Maggie's Farm

As of this afternoon, my parents' house is empty of everything. Even the dumpster has departed.  The Steinway Baby Grand was happily delivered to our parlor today and sounds pretty good there. My Mom's Victorian cast iron bird bath with four herons is in the driveway, waiting for me to show it some love with a power-wash and some Rustoleum. My Dad's Danish-style double bureau is in my bedroom. I've needed one forever, never saw one I liked. The drawers are cedar, so it smells good. Plus it was my Dad's for many years. He liked Danish design.

Funny thing about my parents. They never owned many clothes, but they always looked perfectly appropriate, and modestly-elegantly-attired, whether for weddings, beach club parties, dinner parties, fancy cruises, country clubs,  hiking in Europe, opera, funerals, yard work, etc. I don't know how they did that. Mrs. BD opined that they did it by owning a very few perfect and very fine things, and were careful to never over-dress. They were not shoppers but seemed to have excellent Yankee taste. They had very little clothing for Good Will to take away.

Their dining room table is now against a wall in our living room, for the moment, where the piano mover guys were kind enough to lug away our old upright that my kids learned on. We might want to keep that Danish slate-topped table and use it as our kitchen dining table, as the wonderful one we use is quite large. Huge. Or save it for a kid. Mom's jewels - the few which I obtained thus far - are stashed in my safe.

After I do some clean-up, I'll post some pictures of it all. Life in Yankeeland goes on. An empty family house is eery, and left me feeling troubled and disoriented. I was already away at boarding school when they built it, but it became home even though I never really lived there. Somebody prosperous will love it, paint it, and raise some fine batch of kids there (it has 6 bedrooms). It's a lovely dwelling. Or maybe they will decide to do a demolition and start fresh. We are gone now.

Clean and wax the floors, wash the walls, then an open house asap. It's a short walk to the Congo church on the hill. It's only worth around a million, for the land. The lovely, large, but 1960s-era home itself does not seem to factor in its value at all. Small bathrooms, lots of big windows with no thermopane. People expect more comforts, nowadays, even though it is entirely sufficient and functional, modestly elegant and comfortable.

My parents were not interested in modern conveniences. Instead of a/c, they just planted trees to shade the house. No sound systems. Radio with WQXR.

Dad, I believe, was proud to have designed and built it for his big family of five kids. A place to read and talk, entertain, eat, and sleep. Never a TV until all the kids left, and always dogs until they got too old to take good care of them. Springers.

Chart above via Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations By Time Period

Major Danish Daily Warns: “Globe May Be On Path To Little Ice Age…Much Colder Winters…Dramatic Consequences”!

How adults became able to drink milk

Study disputes link between combat and suicide

Don't believe what you read about happiness. It's all lies.

Maybe You Should Have Gone to Trade School

The Childless City - It's hip, it's entertaining—but where are the families?

Barred versus Spotted Owls: Humans in No Position to Contradict Nature

Sonnet 41

I thank all who have loved me in their hearts,
With thanks and love from mine.
Deep thanks to all
Who paused a little near the prison-wall
To hear my music in its louder parts
Ere they went onward, each one to the mart’s
Or temple’s occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice’s sink and fall
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art’s
Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot
To harken what I said between my tears, . . .
Instruct me how to thank thee!
Oh, to shoot My soul’s full meaning into future years,
That they should lend it utterance, and salute
Love that endures, from life that disappears!

A "Cape" is short for a Cape Cod - style house. This was a common architectural style in the Colonial period, especially on Cape Cod but in New England generally. Common also in the Colonial Revival period (1930s-1950s). More about Capes in Wiki.

Here's an original one, in Wellfleet.

Well, as close to an angel as I have ever identified.

Like most angels, she just looked like an ordinary middle-aged person. Unremarkable, unmemorable.  Angels are simply messengers, aren't they? They aren't gods, and they don't have wings. The wings in angel images are symbols.

Tuesday morning at 10:30 I was sitting in the Maggie's HQ between meetings and conferences, with all doors and windows open to the soft summer breeze and enjoying a nice Partagas - I'm the boss so I do what I want - when I hear a knock on the open outside door. "Hello."

