Maggie's Farm

Paul Mirengoff poses this one:

I have suggested, in connection with President Obama's dealings with Russia, that to call him a fool is to give him the benefit of the doubt. For Obama's hat-in-hand approach to Russia assumes that the thuggish, autocratic, expansionist Russian regime is more sinned against than sinning in its relations with the U.S. If Obama believes this, he is anti-American; If he doesn't believe this but elects to act as if it were so, then he is a fool.

Several views of the Bob Dylan Christmas album at Walking. I think Bob just does what he feels like doing, with a healthily quirky, inner-directed take it or leave it attitude. But I might be wrong.

Toon via S,C&A:

Our friend Right Wing Prof is now blogging about his cancer diagnosis - and even about where he might want to be buried - at his other site: Central Pennsylvania Orthodox.

God bless him for doing that.

Yesterday:

Roxbury (pop. 2300) in southern Litchfield County is one of the most pleasant exurban towns (among many) in CT. It's far enough north to be beyond NYC commuting distance, but it's a good distance for a weekend home - and every wealthy American urban Lefty deserves his dacha.

Roxbury has plenty of old farmhouses, barns, and well-maintained horsey estates with white-painted fences, but even it has been contaminated by some grandiose new construction over the past 20 years. Marilyn Monroe lived there during her hook-up with Arthur Miller. He may have suited her for a little while, but I doubt that Roxbury, or the Roxbury Congregational Church, were her cup of tea. Not that she ever knew what she needed...

The 1850 farmhouse pictured above on 4.5 acres is asking 1.9 million. (I would be inclined to get rid of that big old Norway Spruce on the front corner. People always planted those gloomy trees too close to their houses.) 

More Roxbury listings here.

Revelation 21:1-6a

21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

21:2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;

21:4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

21:5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."

21:6a Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. Dylan's great song performed by Jerry Garcia, 1985:

Dede Scozzafava releases her voters! She is essentially dropping out.

This should give Hoffman an edge since she is, nominally, a Repub and (was) the pick of the County Repub Chair.

Our blog pal Right Wing Prof just got bad medical news. I don't even know his real name, but God does.

He emailed me the serious details, but I won't post them. Please include him in a prayer today.

Send him a few bucks today, if you like him. Every little bit helps, and it looks to be tight. Plus the race has become nationalized: The O did a fund-raiser in NYC for the Dem in the race, and the RNC finally took down their ads against Hoffman.

We would like to see this modest, non-pol, Reagan-Conservative Republican guy elected.

From Sexy Witch:

The Englishman has, as have many of our friends.

Tell us what hunting you have done this fall (not including pen-raised birds or half-trained farm Mallards - that isn't hunting - that is shooting. Not that there is anything wrong with it.)

Halloween witch above courtesy of Theo

High-end home stagers.

The sad strange life of Bobby Fischer

"Sustainability" Wars on campus.

A new housing bubble? Your government is working on it.

The guy who filmed the world's last hunter-gatherers

Story begins like this:

Last week it was announced that George Soros (the man who helped bring us Obama) had pledged $1.1 billion to fund “Climate Change initiatives”.

“Soros will establish the Climate Policy Initiative, an organization that will work with the US, China, India, Brazil and Europe and ensure that public interests are represented as new issues that affect climate change are established. According to Thomas Holler, who will lead the initiative, “It will be part advisory service, part policy developer and part watchdog.”

What a coincidence !!

That will tie in nicely with this: Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty, Claims British Lord (see video and red text below) – in December President Obama will fly off to Copenhagen again, this time to put his signature onto a document which effectively establishes a New World Government, based on “Climate Change” – formerly known as “global warming”.

Imus was never too impressed, but now he is getting a bit rough on Obama:

Because the President is a whiny little titty baby and a girly man and doesn't have enough guts to figure out what to do in Afghanistan, he's going to take on, what — Fox News and get his ass kicked there?

It's fun to check in with HawkCount and to explore their site to see what people are seeing during our wonderful raptor migration season.

Image is one of my favorites: The rugged, late-migrating Rough-Legged Hawk.

Where are you tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) 1978. The remarkable lyrics are on the video.

h/t, Ace.

The road out to our village in the Berkshires. It is indeed over the river and through the woods. Woods, fields, and swamps:

View from the upper barn. Trout stream down there in the valley. Those are our woods up on the hills too - insofar as anybody can "own" woods. The hawks, owls, deer and and bears own them, really. Well, God owns them, but I can harvest firewood there. You can see the White Pine infestation in the upper meadow. We have been at 'em, but it's a lot of work to cut them down. It's a shame that you cannot really burn White Pine in the fireplace. Too much resin, burns too hot.

