Maggie's Farm

No man loves marshes and bogs more than I do. The variety of life they contain, protect, and support, from protozoans to minnows to bass to amphibians to snakes to deer to woodpeckers to geese and ducks to eagles to bears is astonishing, and feels primeval.

Except for river-fed or run-off-fed marshes, though, most sizeable fresh-water marshes are ephemeral geographical features. In the northern US, most are the remnants of post-glacial ponds and lakes, gradually filled in with plant detritus and, just before they become the damp meadows that the Moose enjoy so much, the sphagnum bogs which, in Canada, are the source of most of our soil-enhancing peat moss.

The only sources of new marshes in the US are man (who is more inclined to fill them for building lots than to create them or rehabilitate them - except for Ducks Unlimited), and the Beaver:

And that is one reason we appreciate the remarkable beaver so much. He not only creates marshes, but he recycles them. I doubt that there is a single beaver marsh in the US which has not been used, on and off (until they have eaten or cut down everything they can find) over the several thousands of years since our last Ice Age buried Manhattan under a mile of ice.

Here are a some of the critters I see (or hear) most often in the immediate vicinity of our small (8 acre) beaver marsh in western MA over the past few years - off the top of my head and probably omitting some:

Beavers (of course)
Otter
Black Bear
Raccoon
White-tailed Deer
Red Fox
Coyote (alas)

Wood Duck (nesting)
Black Duck (nesting)
Mallard (nesting)
Canada Goose (nesting)
Pileated Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Wodpecker
Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Veery
Wood thrush
E. Phoebe
Wood Pewee
Great Blue Heron
Green Heron
Tree Swallow
Barn Swallow
Kingfisher
Swamp Sparrow
Grasshopper Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Barred Owl
Screech Owl
Great Horned Owl
Baltimore Oriole (Northern Oriole)
Marsh Wren
Turkey
Goldfinch (nesting)
Warblers of all sorts (during migration)
Turkey Vulture
Red-Tailed Hawk
Sharp-Shinned hawk
Red-shouldered Hawk
Broad-winged Hawk
Sparrow Hawk (Kestrel)
E. Bluebird
E. Kingbird
Ruffed Grouse
Cedar Waxwing
Catbird

Wood Turtle
Eastern Painted Turtle
Snapping Turtle
Garter Snake
Eastern Water Snake
Black Snake

Bullfrog
Eastern Newt (and their Red Efts by the trillions in the adjacent woods)
Leopard Frog
Green Frog
American Toad
Wood Frog
Spring Peeper
E. Gray Tree Frog

Old postcards from around the US. Here are some cattle (oxen, I think) at the old Danbury, CT State Fair:

No sappy Mom's Day commentary - just a virtual bouquet for my Mom, who happens to be in England at the moment with my Dad. (Still life by Juan de Arellano, c. 1650)

Confessions of a Car Salesman

Blacks seem racist in their voting patterns. Riehl. For one delegate, however, it's about the green, not the brown.

Obama and cap gains taxes. Already factored into the market?

A global warming two-fer: Synthstuff. Related: A very cold April this year.

The MLK memorial statue. Neoneo

"Wellness" uber alles. Am. Thinker. Be healthy or else...

Knee-pad time? Journalists ogle Obama. Michelle. Related: The Messiah and the media. Related: Caesar comes to the Capitol

Al Qaida plans attacks on Nigeria. Is that chickens coming home to roost too?

Bob's new tour. Right Wing Bob. He's only 67, which is no time to slow down.

Big Brother Video isn't working in the UK. (h/t, Flares)

How Japan continues to suffer from WW2. They lost their national meaning and purpose.

Brit corporations want to flee England.

The Cuban blogging revolution. Power to the People!

The NYT, the Hmong, and a criticism of the right. Dem Project

Time for regime change in Burma? No doubt, but not on my nickel.

A book: The Dirty Dozen - How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom

The Poison Ivy League. Prelutsky

MADD goes insane. Classical V. Maybe it's time for those MADD people to have a drink or two, and chill out.

Acts 2: 1-21

2When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. ⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ ¹³But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

 ¹⁷“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
   in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
     and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above
   and signs on the earth below,
     blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness
   and the moon to blood,
     before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Stick with it to the debate with the three Canadian Moslem lawyers (or law students?). Video:

The Agenda: May 6, What's wrong with Mark Steyn's view of the world (h/t, LGF)

I WILL SOON HAVE BIRD DOG PUPS FOR SALE. ANYONE WHO IS INTERESTED IN ONE, PLEASE CONTACT ME. THE LITTER WILL PROBABLY BE ABOUT 7 - 10 PUPS, WHICH I WILL SELL AT A VERY REASONABLE  PRICE.

I HAVE ATTACHED A  PICTURE OF THE MOM AND DAD SO YOU WILL HAVE AN IDEA OF WHAT THE  PUPS WILL LOOK  LIKE.
 
