Maggie's Farm

Let me use disappointment as material for patience;
Let me use success as material for thankfulness;
Let me use suspense as material for perseverence;
Let me use danger as material for courage;
Let me use reproach as material for long-suffering;
Let me use praise as material for temperance;
Let me use pain as material for endurance.

- from a prayer by John Baillie

Nice weather equipment - WeatherPeddler

Slainte! - Check out Malts.com.

Wonderful. You can read Smithsonian Magazine online

Cabela's sells floor mats for most cars and trucks.

Travel -See America.org

Cost-effective travel - Club ABC

Vacation Home Rentals by Owner - VRBO. For example, this nice weekly rental on Nantucket:

or this one in Bellaggio on Lake Como:

And, of course, there are always good pin-ups at Theo

A re-post:

Both the majestic American Elm and the Chestnut fell victim to blights imported from overseas. With their deaths, the New England landscape was altered, for the worse. No more village blacksmith "under the spreading chestnut tree," and no more village greens and churches graced by rows of giant vase-shaped Elms - the hallmark of old New England.

Yes, we still have some elms, but the young ones don't make it to adulthood, and any remaining trees are slowly dying off.

The good news is that there is a blight-resistant Elm available. You won't live long enough to see it in its glory, but planting some now in the right places will be a heck of a fine gift to the future.

You can find them at Miller Nurseries.

Readers know that I have a special attachment to Wellfleet on Cape Cod. I was a little kid in Hyannis when it was a sleepy village without malls, car dealerships, and retirement complexes, but my family soon fled up to Wellfleet for the summers.

By no means do we wish to encourage anyone to buy there, but most of the town is Cape Cod National Seashore so construction opportunities are limited. And the water, especially on the ocean side, is too darn cold for almost anybody except native New Englanders and kids.

Besides, as the old joke goes: "Cape Cod Real Estate - going fast." That's because Cape Cod erodes at the average rate of about 3'/year on the ocean side. Thoreau was impressed by that fact. Over the years, we have seen many nice oceanfront cottages disappear over the winter.

Wellfleet is not a fancy town (it's a glitz-free zone) and its waters produce the best oysters in the world. Wiki tells us: "Wellfleet was encountered by Europeans as early as 1606, when the French explorer Samuel de Champlain explored and named it "Port Aux Huitres" (Oyster Port) for the bountiful oyster population resident to the area."

I thought our readers might be amused by this piece of Wellfleet real estate, for sale now.

They are asking $1.8 million for that waterfront villa. It's probably the location on the harbor shore, not the structure - if you can call it that a structure.

For something with a little more charm, but no waterfront, this is my idea of a real Cape Cod house:

They are asking $3.625 million for this place. If you do the math, though (lot size 435600 at rule-of-thumb 44,000 sq ft/acre, that's a ten acre place. A solid foothold on the Cape. Worth every darn penny).

Richard Gatling believed that his rapid-fire gun would be a boon to mankind.

A quote from a review of the book on the right by Jonathan Yardley in the WaPo:

 'It occurred to me,' he wrote to a friend in 1877, 'that if I could invent a machine -- a gun -- which could by rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a great extent, supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease be greatly diminished.' As disingenuous and self-serving as that sentiment sounds, it ended up being quite correct: Innovations in arms steadily reduced the relative lethality of battles (not to mention the cost of waging war) throughout the twentieth century."

I hope our blog friend at Never Yet Melted doesn't mind this photo theft, but this one completely cracked me up:

From Totten:

What most of us still think of as “war” in Iraq is, at this point, a rough and unfinished peacekeeping mission. Whether it is officially over or not, it has certainly been downgraded to something else, and it’s about time more analysts and observers are willing to say so.

Photo via Villainous

An astute grown-up. h/t, the astute Astute bloggers

What did Manhattan, or Manahatta in the Lenapi language, look like in 1609 when Henry Hudson arrived? It is often forgotten that NY Harbor is where the Pilgrims were headed. November storms interfered with that.

A landscape ecologist is mapping it out. Slide show here. h/t, Neatorama

Today, from Dad to young lady teen studying advanced Shakespearean acting at Oxford with the Royal Shakespeare Company:

"Hey, babe. Leaning anything?"

Entire reply from teen:

"You betcha."