We owe it to King Camp Gillette for making it easy to be a well-groomed gentleman without cutting your head off, or having to visit the barber.

He was a clever tinkerer and, apparently, an equally good marketer of his "safety razor."

Since his invention, razors have seen many modifications to Gillette's basic idea - not to mention electric razors (do any guys use those anymore?).

When the Gillette products got too expensive for my taste, and I couldn't keep track of each new type of razor and the costly blades that went with them, I opted for buying cheap disposable razors in bulk. The one pictured is $10.49 for 100.

Depending on your testosterone level, one is good for a week - at least. Longer if you can put up with minor discomfort.

Added benefit: No problem if a daughter borrows your razor. Who cares?

Here's a good bio of Thurber from an opthalmologist who was interested in Thurber - and his vision problems. (Thurber's brother shot him in the eye with an arrow when they were playing William Tell games.)

Dorothy Parker or some equivalent wit commented that Thurber's drawings looked like unbaked cookie dough.

Hoping I can get some functional links to some more Thurber toons. Everybody's seen this one:

1969:

Here's one of my favorites:

I know that leaf photos are corny as heck. So what? My Red Japanese Maple is colorful. I would never have planted one of these flamboyant things, but somebody else planted it there about 30 years ago, and I am not going to cut it down.

The other night I became distracted by reading the series on radio soap operas which James Thurber wrote for The New Yorker in 1948. "Soapland" is in Thurber's The Beast in Me and Other Animals.

I envy Thurber's clarity, simplicity, and directness of writing, whether he is doing humor or regular reporting. Liked him better than EB White, with whom Thurber collaborated in writing the spoof on self-help books, Is Sex Necessary?, in 1929.

If you have never read Thurber, you are missing a real delight. Start with The Thurber Carnival. I could not find any of his toons on line, but I didn't spend much time searching.

Here's a good summary of the history of the radio soaps. Thurber's piece on the topic is a masterpiece of straightforward New Yorker-style reportage; the kind that can make any random topic fascinating because it is so well-written.

The Dems are the fast road to Socialism and the Republicans are the slow road to Socialism.

Many people say this, but heard most recently from my son and one of my daughters (the Ron Paul one at Kenyon - not the McCain one in NYC). We observed during our drives yesterday, with irony, that the only reason China has been able to slowly, step-wise get rid of Socialism is by having an authoritarian, police-state government. Places like France, England, and Germany will never be able to do that, with so many people sucking on the government teats. They are screwed economically, spiritually, and humanly. Their people with verve and ambition still come to America...for now.

Check out the stuff we posted over the weekend. Some fun stuff, I think.

Did a bit of driving around this weekend. Took some lousy photos. We did drive past a doctor's office in Norfolk, CT: Dr. Ralph Emerson. We all agreed we'd be glad to go to him. (In some areas the leaves were wonderful, and in some spots not so good, but we were not looking for leaves.) This is Canaan, CT:

 The Housatonic Valley, Route 7 in Western MA:

 More random road photos below the fold:

The pup who works in NYC is studying for her GMAT. It sounds like a rightly demanding and discriminating exam.

She says the grammar correction sections are extremely subtle aspects of complex sentences, and that the two-part interactive math problems only give you two minutes each if you want to finish them. If you get one right, the computer gives you a more challenging one. It ramps up fast, she says, to try to find your limits. That's a great idea, like an automated oral exam where they can push each line of questioning until you are totally stumped and crushed with humility. The two-part math questions involve something like Which of the following additional pieces of information do you need to solve this problem? A,B, Both, Neither.

Brain swirls. These sorts of logical challenges quickly separate the men from the boys.

There are two essays also. Sounds like good fun to me, but I like exams. No. I love exams, whether offered by schools, institutions or, most importantly, by real life every darn day.

The pup does too: she is busy re-memorizing her exponent and square root tables to save time on the exam. She has great fun doing it, and says "It will never hurt you in life to have 9 to the 5th on the tip of your tongue." She began with 1-12 to the third and is working her way up.

No calculators allowed for this exam. Good on them for that.

Lena Horne, 1969. Damn, this is good:

I am in the middle of Conroy's new book, South of Broad, which is set in Charleston.

Being a Yankee, I had no idea what Benne Wafers were. Here's the recipe.