PLEASE LET ME KNOW  AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AS THEY MAY GO FAST. THANKS.

On the other hand, this seems like a better way to breed top quality bird dogs: Cloned Sniffer dogs.

A re-post:

A few nifty finds: New York City in Pictures, with "every street and every building in NY"; NewYorkology is a site with depth and detail, with tips for visitors and residents, including the location of the Whispering Gallery in Grand Central Station, which is quite near my favorite spot in the world for oyster stew and a beer, the famous and venerable Oyster Bar & Restaurant, which, along with oysters from all ends of the earth, almost always offers the rarest and very best oyster on earth, Wellfleets , with their subtle nutty flavor derived from the Herring River which flows into the harbor of Bird Dog's favorite town on his native Cape Cod. 

Then there's NY Architectural images - cool building photos listed by neighborhood. Oldbars lists - with photos - some of NYC's oldest, including McSorleys, where I have both booted and rallied in youth, back before 1970 when women weren't allowed in; and, since we're on bars, there's the unique  The Campbell Apartment, if you can find it; Forgotten New York is a good ramble; and the new Tenement Museum has been getting a lot of attention, but I haven't been there.

Reversibility

Little Walter on harmonica with Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, Wild About You, Baby, 1967.

I have been through James Burke's series twice.

Get it while it's hot. I don't know how long he will donate the bandwidth to the general public.

The "Point of View" episode makes it clear that armies exist to defend ideas, which, being American, I knew, but it clarified some things. Western Civ is about asking all of the questions we can think of asking, and viewing every question as an adventure.

From this morning's men's Bible study group:

"If you could take an immortality pill right now, would you swallow it?"

Addendum:  By coincidence, Dr. Bob's quote today:

God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I do not think that she and her team are deluded. I think they have known for a while that they cannot win this thing without a miracle. The Clintons are hard-headed, practical, cynically calculating, and realistic when it comes to power (and money - when Dems get rich, it isn't greed).

But she is getting more than her share of time in the media sun (BTW, is a Repub also running for Pres? You would hardly know it.)

It's all about power. She keeps running to firmly plant the Clinton flag in the center of a Dem party which seems to be giving her a bit of a cold shoulder, and to show her tough stuff so that she will be a major force in the Party - and maybe a Pres candidate - in the future. If Obama goes down in the November election, she will look good and will become the #1 Dem. And if he doesn't go down, she'll be the heavyweight in the Dem Senate and the de facto #2 Dem in the country (overshadowing Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, and whoever the VP nominee is).

Thus she has much to gain by not appearing to be a "quitter." She can win by losing, but the timing is key to polishing her halo. She needs to sell on an up-tick.

The speech she will eventually give in support of Obama will bury the hatchet, and will be designed to make her look like a Dem angel. The Dem angel.

Samuel Finley Morse Badger of Massachusetts, aka Sam Badger, aka Solon Francis Montecello Badger, painted ship portraits. This is the schooner Edward H. Cole:

Our Spring Peepers have been out for a while, but now, on warm days (we haven't had many), the larger frogs come out to play.

I have eaten plenty of frog's legs in my time, mostly in the South, and they aren't bad sauteed with a little butter, wine and garlic... but so is anything.

However, I prefer that my Bullfrogs stay alive, croaking in the swamp. "Jug-a-rum."

These large (3-6") frogs are native to the Eastern US and Canada, and have become pestiferous when they have been transplanted (as in California and Europe). They will eat anything moving that they can fit into their Jaba The Hut-sized mouths, including small snakes and frogs.

I love swamps for their mysterious wildness and their abundance of life. Sippican isn't so sure that he does, but he is an effete, hyper-civilized egg-head sort, isn't he?

Watch James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed" series, at your own pace, at Dr. Merc.

What I find so handy about the series is how Burke puts everything into a context for us. Learning, without the context of the big picture, always felt dull and unanchored to me, and it took me a long time for that big picture to come into focus. Every teacher focused on their little niche, and nobody tied it all together.

Be sure to watch #7, which is a sketch of the history of modern medicine.

As the human race awaits the next inevitable Ice Age which will leave vast areas of the Northern Hemisphere under mile-thick glaciers, humans find it amusing to argue about the weather.

Quote from a piece at Global Warming Politics:

“The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.” [Dr. John Brignell, Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton, on Number Watch (May 1)]

Oh dear! The inevitable is happening. The ‘global warming’ trope is unravelling on a daily basis - scientifically, economically, and politically. The wheels are coming off the hysterical bandwagon, and it is not going to be a salutary sight watching the politicians and the media junkies jumping cart and trying to throw mud in everyone’s eyes.

However, fear-mongers like well-known emitter Al Gore says cyclone a consequence of global warming. WTH? Does he believe that, or does he just have a policy that everything that happens in weather is man's fault? He parodies himself while frightening the ignorant.