Maggie's Farm

America's favorite ground cover, second only to asphalt. It sure does beat grass, because it doesn't get weeds, doesn't need watering, is happy with deep shade, is evergreen, is tough as hell, and doesn't need to be mown. It is an import from Japan.

It's coming into bloom right now, around here. The early-waking bees love those flowers.

Why a curse?  Did you ever try to remove a bed of pachysandra? It's like cleaning terrorists out of Baghdad, except they don't shoot back.

Docks in winter storage.

Aliyah 3-15-06: Galilee   

    We hit the road to the upper and lower Galilee, in opposite order.  A week ago Wed, off with the Ulpan, rising at 530 to get to Ulpan bus by 7 am.  There is a quality of herding cats in such groups, with people meandering off and occasionally back. One girl from Switzerland insists that we stop the bus mid road, as her friend has just arrived at the Ulpan, which we left some ten minutes earlier: she's only three minutes away, she insists. And we stop.  Miss Swiss exits the bus, assuring that we cannot leave, and we learn that her friend is still on the highway, being driven by someone, who doesn't' know Netanya, so can't find us.  About ten minutes later, some reason prevails, and Opher -- our Yemenite guide-song leader-accordianist-pianist-overall core of patience -- negotiates Swissy back on the bus, with assurances that it is easier for her friend's driver to find us downtown Netanya (where another group has been patiently waiting for our now-late arrival).  This was a bit like reverse-hostage negotiation: Opher trying to convince Miss Swiss on-board so that we can be held in thrall en route, rather than mis-en-scene.  When Swissy's friend boards, both of them have a mad on for our not waiting mid-road, rather than going into town. This lasts for a few hours.
    Something curative of the above upon entering "god's vineyard" -- Carmel.  We put Zikhron Yaakov on our right and Haifa north and behind us as we descend into god-will-sow valley, the Jezreel.  "To sow," the word in Hebrew, shares a root with the word, "arm," connecting us bodily with the limb used to broadcast seeds, signs of hope, of future.  This is a very "bodied" land, Israel, also one with sudden, even stark shifts of weather, and we are edging into the season of hope, of spring. Our guide, Sara, points out that this is the best time to see the flowers in the Galilee, before the summer heat wilts them.  Life buds, even blossoms here, sometimes in hidden corners, such as the forests we will visit, in spite of the acrimony surrounding.  Freud, after receiving Stefan Zweig's enthusiastic book about Israel, thanked him, and remarked eliptically, that this is a strange land, from which little art or science has emerged, but only three illusions. (And of such illusions, Freud saw little future.) Freud finishes, it should be studied more.

It is the beginning of Forsythia season in Yankeeland.

Today is "Celebrate Illegal Alien Day."  Let's make it a national holiday, GW. Michelle.  Is this not a case in which foreigners, illegally in the US, are attempting to influence American politics? Does that make sense? My political intuition tells me that these protests will backfire, badly. Since when can you sneak into a country, and then make demands? As our reader comments, what is Spanish for "chutzpah"?

When I last returned from the US after a vacation in Italy, with a US passport, they put me through a meat-grinder. Easier to fly home to Mexico, and walk through the river. They would not have gone through my bags and done a passport check - not that there was anything to find. Well, I had an apple from the airplane in my pocket which I forgot to carry in my stomach - an illegal agricultural product. Shame on me.

Here's the list of places where the protest marches will be occurring. These marches seem to be coordinated by the Center for Community Change.

Auster points out that normalizing illegal immigration means, in essence, an open borders policy in which the US abandons the right to control immigration of any sort. In my opinion, that is an abrogation of nationhood because, as I have said, half the world would come here if all they had to do was wade across the Rio Grande.

In reply to our email, asking Borders to confirm that their cartoon decision was reported accurately, we received the following profession of dhimmitude, dated 4/9:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your expression of concern about our decision not to carry the issue of Free Inquiry magazine featuring cartoons depicting Muhammad. Borders is committed to our customers' right to choose what to read and what to buy and to the First Amendment right of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. In this particular case, we decided not to stock this issue in our stores because we place a priority on the safety and security of our customers and our employees. We believe that carrying this issue presented a challenge to that priority.

We value your thoughts and sincerely appreciate that you invested your time to tell us how you feel about the issue. I can assure you that our management team gave careful deliberation to this decision and considered all sides of the issue before reaching this conclusion.

