Maggie's Farm

The Amazing Rhythm Aces (1976) - h/t, Reader

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
  So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

A re-post from the archives:

It feels very bad to me to know that the fate of the Everglades is in the hands of the notoriously and historically disreputable Miami-Dade County Commissioners.  I'd like to hope that their bad days are past.

It's tough to be an ideological purist in real life. I've known Libertarians who went nuts when a neighbor put in a tennis court too close to his property line. And it is true that we all have a stake in the land. Developers, and the folks they sell to - homeowners and stores and businesses - will always want more if there is profit in it; conservationists will always want more of which to be good stewards; farmers - and I don't mean small family farms in Fla - will always want what they need. So it's always a battle for conservationists. (I don't mean environmentalists, whatever they are.)

My solution tends to be to urge groups to assemble themselves to buy up land, or to buy up the development rights to land, if they want to protect and preserve it for the future. States, land trusts, conservation groups, ad hoc groups with an interest in a specific piece of land. This can be done without a sacrifice of property rights.

BUT it is best done BEFORE there is economic pressure on the land. Unfortunately, people tend to be of the Big Yellow Taxi school: "You don't know what you got til it's gone. You take paradise, put up a parking lot."

I have no doubt that one of my literary heroes, Carl Hiassen, is on the story. I missed him on 60 Minutes last week, but was told that he is as funny in person as he is in print. If you haven't read him, especially his early handful of books, they are absurdist, black humor mysteries set in South Florida, with memorably strange characters, many of them deeply depraved, corrupt, and plain evil.

Carl cares about conservation and he loves Florida, and, bless his heart, he remains a reporter in Miami, so I will count on him to take care of this story, and this problem.

This is the Fin-Duck Sauna Cruising Boat. It's probably a bit large to function as a decoy:

I did promise that I would pre-post some interesting things while I am away.

If you read this piece, you get a sense of how little that part of the Middle East has changed.

Shorpy's comment: "Washington, D.C., 1920. 'Penn Oil Company, Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol.' National Photo Company Collection glass negative."

I like the 1920s-era a/c.

A fairly common Eastern woodland migrant and breeder, but often missed, despite the male's dramatic color, because they often forage up high in the oaks, way above eye-level. 

Read more about this handsome bird:  All About Birds

Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette.

Leonard Bernstein's acclaimed 1973 lecture series at Harvard, The Unanswered Question, was directed towards a general audience rather than towards musicians.

You can buy the DVD at Amazon, or ask your library to buy them.

Here's a sample:

Our post on how flies manage to land on ceilings a while ago was such a hit that it inspired me to do another fly post.

In the fall Cluster Flies head for houses to spend the winter in dormancy. When you turn on the heat, they wake up and clamber around disgustingly, often in clusters around windows.

When that happens to us, we get out ye olde vacuum cleaner.

You can read about their natural history here (they leave their winter shelter and lay their eggs on earthworm holes at this time of year. Their maggots live on earthworms).

An official distinction between formal and informal essays.

We mostly do the informal, here.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Fyodor Doskoevsky

St. Johnsbury, VT is about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, and with a population around 7000 it is the main town in Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom. Calvin Coolidge went to school there and Dr. Bob of AA fame grew up there.

You drive through St. Johnsbury on the way to somewhere else, such as grouse hunting in NH or Maine. It's a sad, run-down old town today, with plenty of poverty and few jobs, and it gives you the feeling that those with the inner resources to leave, do so.

Except for the farmers, the logging truck drivers and the Maple sugar bottlers, it's lots of folks on Vermont welfare who would have much better lives if they took a deep American breath and left the squalor behind by taking a bus to Atlanta, Alabama, or Arizona to find a new life and a real job where they could be of use.

This 1900 fixer-upper pictured can be had for $89,000. I wouldn't take it if you gave me $89,000, unless it was wintertime and I was desperate for shelter. No amount of money could make this house charming or homey, but shelter is shelter and, in VT in the winter, ya gotta have some and to hell with charm.