"Come on in," I say. "Pardon my cigar smoke. What can I do for you?"

"Nothing," she said tentatively. "I've never done anything like this before, but I felt had to. Are you (my name)? "Yes, I am. Who are you?" She gave her name to me.

I was pleasant, she was too. She said she hoped I did not mind, but the Lord had asked her twice, in prayer, to pray for me by name and to remind me that God loved me. She had no idea who I was, but googled my name, located me, and walked in my open door on the chance I would be there.

I told her that, far from intruding on me, she was like an angelic apparition. She had driven 20 miles to deliver me a message. I told her that I had lost both of my parents in the past few months, was grieving in my various ways but was not feeling disconnected from God.

She gave me a light hug, said "The Lord wants you to know that he loves you", and walked back out to her car. A silver Camry.

I told Mrs. BD that I had had a visitation from an angel. No, I am not insane. As I thought about it over the past couple of days, I began to realize that grief had indeed distanced me from God - not out of anger or anything stupid like that, but just by preoccupation with my own feelings, self-involvement.

Matt Damon Explains It All

SAT Scores No Longer Important to Some Colleges

Any customer is better than no customer

Monstrous - Polyamorist Michael Philpott killed his children in pursuit of welfare benefits.

NYT Spotlights Obama’s Middle East Mess

Al-Qaeda Is on the Run? Obama’s Foreign Policy Projects Confusion and Weakness

Chris Matthews: The Fact That I Speak Openly of Barack Obama's
Speeches Giving Me Erections Does Not Prove That Either I or My
Clownshow Employer Is Baised In His Favor

Why Seniors Are Turning Against The GOP

Where are all the children?

NYC:  If Giuliani, like Alexander, had run out of problems to conquer, Bloomberg never had any to begin with.:

 Republicans still believe in being the party of good government, while Democrats, under lefty influence, believing in being the party of moral government. The more pragmatic authoritarianism of the good government party only paves the way for the moral authoritarianism of the left.

The cycle ensures that the left will always have a right to clean up their messes and to rebel against. They need their Nixons to get them out of Vietnam, try to make their social welfare policy disasters seem workable, and act as the father figure that they can pull down and destroy. They need the Reagans and Giulianis and Eisenhowers to denounce as authoritarian conformists, thoughtless buffoons who prevent progress, because the alternative is the eternally stultifying rule of the left whose existence in a country destroys the left as a meaningful moral force in human affairs.

The authoritarian cycle allows the right to claim credit for cleaning up the messes and the left and allows the left to claim credit for cleaning up the messes of the right. The left blames the right and its "budget cuts" to social welfare programs for causing the mess. The right blames the left's flirtation with criminality and its hostility to the solid citizen. The dynamic is a familiar one from elections.

The Peace Process’s Turkey
Problem

The Vietnam War, via chopper

The UN’s Millennium Development Flop

Washington fixes Obamacare --- for Washington only!

Be there or be square. Evening ice cream at Mac's on the town dock. One of the very few places on earth I know where standing in a line is sorta fun. Fleece or sweater required.

A couple more pics below the fold -

but it still reminded me of the song. In five months, both parents dead and final child moved out to NYC this week. That's a big life change for me and the Mrs., but we still have the dog. All 3 kids living and/or working in NYC now. It's a good thing for the youth to do: If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. They don't have to stay there forever.

What makes it even better is that they get together there sometimes, and sort of network socially. They all have lots of friends and associates from prep school, college, and work. Interesting, attractive, proper, and ambitious kids, and they all want to be in NY where the action is. Meet people, make friends, build a life. Fun, plus social capital. They all have nothing at all to complain about except income, and when you're young in Manhattan, you don't really care. When I lived there, I had no clue that I was a pauper. Life was fun and fascinating, I could afford a beer, and I even met the future Mrs. BD there. Man, that was a random meet but it clicked.

To cheer me up and to distract me from all of the family death and all of the memory tape loops that keep running through my mind with no "pause" button that I can find, Mrs. BD is treating me to a little trip later this summer. Carpe diem in the face of death.

