Maggie's Farm

Ferguson's excellent essay at Weekly Standard, titled Nudge Nudge, Wink Wink: Behavioral economics—the governing theory of Obama’s nanny state, quotes the Prez: 

“Far more is now known about regulation—not only about when it is justified, but also about what works and what does not. .??.??. In this time of fundamental transformation, that process—and the principles governing regulation in general?—should be revisited.” 

Gee whiz, it sounds very "scientific." My response to the notion that my supposed betters need to regulate and nudge me and my life is not printable on a family website such as Maggie's. I do not care whether it "works" or not. Mussolini made the trains run on time, too.

I believe that our Maggie's team and our readers know far more about life than Barack Obama or Cass Sunstein will ever know.

A re-post from June, 2008. Was it that long ago? Seems like yesterday...It was a fine trip.

We took a day, last week, to hop the train over to Lake Como (and to stop by the Como Duomo), and took the fast ferry up to Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo - and then across the lake to Bellagio to see the equally renowned gardens of Villa Melzi.

The 17th-18th century Villa Carlotta and its gardens were a traditional and necessary stop on the "Grand Tour" of "the Continent." We anglophiles like to follow in those old paths.

It is impossible to capture on camera the feel of such vast and varied gardens, which are, in effect, both botanical gardens with worldwide collections of plants, and ornamental gardens designed to impress as much as to delight - some formal Italian and some English-style.

For example, these gardens have bamboo groves, Sequoia groves, acre-sized plantings of azalea, palm collections, collections of cacti, citrus arbors, etc. Even a turtle pool with happy and smiling American southern Red-eared Sliders and Cooters.

This photo is the entrance:

More of my mediocre photos on continuation page below -

Jars of Clay are wonderful, but I'd like to hear Dylan do this one with Paul Simon:

Video of Market St., San Francisco, 4 days before the quake. The camera is mounted on the front of a streetcar.  I cannot embed it...but maybe Dr. Merc, our Embedder In Chief, can figger out how to. 

The population of SF was 400,000. Some traffic, eh? No lights, no crosswalks, no rules. Everybody dodging cars, horses, and streetcars. Total chaos, and wonderful. I love the two guys running to jump-start the car in front of the streetcar.

Also, dig the serene dude on horseback weaving through the people and the traffic. Reminded me of the absurd end of the already-insane Blazing Saddles.

My Wife

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.

Honour, anger, valour, fire,
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty Master
Gave to her.

Teacher, tender comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free,
The august Father gave to me.

I had something else in the pipeline for today, but I could not resist this offering from Stevenson from our reader MM.

From Spruill on student loans and government obesity:

(A) point I made during the student-loan debate is that it has demonstrated the process by which a basically conservative citizenry can be made to accept a much larger federal government. Step one, subsidize an activity through the private sector, gradually getting the public to think of the subsidy as an entitlement. Step two, get the government more involved through the direct provision of the activity. Step three, denounce the old subsidy as corporate welfare en route to arguing that the government should be the sole provider.

If anyone counters that the government should stop subsidizing the activity, call him a radical (and possibly racist) throwback. If anyone tries to defend the status quo, call him a corporate shill.

Related, see How 100 million lose insurance under Obamacare. Many will no doubt be eager for a government plan...if that's all there is.

I guess that even I, who does tend to be a skeptic about everything, have been a bit influenced by the RC-hating MSM, because I have to admit that this somewhat surprises me.

Got plenty of thoughts about it, but no time now.

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall.  Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day.  Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down.  And this is all life really means.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I mentioned Elco yachts in my post yesterday. Here's a 1937 53' Elco, now for sale here.

As I always ask about boats made of wood (and about fancy women), "Even if you can afford to get her, can you afford to keep her?"

My Mom recently mailed me a stack of letters, postcards, etc that my Grandpa had mailed to his kid sister from a June-August 1940 trip he had taken his two kids on - my Mom and my late uncle. (My Grandpa's lovely wife died after giving birth to my Mom, and he never remarried. Not sure he ever got over that loss.) A single parent.

He wrote about three letters or postcards per week to his dear Sis in Bridgeport, CT. It's a delight to read these travelogues. Seems like the fellow (who was a good pal to me when I was young), a great yachtsman (also a fine horseman, polo player, and shooter), spent much of his time on the bridge with the officers during the cruise part of their trip. He reported all the warships he admired en route - Sis' husband was a naval officer in the Pacific at the time. Probably spent the rest of the time in the bar playing poker, which he reported was pleasantly air-conditioned.

He also reported that my Mom, as usual, won the shipboard trap shooting contests (she has always been good with a horse and a shotgun, but now all she does is tennis and gardening). At the time, my Mom was in high school on the riding team and my Uncle at Dartmouth on the drinking team.