I hope that this information is helpful. If you should have any other questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Chatica
Borders Customer Care
http://www.bordersstores.com

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.” - Edward Abbey, naturalist and author

Quote thanks to LaShawn, with these quotes of hers, too:

The rule of law has been eroding for some time now. Think about the effect amnesty will have on criminal aliens who commit additional crimes, especially the ones prone to drinking, driving, and killing innocent people. The word illegal is rendered meaningless. If flouting immigration law isn’t illegal, why should drunk driving be illegal? Or selling drugs?

If you think there’s too much race-talk now, just wait until a critical mass of black people finally “get it” and realize how criminal aliens are hurting black workers forced to compete with them. Elite politicians and “the wealthy” are insulated. They don’t and probably will never have to compete with criminal aliens hired for low wages by criminal businesses. It’s the average person on the street who suffers.

And think about the message this sends to home-grown criminals. Under Bush’s plan, millions of foreign criminals would go unpunished just so they can continue providing low-wage and low-skilled labor. As I said, if you think you’re fed up with race now…

Read it all.

Last chance to put in your orders:

   A great source for native plantings on a large scale: Musser Forests
   A great source for fruits and berries, and miscellaneous: Miller Nurseries
   The premier place for perennials: White Flower Farm
   Great source for unusual varieties: Wayside Gardens

A month or so ago we posted a snarky and unkind critique of a post by Mixing Memory, a blog concerning cognitive psychology which we read weekly because of our interest in the subject.

Specifically, we erroneously claimed that his blog, or at least his post, ignored the religious and/or spiritual, and we also were ill-mannered in doubting the hard-science rigor of the post.

I hope he will accept our apology. Here are some of his posts on religion. And here is his latest: How Motivated Cognition can Save your Marriage.

From an interview with Benedict:

Asked by one student how he realized his own priestly vocation, the 78-year-old pontiff said that when he was young in Germany it was more "normal" to accept faith and vocations than it is today.

"There was the Nazi regime," Benedict said. "We were told very loudly that in the new Germany 'there will not be anymore priests, there will be no more consecrated life, we don't need this anymore, find another profession."'

Looking for a "How-To" book on becoming a Manly Man - a review of a few books on the subject in the CSM:

"A Guy's Guide to Being a Man's Man," is as full of practical tips as Mansfield's is devoid of them. He reminds men exactly how to behave with honor, respect, and gentlemanliness. That includes dating ("don't look too eager"), dressing ("no ties with animals, Looney Tune characters, or Spongebob."), dining ("order New York strip steak for three"), and listening to "man's man" music ("Sinatra was the ultimate"). His formula for men in 2006 is to get a manicure (but no pedicure), money clip (no Velcro wallets), and a DVD of "Saving Private Ryan."

Why aid doesn't work in Africa. It's a well-known fact, and even our State Dept gets it. Africa needs investment by bold entrepreneurs from all over the world. Samizdata. 

Rick Moran gets on a roll. One quote:

There are even efforts in blue states to stop “trading” with people and companies who live in ordinary America, as if people who live, work, play, go to church on Sunday, take off their hat when the flag goes by, and get choked up when they hear the national anthem live in a different country than the urban sophisticates who dominate the culture and to a large extent, the national conversation. We are told what is proper to believe, what we should watch on television, what cartoons are blasphemous, and which European countries are better than we are. We are instructed in what is “good” and even what is funny and what is not.

And when red state America rebels against this cultural tyranny by voting the way they think rather than the way they are told to, they are belittled as morons, mouth breathers, hicks, hillbillies, and dolts.

And liberals wonder why they can’t win an election for dog catcher in most areas of the country?

In truth, as we head into the silly season in politics, Democrats are going to have to find a way to put a lid on this attitude of loathing toward ordinary voters lest they be discovered for the insufferable elitist louts they truly are.

Thanks for that, Rick, from your loutish hillbilly friends at Maggie's Farm. Whole thing here.

I suggest he read this at National Review( http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/haislmaier200601271110.asp ), and realize many of his objections are met, and many of many others' are met, including why someone else should be responsible for his family exceeding his means to pay, and including that limited (more toward what he calls catastrophic) policies will be available at a more affordable cost.

 

The USS New York.
The 6th USS New York is being built (LPD-21,
an amphibious assault ship) with steel from the Trade Center. (LPD is "landing platform dock).

Image is the USS San Antonio (LPD-17)

Now for the bad news: Super-Cavitation Torpedoes. 250 mph and 27-feet long, these Russian-designed nasties could change naval warfare. And Iran has some. Info at American Spectator.

Update: (Thanks, reader) This torpedo's bark may be worse than its bite. Strategy Pages.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Nietzsche (That is a good Maggie's Farm motto)

We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made.

