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.
"Cape Cod Turkey" is, as any Cape Codder knows, dried salt Cod. Brined, then dried in the sun until hard as stone.
The pics above are of drying cod "flakes" near Commercial Wharf, Provincetown. More pics and details here.
The starving Pilgrims would have dined well on Cod, had they known how to catch them. They were weak on survival skills (half died the first winter), but they, as you recall, had never meant to end up in the Massachusetts woods. They were headed for the Hudson River, somewhere near the Dutch city of New Amsterdam. Some reports say they were headed to what was termed "Virginia," the vast area claimed by English investors running south down the coast from New Amsterdam).
European fishermen were harvesting and drying Cod on the coast of eastern Canada 100 years before the Pilgrims arrived, and the Portuguese and Spanish (and eventually, the Italians too) figured out how to cook this wood-like substance, which they call baccala or bacala or bacalao, in interesting ways.
Here's Thoreau's amusing take on the Cape Cod cod industry. (Link fixed - well, maybe not. No time to mess with it right now)
“Wasn’t it Jesus who said: ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s’? Well, BSkyB belongs to Caesar and the Church should keep its eyes on the heavens not on the wheeling and dealing in the City."
The Obama administration’s “Race to the Top,” at the cost of $4.35 billion, is the latest of a long line of lavishly funded federal education initiatives, joining “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) and others that have failed to reform education. As is typical, there are high hopes for change but a low probability that any significant or lasting reforms will be implemented.
According to a report in Heritage Press, in April 2006, Neal McCluskey, a policy analyst with the Center for Education Freedom asserted, “Government programs have a troubling way of taking good ideas and ruining them with bureaucracy, unintended consequences and control by special interests.”
It's the government, so it's all politics. For the Dems, it's the Conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid. For the Conservatives, it's our Conspiracy to set you free from the government.
The United States is often referred to as a melting pot, where immigrants become Americans – proud of accomplishments and sacrifices here, and willing to contribute to that -- while holding on to traditions from whence they came.Many fear this melting has diminished, as more immigrants hold on to more of their native traditions and assimilate less.
That may be so. But, I’ve found that the reduction in those American traits is more pronounced among those born here, and they are to fault for the reduced emphasis on assimilation.
Thanksgiving is the uniquely American holiday, to give thanks for the bounty and freedoms found here. Over the years, I’ve seen the most sincere thanks given to America for that among immigrants.
Assimilation isn’t always easy, but they try. I’ve seen some buy Banquet TV dinners of turkey. I’ve seen some with widely different eating tastes force the turkey into their mouths and be at a loss for what to do with the leftovers.I’ve seen some introduce their native spices for the turkey and serve native side dishes. I asked a Mexican immigrant what his family does. The answer, “eat too much, just like everyone else.”
Want to enlarge the melting pot? Invite an immigrant to your Thanksgiving table. The first Thanksgiving was about sharing. Share stories about why you give thanks, including your family’s immigrant experience.
My family will host a family who recently immigrated from Japan.
At Spiked. Indeed, a voice crying out in the wilderness of PC insanity and censorship. One quote:
Lukianoff says it is a consequence of the broader academic culture that students find themselves in today – an academic culture which instead of highly prizing combative debate and the unfettered freedom to scuffle over ideas and knowledge increasingly demonises such things as potentially hurtful and damaging. An academic culture, in short, which is destroying its own raison d’être – to foster thought, discussion, enlightenment – through its acceptance of the idea that actually, after all, words and ideas can be quite dangerous and thus should be subject to policing.
As families gather for Thanksgiving this year, nearly one in three American children is living with a parent who is divorced, separated or never-married. More people are accepting the view that wedding bells aren't needed to have a family.
I have no idea how anybody can run a family or a household, or build a good life, without a loyal and dependable partner. I couldn't do it.
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”
Everybody has known for years that it's just a boondoggle for Iowa corn farmers.
The end of the line is rapidly approaching for unsustainable government spending. The states will be the first to reach that station.
The arrival will be a painful crash. The impact will reshape much of the US government policies of the past half century.The triage of those affected will raise bloody howls of anguish, and none will escape the effects.
Those who survive the fittest will be those most adaptable to a renewed America of more effective use of personal and financial resources. All will face difficult choices. True need will be better defined, to protect those really unable to cope. True merit will be better rewarded.