Very bad politics. Rick Moran has got this right. One quote:

Forget that Gramm’s remarks about America being in a “mental recession” and that our fellow countrymen are a “nation of whiners” were insensitive, crass, stupid, and abominably ill-timed. They were just plain bad politics and trying to justify them as “true” in any sense whatsoever is the heighth of political ignorance.

To chastise your fellow countrymen who are genuinely worried about the way the world seems to be giving way underneath their feet as change and uncertainty sweeps across the country in the form of ever rising energy costs and a housing crisis to which there doesn’t seem to be any bottoming out bespeaks an obliviousness to the political realities of what is happening beyond your own small corner of the world. Your appeal to an economic Darwinism as a model for the American people to follow is as outmoded as it is despicable.

Photo: The gardens of Villa Pallavicini in Stresa, two weeks ago. If a garden space is like a room, they put a row of picture windows in it.

In A Tribute to Italy, The Fjordman posting at Gates of Vienna takes a look at the European sickness, and sees a ray of hope in Italy:

Italy is by no means immune to the problems affecting everybody else in the Western world, but her odds are better than those of several other countries. Through contact with Italians, I get the impression of a country whose national heart is still beating, a people still in touch with their roots and believing that their cultural survival is desirable, which is no mean feat given the suicidal state of our civilization in this age. When observing Italy, I see sickness but also life; and where there is life, there is hope. Something tells me that the story of Italy as a vibrant heartland of European civilization still contains more chapters to be written. If we are lucky, her struggle for survival and rebirth can inspire others far beyond her borders.

Gates speculates about Italy's resistance to PC and modern multiculturalism:

...commenters speculated that Italy’s innate regionalism might be one of the key factors that inoculates it against the most pernicious post-modern political diseases.

Our regular Italian commenter Ioshkafutz confirmed this viewpoint, and provided us with a comprehensive and engaging summary of Italian culture, which is reproduced below. It has been edited minimally for spelling, punctuation, and clarity:

Italy is many countries. A Milanese is closer to an Austrian than to a Sicilian, A Torinese to a Frenchman than a Calabrese. When I go to my Roman caffé / bar at night and Neapolitans truckdrivers enter, I don’t understand a word, or rather, just barely enough to know they are Italians. The rest could be Ancient Greek.

They — the Neapolitans — have their own musical genres, theater, and even cinema… all still thriving.

They’ll defend the legacy of the Borboni when Naples was a Capital city. They never really digested the Piedmontese invasion. The Romans instead have, also because when Rome became the Capital city and Mussolini brought cinema to Rome (he is responsible for cinecittà) Turin was marginalized.

Maybe Italy is already multicultural enough. Ever since Italy was a province of the Roman empire, it never became a political entity again until 1861.

From Theo, that's a bunch of service dogs in Hawaii. How did that fat Golden sneak into the photo?

And, via Callimachus, Poodles in WW 2. A bit too friendly to be good guards.

Our regular readers know that I enjoy cooking meat in my smoker. For me, that is real barbecue. Not a grill - a smoker.

Mostly pork, sometimes beef. Unlike some of my pals, I do not believe in smoking game birds because their fine flavor is too subtle to hold up to smoke. 

I like to put on the hot rub du jour overnight, then start smoking it in the morning - or whenever I get to it. Pork loin, butt for pulled pork, ribs, beef tips, whatever.

Sometimes I like to finish it off with a store-bought or home-made barbecue sauce on it while it finishes, sometimes during the entire cooking, sometimes on the side. For ribs, you have to cook with the sauce so they don't dry out. In Texas, it's on the side with the brisket - but I don't like brisket.

What's your preference?

Photo is my smoked pork loin. You need to have the sauce on the side for that.

This is a summer weekend re-post from our dusty archives:

"Progress," like environmentalism, is a secular religion.

I have always been suspicious of the concept of progress. For Chambers of Commerces, it has always seemed to mean more asphalt. For Leftists it has meant movement towards international socialism. In the world of morals, it has seemed to mean less morality and self-discipline. In art and design, it often seems vain and meaningless. In the world of religion, it has seemed to mean watering it down. In the Sciences though - medicine, technology, etc - advances have of course added much to quality and ease of life - but nothing to the meaning and purpose of our lives unless we are scientists.