It's nice to know that there are still places in America where ladies routinely have teatime with homemade tea cookies. It is civilized and civilizing, like so many old Southern habits.

Regarding other low-country foods, She-Crab Soup is fine and dandy, but this summer I discovered how much I enjoy Shrimp 'n Grits (and I don't even love shrimp. I like it with the smaller shrimp).

This is my idea of a fine dressing for Mr. Turkey: Foie gras, apple and chestnut.

I have baked some quail with foie gras stuffing (damn good), but never turkey. Time to do it.

I may do a side of oyster stuffing and a side of the foie gras stuffing, but fill the bird itself with the expected chestnut, sausage and cornbread stuffing. Or maybe not.

Anyhow, I have to cook two, so I'll do one on the grill, unstuffed of course.

As a counterpoint to yesterday's Country-Pop You Belong With Me, here's Dylan's wonderful version of You Belong To Me, with some repetitive video of Bob with Sarah, his first wife, in what appears to be their bedroom in NYC - it doesn't look like their Woodstock, NY house.

Seeing all the Amish in Ohio last week got me to thinking about Rumspringa.

It seems to me that this is nothing unique about the Amish. A fair number of adolescent kids in any culture spend some time taking a vacation from their parents' values and way of life. Fortunately, most return to sanity sooner or later if they don't lose themselves or destroy themselves in the process.

Our occasional contributor Kondratiev posted this recipe as a comment the other day:

Cooked this one last night using venison backstrap (loin):

Seared Venison Steaks with Baked Pear and Red Wine
Serves: 6

Ingredients
3 bosc pears (1/2 each)
1 small cinnamon stick, broken
5 black peppercorns
½ bottle red wine
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 trimmed 6 oz. venison steaks
Salt and ground black pepper
1 shallot, finely diced
1 tablespoon red currant jelly
2 oz. butter, plus extra for greasing

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter an ovenproof dish. Peel, core and halve the pears. Arrange snugly in the dish, hollow side up. Tuck in the cinnamon and peppercorns, then pour in half the wine. Sprinkle with sugar and dot with butter. Crumple up and wet a sheet of greaseproof paper, then lay it over the dish before covering with foil. Seal tightly and bake for 1 1/2 hours, or until the pears are tender. Turn the pears after the first hour. Keep warm. You will need their liquid for the sauce.

2. Pour the oil into a non-stick frying pan and set over a high heat. Season the steaks and fry for 2-3 minutes on each side for medium-rare. Remove the steaks and keep warm. Reduce the heat and gently fry the shallot before adding all the wine, including that with the pears. Boil vigorously, scraping the pan as you do so, until it has reduced by half. Microwave the jelly and, once it has melted, then stir it in, remove the pan from the heat and quickly whisk in the 2 oz. butter. Strain into a warm sauceboat and serve immediately with venison and warm pears.

Just found out Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour has finished its 100-piece series.

It can be found on line, though, and in reruns on Sirius. It's enjoyable, with a great selection of old tunes.

In Memoriam A.H.H.

(It's a lengthy piece, with many oft-quoted lines, which Tennyson wrote over 17 years. The remarkable work begins like this - the whole poem is here)

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
    Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
    By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
    Thou madest Life in man and brute;
    Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
    Thou madest man, he knows not why,
    He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.

Thou seemest human and divine,
    The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
    Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;
    They have their day and cease to be:
    They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.

We have but faith: we cannot know;
    For knowledge is of things we see;
    And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
    But more of reverence in us dwell;
    That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,

But vaster. We are fools and slight;
    We mock thee when we do not fear:
    But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.

Forgive what seem’d my sin in me;
    What seem’d my worth since I began;
    For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
    Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
    I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
    Confusions of a wasted youth;
    Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.

Viking wonders whether country music is the new rock and roll. I stole this Youtube from him because it's touching as hell. Taylor Swift:

Update on the invasion of the Asian Longhorned Beetle. Please do not term me racist or anti-immigrant for posting this.

Phoenicians in New Hampshire? No doubt. I think I saw one there this summer, rowing a galley full of purple elephants across Squam Lake.

The retired (I think) pastor Dr. Andrew Jackson has announced his Experience Turkey travel biz. Readers know how much I love that country. His email announcement says, in part,

As many of you know God has given me a deep love for the biblical land of Turkey. Once the home of Abraham, Noah, and the Apostles Paul, John, Peter and many more.

After traveling and ministering in Turkey and leading tours for almost 20 years now - as well as writing two books on prayer journey itineraries through Turkey - I have decided it is time for me to go public as a Turkey tour/trip consultant.

I already assist many people (Christian and non-Christian) around the world with their tours/trips to Turkey, so I thought I would make it official, and offer my expertise and first-hand experience.

You can find the details of my Turkey tour consulting group at my new website www.ExperienceTurkeyTours.com. 

In Health Care, Nobody Knows Anything. Two new industry studies reignite the debate about what makes health care so expensive.

However, Betsy is spot-on:

The Pelosi Democrats aren't going to give up on trying to leverage in some sort of public option. Their logic is that once they get a program in place, they can start piling on additional mandates and increase the size of the program just as has been done with other government health programs over the years. That is why they're so adamant to get a public option approved. They figure they can hammer out the expansion later. And the result will be to drive private insurers out of the market and throw more and more people into a government-provided insurance plan. That's why they're so excited about describing their plan as "Medicare for Everyone." They just are ignoring the fact that the reimbursement schedule for Medicare won't cover all a doctor or hospital's costs. Someone has to pay the difference. And if we start forcing people out of the private market into the government program, there won't be anyone left to pay the difference. And so the only solution will be to provide less health care. The trajectory of improvements in health care that we've seen in our lifetimes will start flattening out and maybe even trending down. That's the real curve that the Democrats are bending - not the cost curve.

The dirty-minded MSM: Powerline

The O holding up Aghan decision until after the Nov elections. Probably until after health care votes too. What a jerk to operate that way. It's not manly.

It's about jobs. Yes it is, partly. But there are only 2 things government can do to help business growth: easy money and cutting taxes. As the guys says:

The One is far too busy trying to ruin healthcare and jack everyone’s electricy and heating bills to the moon to worry about job creation. 

Why the Pay Czar is way off base.

Ditto, Ramesh: I'm against hate crimes; and against hate-crimes laws, too.

$15 million/year dingbat lectures Wall St on salaries

Where did all the Obama Youth go? Yes, probably looking for jobs.

To get a taste of central Ohio, we stayed at the very pleasant Honey Run Inn outside Millersburg in Holmes County, the heart of Ohio Amish country where every other name seems to be Yoder. Excellent dinner menu there, but pricey. 

If you don't get lost, it's only a 45-minute beautiful country drive down to Gambier in Knox Co. Gotta watch out for your turns, though, on those nice two-lane county roads or you can end up far from your destination with no gas station anywhere.

When I visit a new area, I like to get a close-up feel for the woodlands and their outdoors, so I took a couple of early morning hikes up there in Holmes Co. I'd say the bird life and the tree life are similar that of southern New England, and the woodlands are similar hardwood forest - except that the density of nut and mast trees is remarkable: Walnut, Beech, various oaks, Hickory, Shagbark Hickory, Butternut, Ash. When you walk through the woods in late Oct. as I did, you hear the startling thunk of walnuts falling constantly. Also different - I saw no pines and no birch. Plenty of majestic Tulip Trees as one sees in southern New England, and Maples all over.

You cannot have familiarity with a woodland without knowing each tree, and I try to do so. Was mann weiss, mann sieht.

4000 years ago much of Ohio was short-grass prairie and full of Bison. A cooler, wetter climate since then has made possible the hillside woodlands of today (everything flat seems to be farmed) - plus there are no more Indians to burn the prairies to suppress woodland growth.

From the size of the trees, this patch of hilly woodland below was pasture 40 or 50 years ago. Why I did not see or hear lots of Wild Turkeys I do not know, but these woods definitely hold plenty of deer.

 A few more snaps from my hikes in the morning drizzle below the fold -

It's not too late. Or you can do it again. It's even worth it if your Congresscritter or  Senator is a far Lefty: it's important for these people to know what you think.

So take a minute today to email your Congressman and Senators to let them know your views of the Dem healthcare plan.

Their email and fax addresses are here. It helps to be calm, polite, reasonable, direct - and brief. A fax is probably better than an email.

If you oppose further government involvement in our medical care, you can also sign the Free Our Health Care Now petition. Over 1 million have signed it, I am told.

For me, it's an issue of how much I want my life controlled by Federal bureaucrats and politicians. I am with Jefferson: the less, the better. Let's take care of the poor, the unfortunate, and the feckless, and let the others make their free way in life as Americans are born and raised to do.

Keep the government's hands off my body!

All artists steal and borrow. Computer program proves Shakespeare didn't work alone, researchers claim.

"Proves"?