Most agree that the root cause of the crash, the bulk of most of the deficits, is bloated government policies and the agencies that implement them. Some argue, instead, that the gap be filled by increased taxes, not facing that spending excesses will then require more again, further reducing the incentives to produce and afford taxes.
I’m not one to say that government workers goof off more than private industry workers. It’s not their work ethic that I fault. It is the policies that political leaders set them on that are at fault both for the financial ruin that most states and the federal government face and for the frustration expressed by taxpayers over servicing a better paid civil service than themselves.
A conservative commenter thinks that President Obama will act with his “natural tendencies to ‘rescue’ and ‘control’ things” and that “The nature of his response could determine his tenure at the White House.” A liberal commenter thinks that former US Senator Alan Simpson’s remark, that “the blood bath will be extraordinary” in April when the federal debt limit comes up for a required vote to increase it, when – the commenter fears – “we can only hope that the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize.” (Republicans will require spending cuts.)
The public mood is contradictory. Most want someone else’s ox to be gored. Increase someone else’s taxes. Cut someone else’s entitlement. Slash government payrolls. Don’t eliminate the program that benefits me.
This time, however, as in the case of California’s continuing $25+ billion structural deficit, over a quarter of its budget, there are no more cans and the end of the road is before us.
Leaving it to the politicians has meant cost-cutting nibbles and kicking the can down the road with accounting tricks. Court challenges have often resulted in reversals of spending cuts, due to judicial quibbles, activism, or faulty drafting of the cuts.
Federal legislation would be needed to allow states to declare bankruptcy, or to forbid bailouts of the states, or the Congress may simply refuse to bail out the states. More howls, and more judicial meddling.But, it is the necessary next step, if Congressional budget-hawks have the wings to withstand downdraft counter-pressures from many voters at home and, instead, soar to responsibility. State legislators and governors will be forced to make hard choices.
At the state level, civil service unions will have to renegotiate contracts. Program excesses will have to be trimmed. Some taxes may be raised. There will, then, be carry-over to federal programs. There will be increased demands to trim spending mandates imposed on the states and to trim other federal programs that will be seen as excessive in light of the dimmed largesse of the states.
All will enter a new America, in which there is a more direct connection between one’s own views, own comforts, and own efforts.It will be a difficult adjustment for all, painful for many, and would be a welcome improvement. The alternative is greater difficulties and pain for all if we allow complete insolvency and dissolution of assets by avoiding the confrontation with realities.
Political correctness has never been about helping the downtrodden. It has been about turning people’s compassion and courtesy into a weapon against them. Political correctness has always been the bully’s cudgel. At long last, it has been pushed to its breaking point of absurdity.
I have a retired friend who spends around 6 weeks each year at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. Quite a few people do this sort of thing. It's a Trappist monastery (Cistercian, with strict rules) with guest houses for retreatants. (They do take in married couples as retreatants and you probably need to be Roman Catholic, but I'm not sure.)
He does whatever labor is assigned to him - from baling hay to cleaning toilets, observes the rules of silence, and makes it to all of the Masses (beginning after the morning bells at 3 AM).
He returns home "cleansed and refreshed by the Spirit." The guy was a drop-out seminarian, USMC in Vietnam, and, as he describes himself, a "kick-ass businessman." He is, indeed, a tough SOB who loves the Lord.
The Abbey is an old plantation on the Cooper River, north of Charleston, donated to the order by the Luce family.
The Wall Street Journal reported this collapse in June 2009. Further photos and analysis show that the pilings were faultily built and that later digging out the ground under one side for an underground garage was not the way to go.
I think I'll pass on the coming Chinese economy cars.
I think I could direct Carmen myself, every tuneful note is so familiar to me. Bizet is the Elton John of opera.
The story is just a vehicle for the tunes. Naive soldier falls in love with hot gypsy babe, deserts the army and joins the gypsy criminal band. Fickle, promiscuous gypsy babe changes her mind and runs off with studly matador. Naive guy is distraught and kills gypsy lady. Too bad - he has now destroyed his life. A cautionary tale about hot gypsy babes.
It's in French but set in Spain for the fun of it, and so Bizet could use that cool Toreador song he had in his drawer.
The opera is too long to tell such a simple tale, but Bizet was full of tunes.
I thought Galanca was excellent, but Cabell as Micaela stole the show. The sets were an amazing blend of neo and traditional, with lighting that Robert Wilson would envy. Dinner in the Grand Tier was excellent, of course. We had the Gateau Opera at intermission. What else would you have?
Examiner: 
The Wall Street Journal