Wilfred McClay in Touchstone points out how the word has shaped our experience. Our words shape the way we think about things, sometimes in insidious ways and without our awareness, even as we use them: sometimes our words lead our thoughts instead of vice-versa.

History has become for our secular age what “fate” was for the Greco-Roman ancients, and what “providence” was (and remains) for many Christians. This is the sense of History that Hegel and Marx promoted, and the sense that Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy recently appealed to in justifying an opinion by “evolving standards of decency.” It is the sense that moral innovators are appealing to in promoting homosexual and polyamorous “marriage,” artificial wombs, bioengineered enhancements, and all the other delights of “posthumanity.”

The postmodernists who claim that we are beyond the sway of such metanarratives as History are speaking utter rubbish. (As usual.) “Progress” is the one article of faith that remains strong among us, the one torch in modernism’s darkening hall that still burns bright. To oppose it, even in the slightest, is to render oneself an “enemy of the future.”

Which is why the possibility that such innovations might ultimately fail is, literally, inconceivable to so many true believers, as inconceivable to them as a sudden revocation of the laws of physics. You see, there are certain prevailing winds in this thing called History, and the Path of True Virtue can only be found in discerning those winds, and aligning one’s skiff with them. Or so the partisans of conventional wisdom would have it. And their confidence is oddly mirrored in the dejection of the orthodox, who feel themselves on the losing side of History.

Yet both are wrong.

You can read the whole brief piece. It's a Christian view of time and of history.

Update: AVI did a piece about cultural views of time last week.

Psalm 119

¹Happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
²Happy are those who keep his decrees, who seek him with their whole heart,
³who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways.
⁴You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
⁵O that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!
⁶Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
⁷I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous ordinances.
⁸I will observe your statutes; do not utterly forsake me.

⁹How can young people keep their way pure? By guarding it according to your word.
¹⁰With my whole heart I seek you; do not let me stray from your commandments.
¹¹I treasure your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.
¹²Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes.
¹³With my lips I declare all the ordinances of your mouth.
¹⁴I delight in the way of your decrees as much as in all riches.
¹⁵I will meditate on your precepts, and fix my eyes on your ways.
¹⁶I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.

¹⁷Deal bountifully with your servant, so that I may live and observe your word.
¹⁸Open my eyes, so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
¹⁹I live as an alien in the land; do not hide your commandments from me.
²⁰My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times.
²¹You rebuke the insolent, accursed ones, who wander from your commandments;
²²take away from me their scorn and contempt, for I have kept your decrees.
²³Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes.
²⁴Your decrees are my delight, they are my counselors.
²⁵My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word.

Sorry. It's not working reliably. Will fix when able.

UPDATE: Fixed.

When I say 'Religious Left'... AVI

Will Israel attack Iran? Current

Chilled red wine in summertime

Good stuff. We linked to Salatin's essay, Everything I want to do is Illegal, in our post on farming yesterday. He's a farmer in VA.

India disputes global warming

MSM "confused" about Obama. Also, Obama's educational romanticism. Derbyshire

Insty: MASS TRANSIT IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE

"We're so..." by Russ Vaughn, via American Thinker:

We're hip, we're cool and so arty;
We're Democrats, the smarter Party.
We're sophisticated unlike you:
We understand merci beaucoup.
We're ubane and you're provincial;
We're worldly-wise, so existential.
We're cultured, complex, so refined,
We've left you ignorant serfs behind.
We're witty authors of clever puns,
While you clods cling to God and guns.
Were you not so closed and clannish
We'd have you peons speaking Spanish.
We say all this with knowing smirks;
We're Democrats, you Red-State jerks.

Johnny Otis, Willie and the Hand Jive (with Lionel Hampton)

Hand Art, from here:

More hand art photos on continuation page below -

Westport, Massachusetts is a lovely summertime seaside town on Buzzard's Bay. Lots of Boston people summer there. It has a Cape Coddy feel to it. Plenty of marshes and beaches, and a nice harbor (pictured above).

This cute little Victorian farmouse on two acres is for sale. It has a boathouse and a cottage. Asking only $995,000. It looks cozy and perfect, to me. Home. (No, we are not in the real estate biz and no, we don't get a finder's fee!):