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.
A well-loved, loving, well-trained (but overly-exuberant as a hunter-retriever - could never train that excess out of him as some of my bird-hunting pals know) dog, dead at 13 after enriching our family life in countless ways. From a line of hunting Standard Poodles. Sad for the Bird Dog clan, leaves a hole. Many dogs in my life, and each one was the best pal. I train the heck out of them, and they repay it in all ways. Never needed a leash until he got half-blind and entirely deaf in the past year - responded to me, at least, promptly to voice, whistle, and hand commands until then, even if there was a rabbit to chase.
That is Paco sitting watch over a napping Mrs. BD at the Farm a few years ago after a swim in our trout stream. Kept watch over all of us, I guess. Loved to swim with us at the Farm and on Cape Cod. Like all of us, a Cape Cod-lover who was invigorated by the salty air.
As the West de-industrialized, the enforcement of labor laws have fallen away. Masses of helot labor brought over from Asia into Silicon Valley, for example, worked under agreements they struck with the business owners. Tech companies love open borders as it gives them a loophole to avoid some of the constraints of the Servile State. The same is true at the unskilled end, where companies rely upon masses of labor from Latin America.
This is an untenable situation in its own right, but the coming automation of the American economy will result in an evolution of the Servile State. ..
It's good to be back in the land of Dunkin Donuts. The Scots are tea-drinkers. Well, tea, ale, and whisky drinkers. You can't get a cup of coffee until, at the very earliest, 7:30. Utterly unacceptable. Europeans do not seem to be early-risers.
Many thanks to our occasional (too-occasional) contributor Roger de Hauteville, the one-time Viking King of Sicily, for his unique morning links over recent days. Roger has a gift. Now back to my usual.
Seriously, when I read the transcript of Trump’s speech yesterday, I thought it was pretty ordinary stuff. The American president saying Western civilization is good and worth defending? This is controversial? And as I’ve said a couple of times in this space, it’s eye-rolling to hear Donald Trump talk about the importance of strong families and strong values. Still, if you’re going to go to pieces every time a politician says something hypocritical, you’ll never be able to get out of bed in the morning.
If you take a nice hike from the center of Florence across the Arno and up the hill to San Miniato (an active abbey), you will walk past and even clamber over some of the defensive walls designed by Michelangelo. The monks at San Miniato are friendly fellows, and they can sure chant the vespers.
Pic above is one of our hikes in heavy rain through the higher terrain of Scalpay along the Hebrides Way.
- I'll post a few more photos when I get my over-200 photos organized and edited (mostly taken with Gwynnie's waterproof Olympus pocket camera - man, that was necessary), but a few introductory comments with some photos - below the fold -
It's outdoor grilling season (well, that is all year-long for many of us regardless of snow), but I want to convey our Cordon Bleu-trained chef friend's advice for oven-roasting meats of all kinds: Always 400 degrees.
Even chicken. Ignore the cookbook. Use a meat thermometer if you can't tell doneness by touch.
More meat advice from our expert:
- Remember (everybody knows this anyway) that meat continues to cook for at least 10 minutes after removing from the heat. That fact has ruined many a rare steak or butterflied leg of lamb.
- Rib-eye is best pan-cooked, no matter how thick. Otherwise many or most meats can be pan-seared and roasted. She says grills are best for burgers and hot dogs, but I disagree. I love a grilled butterflied leg 'a lamb. Possibly my favorite meat. Rare, please.
I have skied Mount Mansfield countless times (at the Stowe ski area) but I have never hiked it. Hiking to the top in summertime would be quite the challenge for me but I'd love to give it a shot. Or maybe not. Mansfield is the tallest peak in Vermont. New Hampshire has higher peaks.
In winter, you can get up there on skis, cruise along the ridge, and go down Madonna Mountain into the Smuggler's Notch ski area.That's really a better ski area - fewer people.
Ace posted this painting of a guy taking a leak picnic party atop Mt. Mansfield, by Jerome Thompson (1858). I wonder how they got up there with their dresses and picnic baskets but in that era nature hiking was all the rage for the gentry.
Beacon Hill is a charming 19th neighborhood in Boston, close by the Massachusetts State House. It can't really be compared with the West Village of New York because the current charming West Village was built for the poor and working class, while the Beacon Hill development was built for the gentry.
Mrs. BD and friends were visiting colleagues on Beacon Hill a little while ago. She wondered where the beacon was. I checked it, and discovered that most of the hill and its warning beacon were taken away by horse and wagon in 1811.
It is still hilly, though.
Some major urban areas still have delightful, quiet, antique neighborly enclaves, untouched by modernity or urban renewal. I'm thinking Brooklyn Heights - and large parts of Harlem. Outside the northeast, I think of the entire downtown of Savannah, GA, which was spared the devastation of the Union armies and of urban renewal.
Ocean liners, aka Cruise Ships, still dock on Manhattan's remaining Hudson River piers. The Normandie was one of the great liners but not the last one as the article wrongly suggests (eg The France, QE ll, the Nieu Amsterdam, the Queen Mary, the United States, etc)
6:12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.
6:13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
6:15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
6:16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
6:17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted,
6:18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
6:19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
6:20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
6:21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.
6:22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.
6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew 10:40-42 10:40 "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
10:41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;
10:42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple -- truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward."
Besides opera tix, the other Christmas present I received (besides stinky cheeses) was an island-hopping rugged hiking trip in the Outer Hebrides. Well, Mrs. BD likes remote rugged places as readers know - as long as there are cozy B&Bs at night.
I checked the weather for our trip: 40s (F) at night, high 50s (F) daytime. Some precipitation 21 out of 30 days/month in summer (more in winter). North Atlantic weather. I've done a few ship crossings in the north Atlantic and know what it's like: cool mist and drizzle, no need for sunscreen.
Gwynnie lent me his waterproof Olympus.
My Mom and Dad were partial to trips to northern climes. Dad wrote the poem below to document the habit (with a photo of the poet at the farm).
33 depressing photos that
Darn Tough Socks.
Beacon Hill i
For summer get-togethers or any other festive occasion, along with beer and wine it's fun to have a cocktail theme, like one kind of pitcher cocktail.
American Houses: A Field Guide to the Architecture of the Home 