Maggie's Farm

Giotto's Wedding Feast at Cana, a 1304 fresco in Padua.

John 2:1-11

2:1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

2:2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

2:3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."

2:4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."

2:5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."

2:6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.

2:7 Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim.

2:8 He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it.

2:9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom

2:10 and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now."

2:11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Something America needs more of: good shoeshine stands. This one is in Grand Central Station, NY - a train station which hosts several shoeshine stands of various styles. Those guys do a better job than you could ever do yourself, and a good, solid, comfortable pair of shoes is like a good old friend. Gotta care for them.

I am told that high quality leather shoes, well-cared for and never worn two days in a row (the 2 lbs. of foot sweat per day is a problem for leather's endurance), should last 40 years or more. I own about three pairs of 20+ year-old dress shoes which are just entering their prime years.

Scott Brown for Senator! Wasn't the O in CT a month ago to raise money for Dodd? Worked out well. Obama to Massachusetts to deliver the coup the grace?

Related: Martha Coakley says Devout Catholics 'Probably shouldn't work in the emergency room'. What a moron. How about Moslems?

Eureka! I am a Conservative (and I never realized it). Don't feel badly - it happened to many of us over the years.

Climate change! More China provinces plan power rationing -report

Heather: Chicago’s Real Crime Story - Why decades of community organizing haven’t stemmed the city’s youth violence

Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

It takes a minimum of three legs to build a stool, and a minimum of three logs to build a good fire.

A BD daughter recently learned this basic Boy Scout fact after failing to start holiday fires. It requires a tent of wood to hold in enough heat to produce and ignite the heated gasses which create the rapid oxidation we call a flame. The flame is the burning gasses. The complex and mysterious chemistry of ignition is the key to flame.

The gasses, of course, are hydrocarbons. Wood is nothing but unripened oil or pre-coal. I explained to her (she does not seem to have a chemistry brain yet) that slow oxidation is called "rotting,"  slightly quicker oxygenation is called "smoldering," quick oxidation is called "fire," and extremely quick oxidation is called "explosion."  

Medium controlled oxidation is called "life," and why we exhale CO2 (hydrocarbons + oxygen = mostly CO2 + H20 + heat/energy), and why we are above room temperature most of the time. It's an exothermic chemical reaction. We animals are masterfully designed to control and harness these chemistries in our bodies.

The people of Haiti are difficult to help now, but they have always been difficult to help.

If you want to do something now, we recommend World Vision.

Part of an extraordinary long quote from A Woman in Berlin in a piece at Never Yet Melted:

...I long ago lost my childhood piety, so that God and the Beyond have become mere symbols and abstractions. Should I believe in progress? Yes, to biggger and better bombs. The happiness of the greater number? Yes, for Petka and his ilk. An idyll in a quiet corner? Sure, for people who comb the fringes of their rugs. Possessions, contentment?

I have to keep from laughing, homeless urban nomad that I am. Love? Lies trampled on the ground. And were it ever to rise again I would always be anxious, could never find true refuge, would never again dare hope for permanence.

Perhaps art, toiling away in the service of form? Yes, for those who have the calling, but I don’t. I’m just an ordinary laborer, I have to be satisfied with that. All I can do is touch my small circle and be a good friend. What’s left is just to wait for the end. Still the dark and amazing adventure of life is beckoning. I’ll stick around, out of curiosity and because I enjoy breathing and stretching my healthy limbs.

Ain't Talkin', from Modern Times. The dark, depressive lyrics here.

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.

Anon, via Theo

Park Avenue, Midtown, tonight. Plenty of lights on in those bankers' offices.

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

Anon, from Theo's old farmer quotes. Ain't that the truth.

Like that word. Re the Met, at Classical:

I suppose if Christians want parity in respect, we should be recruiting our own brigades of ax-swingers and splodeydopes, but I did a little reading and apparently our founder's view on disrespecting our creed was some p***y-a** nonsense about "turning the other cheek" (like that's going to strike fear into the hearts of infidels). And as far as I can tell, none of our sects have any proviso for a bevy of pliant virgins on higher planes in the event of pious detonation. So Jihad For Jesus is going to be an uphill climb, to say the least. Meanwhile, I guess we'll have to settle for the smug moral superiority of suffering figurative slings and arrows in both cheeks.

Thompson's Remants of an Army. Story of the 1842 Afghanistan battle here.

Is the MSM beginning to get it? From Jack Cafferty via Watts:

As the debate continues about global warming, the month of December was the 14th coldest in 115 years in the United States… and some scientists insist the earth is entering a cooling trend.

• Wind chills brought temperatures in the Dakotas to 50 degrees below zero, while record cold in parts of Florida is damaging some of the orange crops, and South Carolina called an early end to shrimping season.

• Parts of Canada have seen actual temperatures of 30 below zero… And freezing temperatures and record snowfalls are pounding parts of Asia and Europe too.

• Britain has experienced the worst snowfalls in half a century.

• In India – it’s estimated at least 100 people have died due to the cold temperatures… with dozens more killed in Bangladesh.

• In China and South Korea, heavy snow and unusually cold weather have brought chaos to travelers – blocking roads and trains, canceling flights. After one recent blizzard in Beijing – officials had more than 300-thousand people clearing the streets.

Meanwhile some of the world’s top climate scientists suggest this winter is only the start of a worldwide trend toward cooler weather, which could last for 20 to 30 years. They base their predictions on changes in water temperatures in the oceans

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.

Anon., from Theo's Old Farmer quotes

How often have we heard complaints about the inappropriate cheesecake on Maggie's Farm? Countless times.

So here's some beefcake instead - Scott Brown, MA Senate candidate, as a law student (via a piece at Powerline). The photo should help with the gal vote, don't you think?

Betsy has a very good update on the MA race. Also today: Union plans major ad buy for Coakley. We also note the conspicuous absence of a major national politician to support the Dem in this campaign. The O not invited, apparently.

We support Scott Brown, even if we enviously resent his good looks:

h/t, Lucianne:

The Eclipse. A little too flashy, d'ya think?

The best sermons are lived, not preached.

Anon. (h/t, a collection of good farmer quotes at Theo)

Pow! "It's not Kennedy's seat, it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the peoples' seat." Scott Brown:

WSJ:

Among the astonishing things about the ObamaCare debate—or lack thereof—is that Washington is inundated with warnings about the destructiveness of this plan, and it doesn't matter. The agency that runs Medicare rung the latest alarm bell on Friday, and good luck finding any media mention.

Whole story here.