M. Acklam

We are working on fixing it. Somehow, we have been seeing more and more searches for "farm  porn  sex"  coming through.

Somehow something somewhere listed us as a farm porn site. We are not. We do not even look at farm porn sites.

Admittedly, we once considered becoming a farm porn site to stiffen up our readership numbers, but decided against it for no good reason at all.

Still, ya gotta admit that is one sexy-looking 1950 Farmall Model C - in the nude.

In an effort to film some anti-Moslem
prejudice in the US, NBC has been
seeking Moslems to volunteer to attend NASCAR events while wired and secretly filmed. No doubt they planned to continue filming until they caught something "useful" on film. Like Candid Camera.

I guess it reveals something about what NBC thinks of NASCAR fans.

Nice try, NBC. But you are busted. They used to call this "yellow journalism," and it is beneath contempt.

And the real question is this: If 100 people were pleasant to these stooges, and one person was rude - what would be shown on the news?

Chalk up one more for the blogosphere vs. the biased and, in this case, insidious and corrupt MSM.

Two comments from The Chairman:

1. If they really wanted some good footage, they should have gotten five or six of the scariest-looking Moslems they could find and put them on a transatlantic flight as a group.

2. Why didn't Cynthia McKinney think of bringing a film crew with her when she punched the cop? And why isn't her story a bigger story than Cheney's?  His was an accident - this was on purpose.

Like many bloggers,
the strange case of
the Yale Taliban-
Man has been on my mind. John Fund (his latest piece is linked in the following paragraph) has, of course, been on the story. What's the story really about? Here's my first take on it.

Some of those folks up at Yale are just so doggone smart that they have managed to use their powerful brains to transcend not only Judeo-Christian morality, but all morality, and have thus transcended themselves into the abyss of amoral, ie anti-moral, relativism.

And, all the while, thinking themselves morally superior beings for having done so. (Let's hope they do not run their personal lives in a similar fashion - but I am sure they do not, generally. They live morally, and preach relativism. A rather wierd form of hypocrisy, and the inverse of the common form of hypocrisy most of us practice.)

So, since the wise men of the Ivy League have determined that multicultural diversity and respect have now replaced our narrow-minded and obsolete Judeo-Christian morality, we offer the suggestion that this man might have been an attractive, multiculturally diverse applicant to Yale - had he not been too busy. Goebbels surely could have provided a different perspective - and all perspectives are now valid - right?

No. There is one exception: The Maggie's Farm-type of perspective on the world is definitely not valid. It, alone, is "marginalized" on campus, as they say. We think of ourselves as traditionalist, capitalist, God-fearing, rationally patriotic, freedom-loving, and proudly protective of our country and our heritage. Why is this one "perspective" unwelcome, and disregarded?

Image: Reichsfuhrer Doktor Joseph Goebbels speaking in Hamburg, 1936

Two of my buddies got back from Islamorada on Sunday.Tarpon, Permit, and of course, these nice Dolphin (aka dorado, aka Mahi Mahi). Jealous? I am.

This hunt story from this past winter, in Florida, came in over the transom:

Today, I had something very different happen to me at Burn's field.  This morning saw me sitting in my tri-pod, suffering thru 30 deg.  temps with a biting NW wind in my face. Sure, some of you have it colder, but, this is Florida!! Right about the time I started to begin a stalk hunt (to warm up), seven does filled the end of the field and I picked out the one safe shot and dropped her in her tracks. The other does ran off, then slowly returned to stay around another 45 min. or so. When the last one started leaving, I began to get down as no Bucks wanted to come out and play. Half-way down the ladder, I looked back into the field and saw my doe jerk!!! By the way, she was only about 120 yds. away, so, to see her move, something bad was going on. At first I thought she had only been stunned with a high spine shot and was starting to get up. Then, I saw another body along side of her and I thought the .270 has shot thru her and hit another deer that was bunched up after all. Then the object I couldn't make out, attacked the doe's head and was all balled up around it. 

    I quickly climbed back into the shooting chair, re-attached my steady stick, centered the mass outline on the doe's head and squeezed the trigger. Puff of hair, no movement. After getting down and easing over to the doe, attached you will see the huge male bobcat that was trying to kill my dead doe. He died instantly by my .270 injection, so quick in fact, he still had the death grip on the doe's neck. I've never seen or heard of something like this in my life. Even when I loaded the doe up on my carrier, the bobcat was still attached to her neck. While I didn't weigh the bobcat, the doe was in the 120 to 130 lb. range. You can see how the bobcat was almost as long as she is.

If I have any belief about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very very few people.

James Thurber