Maggie's Farm

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.

You’ll never want to use a reusable water bottle again  (h/t Insty)

 What killed the giant wombats?

 10,000 years ago, North Americans were chowing down on potatoes

Masculine Moments (video) 

The Pope "displayed both the demagogic skills and profound intellectual dishonesty that have become a recurring theme of his papacy."

 De Blasio’s bizarre humbug in Hamburg

 Obama Forgot He is No Longer President, Shows Up at G20 Summit

 America’s Long March toward a Secular Socialist Democracy

 Have You Heard? All Republican Presidents Are Stupid

Why Democrats are still losing the war of ideas 

How and why Maine reduced the minimum wage 

The minimum wage is always zero 

Goodwin:  The 2016 Election and the Demise of Journalistic Standards

 THE NEW YORK TIMES IS IN LEGAL TROUBLE

 Liberals Can't Deal With A President Who Takes America's Side

Dreher:  Yes, They Really Do Despise Their Civilization

 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.

 Trump Launched An Energy Revolution While Everyone Was Obsessing On His Tweets

Leonardo da Vinci applies for a job

 Michelangelo's projects for the fortification of Florence

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 -

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

2:8 The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills.

2:9 My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

2:10 My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away;

2:11 for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

2:12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.

2:13 The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Darn Tough Socks.

I am sure they are excellent rugged socks for hiking and backpacking. Mrs. BD likes them, but I call them Darn Expensive Socks.

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.

Here's Mount Mansfield, from Stowe, in summertime

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)

The sinking of the SS Normandie at Manhattan's Pier 88 in 1942 is a story of one screw-up after another: The Sinking of The S.S. Normandie At NYC’s Pier 88

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.

A Pimm's Cup Cocktail is a good example, a bit unusual in the US, and one you can serve by the pitcher-full.

Some people add gin or vodka to the recipe, to provide a little backbone.

Romans 6:12-23

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."

Astaire made it look easy. It was not.

Awkward-looking craft, but fun to use. As seen from the water last week

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). 

Around 800 languages spoken in Queens, NYC

h/t  Do You Know The Difference Between "Settlers" And "Immigrants"?

Not long ago, that was like saying "Filet mignon" on every supper table.  Connecticut's  Henry Saglio, 'Father' of Poultry Industry.

(h/t reader) 

I first learned about Feynman from his Feynman Lectures on Physics. This was, and maybe still is, scripture for undergrads curious about Physics. What undergrad is not?

Nobel prize and all that, but what Feynman could do best was to communicate, and he could communicate in humorous, self-deprecating, and humble ways. I believe that he truly believed that he wasn't too smart, just curious and persistent.

Here's Feynman's speech titled What Is Science? delivered to the National Science Teachers Association, 1966, in New York City. He talks a lot about how his father inspired his curiosity. Read it. One quote:

I listened to a conversation between two girls, and one was explaining that if you want to make a straight line, you see, you go over a certain number to the right for each row you go up--that is, if you go over each time the same amount when you go up a row, you make a straight line--a deep principle of analytic geometry! It went on. I was rather amazed. I didn't realize the female mind was capable of understanding analytic geometry.

She went on and said, "Suppose you have another line coming in from the other side, and you want to figure out where they are going to intersect. Suppose on one line you go over two to the right for every one you go up, and the other line goes over three to the right for every one that it goes up, and they start twenty steps apart," etc.--I was flabbergasted. She figured out where the intersection was. It turned out that one girl was explaining to the other how to knit argyle socks. I, therefore, did learn a lesson.

For more fun with Feynman, his bestselling book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)