Why are New Yorkers the way that they are? Joan Acocella in Smithsonian.

And an annoyed response by the Chicagoan Huston.

Reality is only an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Albert Einstein

This 1866 Currier and Ives print depicts the "miniature ship" Red White and Blue. Details as listed on the print:

Length 26 Feet. Breadth of Beam 6 Feet 1 Inch. Depth of Hold 2 Ft. 8 In. 2 33/100 Tons Register. On her Voyage from New York to London, August 1866 with Capts Hudson & Fitch & dog Fanny. Sailed from New York July 9th arrived at Margate, August 16th 1866

Gene Autry (1945):

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car."
-Author Unknown

Advice for the day: If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "Take two aspirin" and "Keep away from children."
-Author Unknown

"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
-Drew Carey

"The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it.  At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house."
-Jeff Foxworthy

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base."
-Dave Barry

"Relationships are hard.  It's like a full time job, and we should treat it like one.  If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, and the day before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp."
-Bob Ettinger"

A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: "Duh."
-Conan O'Brien

"Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant??  I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God...I could be eating a slow learner."
-Lynda Montgomery

"I think that's how Chicago got started. Bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.'"
-Richard Jeni

"If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."
-Johnny Carson

"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."
-Paul Rodriguez

"My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that's the law."
-Jerry Seinfeld

"Remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?"
-Warren Hutcherson

"Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same."
-Oscar Wilde

"Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Afghanistan "
-A. Whitney Brown

"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says,  'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'"
-Dave Barry

Do you know why they call it "PMS"? Because "Mad Cow Disease" was taken.
- Unknown, presumed deceased

"Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer."
-W. C. Fields

- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

This is an elegant 2003 70' Hinckley. Hinckley builds sailboats to order, but it makes sense to buy a used one. Her details here. They are asking $3,400,000., and worth every penny.

I've never understood the passion for the boiled or steamed Blue Crab on the Atlantic coast. Too much work for too little reward - though they are by far the tastiest crab in the world, and a true Maryland Crab Cake is the best.  A lobster rewards effort better, but lobsters do not live in Maryland.

(Sauteed soft-shelled - moulting - Blue Crabs are another matter entirely. Great stuff.) Spelling note: "moult" or "molt" are both acceptable spellings, but apparently "molt" is more American.

Some Blue Crab links:

The Peoples' Lobster

A little natural history of the Blue Crab

How to correctly "pick" a crab

How Blue Crabs moult

Two plus two equals five is not without its attractions.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

Jim at Wild Goose Lodge on PEI is a good friend of Ducks Unlimited and is generous in his donations of trips to our fund-raising events.

To accommodate the increased costs of travel, he is reducing your 4-night package cost by $350 this year, while predicting another excellent year of waterfowl hunting.

Before the Renaissance, artists (like composers and songwriters) were artisans and did not sign their work, similar to illustrators and jingle-composers today. The "Master of St. Cecilia" decorated churches in Assisi and in Florence from around 1300-1320.

This fresco is from his Legends of St. Francis, #27 (A heretic confessing) in the Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi (1300)

A re-post from last spring:

Mohonk. My Gramp's favorite place, and one of my Pa's favorites, if you don't include Tuscany or Norway. When you arrive, your first view of the place in the woods�is astonishing. Great rock-climbing in the Gunks.

Tanglewood. Stay in Lenox, or at the 200 year-old �Red Lion in Stockbridge, not too far from Maggie's Farm.

Chatauqua.�Yes, it still exists and is going strong, with mental stimulation.

The Mount Washington Hotel. A grand year-round place, if you ski or snowshoe.

Chatham Bars Inn.�Mostly summer, on the elbow of the Cape. My preference for the Cape is early September: water is warm, the crowds thin out, and the migratory birds are everywhere.

Monhegan Island. Get away from it all, even more so than Cuttyhunk.

Wellfleet. The real old regular-folks Cape, without the nouveau riche of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and their Hummers.

Photo: Monhegan Island, from this guy's photo site