Their cruise took them from NYC to San Francisco via Baltimore, Havana, Cristobal, Balboa, Acapulco, Los Angeles on the Panama Pacific Line's City of San Francisco. From his letters, they also stopped in Colon and Panama City.

As I do, my Grandpa loved the shipboard life, especially the coasting up from Panama to California. Then they spent a few days at the Hotel Empire in SF, then variously trained and drove to the Yosemite Lodge, the Grand Canyon, spent a couple of weeks at the still-wonderful old Eaton's Ranch in WY, thence to the New Lawrence Hotel in Chicago and then train back to NYC.

Nice summer trip.

Christmas, mid-1950s, in Grandpa's parlor I think. My cuz added some color to the B&W. My Grandpa with pipe in hand on left next to Sis, and other relatives:

A bit more about this one of my two fine Grandpas on continuation page below. One day soon, we will do a post inviting readers' Grandpa reminiscences. Not today.

Don't Buy It. Damn good advice these days. "It's not real, and it's not perfect." 

Sipp has got himself a bright little rug rat there to support him in his old age. Or two. I like totally agree with that little chipmunk...except when something really sings to me. Like a new shotgun...or an S&W .357 Airweight...or a trip to Budapest.

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. 

Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, c.1420

You cannot not love June Carter who, I am sure almost all of our readers know, was Mrs. Cash.

God's Gonna Cut You Down (h/t, Englishman)

Up here in Yankeeland, many people read Town & Country to keep up with what's going on socio-culturally.

Garden & Gun may become the Southern version of T&C, but we enjoy it very much also.

Our friend Anchoress emailed me this piece from a Lutheran, The dictatorship of relativism strikes back—and goes nuclear. It begins:

The secular press has had it in for Joseph Ratzinger for going on three decades. Before his election as Pope in the spring of 2005, he was routinely derided in his homeland as the Panzerkardinal (“tank cardinal”) and caricatured in North America as the “Enforcer” or even the “Rottweiler.” The roots of this negative reputation stretch back at least as far as the book-length interview he granted to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that catapulted him to global fame when published as The Ratzinger Report in 1985. Prior to that juncture, as a heavyweight German academic who had leapfrogged over a major episcopal see (Munich-Freising) to become a leading official in the Roman curia (as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under the still new John Paul II, Ratzinger’s was hardly a household name.

Found these at the Bass Pro Shop in Nashville a couple of years ago. In my case, their message happens to be true. Yes, there are still some Farmalls in New England, and my Grandpa's is still running fine even though he stopped running long ago.

The ones with the close-together front tires creep me out on Massachusetts hills, though. I prefer a "wide stance" on the hills.

California Voters Support ObamaCare. They eat Unicorn meat out there (image via Surber).

An atheist: Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity

Outsourcing grading

Dr. Helen: Is Control over Porn Really about Control over Men’s Sexuality?

From Back to the 1970s: Let’s Get Small!

Whatever the new problem—resource depletion, air pollution, acid rain, the ozone hole, or global warming—we always end up back at the same old “solutions”: stop population growth, stop economic growth, stop consuming things, redistribute wealth, go back to small village living, and we’ll all sing Kumbaya. No matter how many times green gloom is discredited (i.e., the Simon-Ehrlich wager), lapsing into the old eco-fundamentalism is just too irresistible.

Can Christie save New Jersey?

Wilkinson: Glen Whitman and the Rise of the New Paternalism

Insurers not demons, just messengers

Containing Mexico

Switzerland as an example for the world

From Mead's Liberal Internationalism: The Twilight of a Dream:

These days, liberal internationalism is a solution in search of a problem: it is an idea whose time has passed.  Liberal Wilsonians must take a long hard look at a world that is not moving toward global governance in any serious way and think about how the values at the heart of the Wilsonian vision can be advanced in a new century.

AVI: America is a Pacifist nation

Is the O eloquent no more? Related: What do some Democrats say in private to each other?

Powerline: Why can't they just forgive and forget?

Rahe: Global warming, RIP

Guy at the NYT thinks he understands me:

Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.

Hence their anger and frustration...

Plain cruel: The O's sissy pitch

Classical liberals should support open borders. It is a debate.

The Man Comes Around, h/t Protein

Juan Williams gets quite a few facts wrong but he is beginning to get it.

AP’s Fournier: Relax, it’s just a Tea Party

Whoa… 4 in 10 Tea Party Protesters Are Democrats or Independent

Rep. Cleaver backs away from spitting claim

Neoneo: It is difficult to demonize tea partiers.

Indeed it is, neo. My pup's scarey violent Tea Partay (with potentially lethal croquet) a couple of years ago: