Traver
A mermaid, or a cougar in a tree? Cougar safely below the fold -
The MSM never told us, but inquiring minds want to know and are curious because he ran for President of the USA and won an election (h/t Sistah). Caveat: I hold nobody's past or stupid youth against them, because we are in America where we are free to invent and re-invent ourselves if we wish to:
Traditionally, when Microsoft releases a new version of Internet Exploder, a chill runs through the geek community as we cower and tremble, wondering what have they done to the poor thing this time? Some favorite button is now gone? That one tricky thing it did is now history? That one feature that you found quite useful, but nobody else did, has been removed because nobody else did?
There's always something we can count on to gripe, moan, carp, whine and bitch about.
But, showing that Microsoft can be even crueler than cruel, this time they played the dirtiest trick on all on us:
They didn't change anything.
And if that isn't spitting in the face on tradition, I don't know what is.
Pic: The lovely Melanie proudly displays two of Doc's favorite logos.
Oh, I might also mention that it's now faster than goose shit when accessing blog sites. Review & setup tips are below the fold.
If opportunity in America is a sham — if the system is rigged and some people get the breaks only for reasons of luck, birth, or discrimination — then merit is fictitious and redistribution brings greater fairness. But if America is an opportunity society — if you have the chance to work harder, get more education and innovate — then rewarding merit is fair, and it is fair for some to make more money than others.
Most Americans believe we live in an opportunity society. The General Social Survey has asked Americans since 1973 to answer whether people get ahead because of “their own hard work” or because of “lucky breaks and help from other people.” For four decades, 60 to 70 percent of Americans have said “hard work,” while never more than 16 percent have said “lucky breaks.”
It’s hardly a shock that seven in 10 Americans believe in the American dream. If you descended from immigrants, ask yourself: Why did my ancestors come here? I suspect it wasn’t to find a fairer system of forced income redistribution. It was to find a place where they could get a fair shake, where they could start their own business, and where hard work and good ideas would be rewarded.
Politicians have denied the core American belief in opportunity at their peril.
Well, luck, motivation, and personality traits are involved too. However, luck favors the prepared mind, and "Showing up is 70% of success." Most heirs, like most lottery winners, blow their good fortunes on instant gratification. Furthermore, many people do not pursue wealth and "getting ahead" as a life goal anyway. It's just one of many possible choices of life goals, although the Marxists and Materialists might see it otherwise. Choosing life goals is a very big deal, differentiates the adults from the kids, and, for most, is probably best done in a partnership. "Chacun a son gout" - which does not mean each selects his own path to gout.
Great idea, Robert. But my Doc doesn't do Medicare. He wants to get paid for his time and interest in my well-being, and he should be. I pay him, with my own money. I thank him, too, and also send him a holiday basket of goodies for his family.
It's not mainly about oil prices. It's about hedging the dollar with commodities, it seems to me. Global investors must hedge their risks somehow, and China wants to dump dollars. Gold, silver, oil - anything real instead of paper money.
If you’re looking for a place with a remarkably high concentration of literary eminences who can be counted on to spout incredibly fatuous political clichés in a consistently self-regarding tone (though heaven knows why, aside from sheer masochism, you’d be looking for such a place), pack your mukluks and set sail for the frozen North. For the fact is that an extraordinary percentage of this region’s most honored and bestselling writers harbor an ardent, palpable, quivering contempt for America and Israel, and express it in a language that’s breathtaking for its utter lack of moderation, nuance, or restraint (or, for that matter, originality).
Mark Steyn reports that his childrens' Kinder Eggs were seized by US Customs as he and they crossed the border from Canada to the US. According to Customs: "Many of the toys that have been tested by the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the past were determined to present a choking hazard for young children....Last year, CBP officers discovered more than 25,000 of these banned chocolate eggs. More than 2,000 separate seizures were made of this product." As Steyn states, however: "And yet oddly enough generations of European and Latin American children remain unchoked."
If you don't know what Kinder Eggs are, they are hollow chocolate eggs with ingenious little assembly toys inside.
Each Summer, my wife and boys visit grandma in Germany. My wife brings back two egg cartons of twelve Kinder Eggs in each carton. Throughout the year they provide exceptional motivational rewards for the boys. My wife is as paranoid as most mothers about her childrens' safety, and as prone as most to believe most scares. The boys have collected several hundred of Kinder Egg toys. They reacted with deep disappointment this morning when I told them they are now illegal to bring into the US , then asked Mom if they could eat them all before getting on the plane home. My wife is trying to figure out something else as powerful a motivational reward as Kinder Eggs.
There's someone in Washington smiling that another motivation for individual effort has been broken and outlawed.
If human beings were going to invent a religion based on wishful thinking, they could come up with something a lot “easier” than Christianity. After all, why not wish for a religion that promised eternal life in heaven, but at the same time allowed promiscuous sex, encouraged gluttony, did away with all the commandments, and forbade anyone to ever mention the idea of judgment and punishment?
Yes - why not, doggone it? We have no problem with atheists - or with any other religions, here at Maggie's. Life, and consciousness, is a deep mystery and a puzzlement, and we all must find our own ways through it with whatever sources of illumination we can find. As readers know, I am a Jesus guy - and I am not even particularly attracted to the idea of eternal life.
Preparing Easter feast for after church tomorrow for my in-laws and all the kids we can collect.
Two of my sisters are going to tend to the old folks this weekend while we finally seek some serious home help for them. I think I was in denial about their decline: it is painful to face as they have always had so much adventurousness, vitality, and work-and-study ethic.
Our menu is Butternut Squash Soup with nutmeg with a dollop of sour cream and my special homemade crouton, Arista (bone in, with garlic and rosemary - Arista is pork loin-rib roast, Tuscan-style), roast potatoes, stuffing with apples, apple sauce, roast parsnips, and Brussel Sprouts with garlic and oil. A nice Cote Roti.
For dessert, Wheat Pie, Rice Pie - and a Bunny Cake! With my good Mexican coffee. A multicultural Easter feast.
Next year, I want to make an Italian Easter Pie - Pizza Rustica.
I'd do it in a minute, if I could take 22 days off work.
Warren Buffet once said the the main advantage in life about being rich is private travel. We regular people easily forget that wealthy people worry as much, or more, about money than regular folks. They have more to worry about.
I rarely have a chance to travel by private jet, but have done so enough to say that it is very good. For my luxury, Mrs. BD just informed me that she rented an Alpha Romeo for me for our 10 days in Umbria. Only 100 E. more than the VW. Definitely worth it. Happy Bird Dog.
Image of Ben Franklin's daily sched via 
Serious gardeners in New England, especially food-gardeners, build 
The latest Marxist trick, cloaked in virtue but a wolf in sheep's clothing: 
A friend sends this:
Earth Day
Well, that was disappointing.
Preparing Easter feast for after church tomorrow for my in-laws and all the kids we can collect.