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.
With an Irish father-in-law, the boiled dinner is de rigeur around here on, or close to, St. Paddy's Day. I'll make up a big pot this weekend even though he is still in lovely San Diego, slowly on the mend and eager to get home.
I happen to be one of those people who love that New England Boiled Dinner, aka Irish Boiled Dinner, aka (per reader) "a greasy, one-pot slopfest."
The real traditional Irish St. Paddy's dinner is Bacon and Cabbage. Why is the New England dinner associated with the Irish? Read all about it here.
Cook the heck out of the meat, for hours, until it almost falls apart. Lots of whole peppercorns, Allspice, cloves, bay leaf, and garlic in the pot.
The carrots are optional, in my view - and the cabbage is the best part. For a large volume of food with generous leftovers for all, I am using 2 packaged corned beefs, 6 turnips, a small bag of carrots, a couple of giant onions, a small bag of parsnips (yum), a bag of potatoes, 2 or 3 large cabbages. That's all that will fit into our largest stewpot.
We're gonna need a bigger stewpot.
A large pot of hot mustard on one side, and a pot of beer on the other side. Great peasant eats, and the spices perfume the entire cabin.
Update: Had to do it in multiple batches but reusing the water from cooking the meat.
What scares the new atheists - The vocal fervour of today’s missionary atheism conceals a panic that religion is not only refusing to decline – but in fact flourishing
Usually we begin to see the first flocks of northward-headed blackbirds in New England around Feb 15, but in recent years their arrivals are later and later. This year, the first wave arrived here yesterday.
"Blackbird" isn't a species - it's a category. Around here, it is mainly Red Wing Blackbirds and Common Grackle, who have spent their winter in the southern US and are headed for the marshy breeding grounds in the northern US and Canada. Very early migrators, they don't seem to mind nasty weather as long as it does not persist. (In the midwest and west, there are other species of Blackbirds.)
Photo below of male Red Wings. The females are an inconspicuous brown. In spring, the males get up on a branch, flash their red epaulets, and crow, in their territorial ritual, while the drab females skulk around and build nests in the rushes.
The Millennial’s Guide To Reaching Adulthood - Here are seven ways millennials can reach adult milestones such as paying off student loans, getting married, buying a house, and starting a family.
The Greatest (Party) Generation - Raising children wasn’t always an all-consuming job. Humorist Dave Barry on his parents’ wild parties and the grown-up escapades of the ‘Mad Men’ era
Professor Judith Hall, of Northeastern University in Boston, said: ‘Benevolent sexism is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing that perpetuates support for gender inequality among women.'
I hold doors for both ladies and gentlemen. Some women can never be happy
It was what kept coming to mind as she stood before the cameras once again, under fire once again, aggrieved once again by Americans’ refusal to see and simply trust how well intentioned and virtuous and good for the country she is:
A New Life for Dead Malls - Developers have had to to get creative when it comes to salvaging America's failing shopping centers, turning them into hospitals, churches, and even parks.
Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches I'll recruit my army from the orphanages I been to St. Herman's church, said my religious vows, I've sucked the milk out of a thousand cows
I've got the pork chops, she's got the pie She ain't no angel and neither am I Shame on your greed, shame on your wicked schemes I'll say this, I don't give a damn about your dreams.
A Wellfleet beach this week. Proof of global warming, I'd say. The warming makes it colder. I understand that part, but it's a little too nuanced for most people.
When I grew up, I thought the Democratic Party was the great friend of minorities and women. The party wanted a world of equality, I thought. Most people I knew believed that too. Sorry, I was an idiot.
Thomas may have played the part of the doomed poet, excused by his genius from following the conventions of decent behavior. But he was a genius: few are the twentieth-century English poets who wrote lines that not only were memorable but that also make the soul vibrate. Thomas was one of them.
Thomas was aware from an early age of his own genius. In his book of marvelously evocative stories about his childhood and adolescence, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, published in 1940, when he was 26, Thomas recalls reciting a poem he had written 12 years earlier, in which the lines appear:
The frost has known, From scattered conclave by the few winds blown, That the lone genius in my roots, Bare down there in a jungle of fruits, Has planted a green year, for praise, in the heart of my upgrowing days.
"The picture of science and religion at each other’s throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths."
1:18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
1:19 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."
1:20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.
1:22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom,
1:23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
1:24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1:25 For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength.
Missing 
Department of Corrections: Those Carville boxed quotes which we linked to yesterday were not real - but they are truthy
A book by a fellow blogger, Robert Stacy McCain: 
Top 10 secrets of Grand Central Terminal 
Pic from a reader in Yankeeland this week