She thinks physical effort will help me feel better. Usually works for me. I love physical effort as long as it doesn't require brains. It's a birthday present for me too, I guess. Or for both of us. She is a world-class trip-planner. It's hiking in the Dolomites above Lake Garda, then a few days banging around the Veneto (with no Venice, thankfully. I hate that tourist trap. We fly into Milan and then drive right out in a rental sports car. I don't care for Milan either.). I intend to rent a little speedboat on Lake Garda and to try to act Italian. In the upper Veneto, some speak German, some speak only Ladin, some speak Italian in public but Ladin with family.

For her birthday, what shall I offer the gal who has everything she needs (except perfect financial security - still waiting for Powerball - however, her material wants and expectations have always been minimal but her cultural, relational, and spiritual desires are considerable. And I have lotsa life insurance...)? Ah, I know just the thing. Tix for Rigoletto at the Arena di Verona.

She can hum a lot of it and recite the details of the tale, but has never seen it live.

Got 'em. Don't tell.

We took the pup for a long off-leash walk two Saturday mornings ago. We ran into a 92 year-old Norwegian neighbor and friend on his daily morning hike. He has climbed the Matterhorn, Mount Blanc, some of the Himalayas. We asked him about the Dolomites. He knew every town, every mountain. Had climbed the Five Fingers. "It's soft stone, Dolomite. Easy to climb." Well, I'll hike all day but I don't climb mountains. Heights have a bad effect on me.

Then, as we head back to the HQ, a car pulls over. A relatively new neighbor and new friend just stopping to say hi. Our dogs are friends too. He's on the way to the airport. We ask where they are going. "Dolomites. Hiking, some rock climbing. Then a couple of days on Lake Garda. We'll have supper and fill you in when we get back."

Life is good, despite it all.

12 years without sex

The most beautiful woman of the middle ages

The Shame of Federal Student Loans

U.S. Congress wins relief on Obamacare health plan subsidies

Walmart Mocks 'The Nation' Over Low-Wages Paid to Interns

Time Magazine Propagandizes Against Reproduction

Obama Says Private Capital Should Have Bigger Role In Mortgage Market, Isn’t Struck By Lightning

Seattle city gov’t bans the words “citizen” and “brown bag,” for obvious reasons

When Markets Turn

Ted Koppel: America's Chronic Overreaction to Terrorism

Is Obama Wrong About Infrastructure Creating Growth?

Larry Schweikart and Burton Folsom: Obama's False History of Public Investment - Entrepreneurs built our roads, rails and canals far better than government did.

A strange story:  A Psychology Professor's Dark Past Raises Questions about the Insanity Defense

Economic Forecasts Are Bad, Budget Forecasts Delusional

DUmmy Wonders If “This Is The Final Question That America Is Asking Itself”

Steve King: Belief In Climate Change Is A ‘Religion,’ ‘Not Science’

Art Horn Letter to Connecticut State Department of Agriculture

Another piece from this large set of ?china?

A bowl of some sort, art deco influences.

What the heck is this material?

Found a large set of these cups, with saucers, bowls, etc. in my parents' storage room. I know they were via my great-grandmother in Connecticut. I have no idea what they are made of, or by whom.

Any ideas? Appearance is of gold or gold plate, but what do I know?

I will have a jeweler look at them this week.

Thanks to Gerard for forwarding this:

Bob Dylan's Lost 1970 Gem 'Pretty Saro'

Holistic admissions policies at Berkeley

Born this way? Transsexuals

Bad Weather Reducing Chevy Volt Reduced By $5,000

Light-Rail to Nowhere: Honolulu, Hawaii's Train Boondoggle

Obamacare: Aetna Pulls Out of Maryland, Connecticut

Busybody Politics

John King: Why Benghazi matters

Benghazi: Is the Alleged CIA Scandal Real?

