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.
As the beavers becomes more common, the wonderful habitats they create - marshes and ponds, Alder and willow thickets, -proliferate. Wood Ducks, Black Ducks, herons, amphibians, snakes, turtles, songbirds, swallows, bugs. Everybody likes a beaver marsh. You can barely see one of their series of dams in the foreground.
Ever gnaw on a raw Rhubarb stem? I used to love that, when I was a kid. Especially the tender thin stems. Huge flavor, tangy, bitter, spicey.
While "researching" this post, I learned that it's commonly done in Turkey and Iraq. Our garden rhubarb came from China. The leaves are poisonous. There are lots of types of rhubarbs, most inedible.
Rhubarb is the most reliable edible perennial that you can have in your northern garden. Just throw some manure on them every Spring, and you're done. The only problem I have had with them (my last patch) was that the plants kept going to flower and seed without producing new stems. I guess I should have cut off the flowering stems sooner.
Treating college as the new high school hasn’t benefited students who waste four years of their lives and pick up staggering debts which make it harder for them to buy homes and start families, but it has benefited the liberal arts infrastructure, which, despite the liberal spin, is just as good at handing out useless degrees with no career path as any for-profit college. And it has benefited the Democratic Party, which rightly sees college campuses as recruitment grounds and liberal-voter-training seminars. ...
Factory fishing, aided by helos, has crushed the population of Bunker. An excellent and thorough review of the politics of the plankton-eating Menhaden which, like the Herring, is the preeminent fish of the lower end of the Atlantic food chain:
A Fish Story - How an angler and two government bureaucrats may have saved the Atlantic Ocean.
Taco USA - How Mexican food became more American than apple pie.
I do like Mexican, on occasion. I like the real stuff, and have a little joint down the road a piece where we can get it cheap. It's near Home Depot, so that's good. They don't speak English, but that's ok with me. They understand "hot."
...the next time you hear a good story about why the financial recession, or any other economically significant event, was caused by a single collection of bad actors — or how a simple linear narrative “explains” an important event — remember this: Just as we are wired to like a diet rich in fats and sugars, we have an appetite for simple, coherent narratives. Neither habit is good for our long-term health.
June 18th will be the 200th anniversary of the US declaration of war with Britain.
It was an interesting war, including the Star Spangled Banner and the burning of the White House. And, of course, the Battle of New Orleans with Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson - fought after the peace treaty had been signed.
Central government -- the Central State -- has been in the expansion mode for so long that the process of contracting government is completely alien to the nation, to those who work for the State, and to those who are dependent on the State. Thus we have little recent historical experience of Peak Government and few if any conceptual guideposts to help us understand this contraction.
Peak Government is not a reflection of government services or the millions of individuals who work in government; it is a reflection of four key systemic forces that drove State expansion are now either declining or reversing...
Gaura lindheimeri is a new plant for me. This one is nicknamed "Whirling Butterflies."
These are perennials (depending on winter temperatures), hybrids of a North American wildflower. Drought tolerant, prefers full sun, blooms all summer. Perfect border plant. They come in white or pink.
The only thing in life more charming than a well-structured and well-designed perennial border is a well-structured, well-designed girl.
Until we manage to uncouple higher education from the job market, we are going to persist in misunderstanding education’s true end. It may well be that in the past—i.e., in a debt-based economy incapable of imagining how top-heavy things eventually fall over—a college degree has been a stepping stone to the middle class, but those days are over. An economy that can’t help a college graduate retire an enormous debt is not going to look upon a college degree as a stepping stone to the middle class. Colleges, obviously, will continue to look thus upon the degree (how they will wield the mighty frame of education, how build, unbuild, contrive to save tuition costs), but this is just one more thing among many about which they will be wrong.
And although it is true that we shouldn’t make higher education a luxury, it is truer still that we shouldn’t make it a commodity. When it once again becomes difficult, it will be neither a luxury nor a commodity. Making it so “every American should be able to afford it” is no different from making it so every American can do it, which is the same thing as rendering it meaningless.
This year's Coming Attractions will include massive and distorted attacks on Mitt Romney's successful business career.
Promising young businesses need funding, and frail tired businesses must be re-built or sold for salvage. Is there a way to talk, politically, about venture capital and business competition in a way that people can relate to? I suppose buggy-whip companies and blacksmiths are a place to start.
The 2012 presidential race will be, in part, a showdown between two different models of economic growth. President Barack Obama and his Democratic administration will defend the once-discredited and now-resurgent theory that government must act as the economy’s “tutor” and use public funds to stimulate it. The Republican nominee, presumably Mitt Romney, will advance the free-market argument that the main source of new growth is the innovative energy of American entrepreneurs and that government needs to get out of the way.
The warblers are on the move up from South and Central America, and pass through hearabouts in May, on their way north to breed as soon as the buds begin to pop on the trees and the bugs wake up. Girls might like diamonds but the warblers are God's real living jewels.
The Yellow is the yellowest, and maybe most abundant warbler, with a distinctive "sweet sweeet sweet" call. Found throughout the US during migration. They like to be near wet areas - willows, etc., but they will be everywhere soon.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear – From Frank Herbert’s Dune (h/t Classical Values)
�
Ever gnaw on a raw Rhubarb stem? I used to love that, when I was a kid. Especially the tender thin stems. Huge flavor, tangy, bitter, spicey.
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Image via
Taco USA
Teaching Doctors the ‘End of Life Conversation’
Are jeans 