Yep, This Sounds Like Classic Workplace Violence to Me…

National Review Misses Most Obvious Point in Taking on "Prison/Industrial Complex"

Organizing for Action pitches help for Democrats

The need for more direct action against the GOP establishment

Another ‘Why Won’t Those Horrible Republicans Learn from Romney and Move to the Middle Already?’ Media Story

Daily Kos not too pleased with Obamacare

He's back to being Don again

Replica of Paris in China becomes ghost town

A new t-shirt easily found up in Yankeeland. I told my wife this is what I want for my birthday, so we got me one. It's all I want for my birthday. I'll wear it in Italy, with my straw Stetson, red shorts, and white sneakers, and nobody will dare bother me. Not even the Somali scum.

$12.95. She got off easy, except for the cost of the Italy trip.

A Red Hunting Poodle.

I have one. Don't you? Smarter than humans.

The 1 percent ruined love: Marriage is for the rich

How Bad Is the Ammo Shortage? This Bad

The IRS Attack on Political Speech

The Indebted States of America - States and localities owe far, far more than their citizens know.

Global Warming as Faith

Note to Congress: Lock Down The NSA’s Data

Federal 'nudge squad' led by 20-something wunderkind gears up to change Americans' behaviors – for our own good

Where Americans want to live these days

Why are homicide laws different for women & men?

Just Spread Detroit's Failure, Why Don't Ya?

Indians vs. Moonbats

Here's Why I Think Jeff Bezos Bought The Washington Post

Not from The Onion: The UK does biofuel - with American trees!

Thanks to all for keeping the "content" flowing.

I am certain that this sign was not there when Thoreau hiked the beautiful beach from Chatham to P'town. BTW, the alcohol rule is ignored and unenforced. There is plenty of brew in those beach coolers.

Note how "crowded" this ocean beach is.

While helping my brother clean out my parents' garage, going through shelves of tools, boxes of drill bits, old hinges, misc loose nails and screws, washers, screw-drivers, hand-drills, boxes of what-nots, etc, along with more garden tools than you can imagine even existed, I came across this old cedar cigar box full of mixed nails.

I know where that box of nails came from. That came from my grandfather's garage. My Mom's Dad. He kept all categories of little things in cigar boxes. He smoked in his office in town of course, but outdoors too, even while scything hay or on horseback, but stuck with cigarettes indoors so as not to offend the womenfolk. Pall Malls. Still delicious cigarettes.

So what about L. Osterweis? Well, he made cigars in New Haven, CT, with "South American" (Cuban probably) filler and Connecticut wrappers. Cigar people know that Connecticut still grows the best wrapper tobacco in the world.

The Osterweis company sold off their assets in 1954. From this Yale snippet, it seems that the Osterweis family did pretty well in the tobacco biz for a couple of generations. Even sent a kid or two to Yale.

Photo of Semipalmated Sandpipers from Being a sandpiper - Animals have thoughts, feelings and personality. Why have we taken so long to catch up with animal consciousness?

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23

1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

1:12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem,

1:13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.

1:14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

2:18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me

2:19 --and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.

2:20 So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun,

2:21 because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.

2:22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?

2:23 For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.

It seems to make me feel better to post and write about death and house clean-out, so I will. I guess it's a slice of life up here in Yankeeland.

Here's a small stack of the number of books I retrieved from Dad's bookshelves. This might keep me busy until Thanksgiving or Christmas. I read Landscape and Memory once, when it first came out, but it wouldn't hurt me to read it again.

I have always wanted to read Wilson's Prelude, but it never fell into my hands. His classic. Dad loved Edmund Wilson. I'm not sure yet how much I need to know about Turner.

One of the most refreshing summer drinks ever invented.

Take a highball glass or large water glass filled with ice cubes, then fill halfway with lemonade, then sweetened iced tea to fill so it looks a bit layered. Slice of lemon. Straw. That's it.

Add some gin or vodka and it's a Dirty Arnold Palmer, but it really isn't necessary.

Deeply heart-warming: A Littel History

The Lightning is a Yellow Fork

The Lightning is a yellow Fork
From Tables in the sky
By inadvertent fingers dropt
The awful Cutlery
Of mansions never quite disclosed
And never quite concealed
The Apparatus of the Dark
To ignorance revealed.