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.
I don’t remember what the “Occupy” movement was about. I remember being really mad about stuff, and others being mad at the same thing, I just can’t remember what it was. I went to a few rallies, yelled at things with a megaphone, became a Marxist for a few weeks, and I threw a brick through the windshield of a PT Cruiser, but for the life of me I can’t remember why. It just made so much sense at the time. Something about numbers, there were definitely numbers involved. I might be off here, but I believe 1% of the population currently owns 99% of the nation’s wealth, and 99% of the population only owns like 12% of the nation’s wealth. Which is much too low. Or too high. I don’t know. Anyways, the semantics aren’t important – I’m mad, and I want things to change, immediately. And my straw fell into the juice box, and now I’m thirsty.
Thank God for the government, saving our children from demonic cupcakes
Beyond ‘Beyond Stagnation’- Dissent’s symposium shows the limits of the Left’s thinking about our economic problems:
“Beyond stagnation” is indeed where we, Right and Left alike, want to be. Conservatives can try to educate the Left and those who are attracted by its policies and rhetoric, and we can try to defeat them in the political sphere, which is of course necessary — but it is not sufficient. As a matter of political reality, we are at some point simply going to have to understand why a not-unsubstantial part of the electorate finds the Left’s policies attractive; as I have argued at some length, the conventional, popular conservative explanation — that the Left appeals to the lazy, the juvenile, and the unambitious — is at the very least incomplete, if not flatly wrong. Conservatives’ more thorough rooting in the dismal facts of supply and demand, scarcity, and tradeoffs may give us an intellectual head start, which would be much more exciting if this were a race. But it isn’t a race at all — it is a journey that all of us are going to have to take together.
Caring
for Ebola Patients Deeply Scary For Health Care Workers - See more at:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/02/caring-for-ebola-patients-deeply-scary.html#sthash.DfwkQFJ1.dpuf
It's summer squash season around here, a two -to-three- month squash explosion during which little zucchinis turn into 1 1/2-foot Zucchis seemingly overnight.
Besides cold soups, it's fun to stuff those big zucchis. Google Stuffed Zucchini to find tons of recipes. Best ones I've had use seafood stuffings with clams and shrimp.
Scoop out the pulp, fill with stuffing, wrap in foil and bake until done. Brown the top at the end.
A "zucchini" (singular, zucchino) is an immature Zucca (gourd).
14:13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns.
14:14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.
14:15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves."
14:16 Jesus said to them, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat."
14:17 They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish."
14:18 And he said, "Bring them here to me."
14:19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.
14:20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.
14:21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur.
We only have fragments of Archilochus' lyric poetry (ie accompanied by a lyre), which have been found over the years on shreds of papyrus. Here are a few of those fragments:
- My one great talent lies in making those who wrong me suffer horribly.
- I am the servant of Ares, Lord of Battle, and I know the lovely gift of the Muses.
- Some Thracian is delighted with the shield, which beside a bush I left unwillingly, an excellent and perfect armament. Myself I saved! Why should that shield be important to me? The hell with it! I'll get another, just as good.
- Not many bowstrings will be stretched nor slingshot flying thick, when Ares makes his killing field on the plain. Then it will be the grievous work of the sword. They are the Lords of this kind of battle - The spear-famed Lords of Euboea.
- I long for a fight with you, just as a thirsty man longs for drink.
- The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
- There is no country fair and desirable or lovely, like that around the banks of the Siris.
- I have no interest in the business of Gyges and all his gold, nor has such envy ever grasped me, nor do I feel envious of the works of the gods, nor have I love for high rulership, for all these things are very far from my eyes.
Archilochus, the first great Greek poet we know after Homer and Hesiod, is thought to have been a soldier, maybe a mercenary, possibly of the nobility - and the inventor if iambic verse. He was a master of meter, and seems to have been a cranky and vengeful SOB who never got over not being permitted to marry the gal he wanted. His vengeance drove her family to suicide. He died in battle, as he no doubt would have wanted to do. Not the type to die in a bed.
Similar to Mark Twain's "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still trying to get its pants on."
A taxicab's day - This visualization displays the data for one random NYC yellow taxi on a single day in 2013. See where it operated, how much money it made, and how busy it was over 24 hours.
There is no new math, or old math for that matter. No matter how many other approaches other people try, how much mewling is transcribed on the Internet about socialization, or how many tennis balls you put on the bottoms of the legs of your kindergarten chairs, it's all wrong and it doesn't work. Like a volume knob that makes the radio louder when you turn it clockwise, and diminishes the sound when it's turned counter-clockwise until it clicks off, the design was perfect on the first attempt and cannot be improved. Every variation after that will be worse. People who want to break new ground without doing anything constructive will change the way that knob operates to become notable for the novelty, but it's always worse.
Healthy skepticism – or realism – about the nature of politics is foreign to many advocates of government intervention. These advocates believe in miracles - and, in addition, they too often reason inconsistently about the play of incentives and the incompleteness of information across different institutional settings.
Grilled marinated pork chops and grilled asparagus with some steamed yellow squash on the side. Here's a tip: There's no need to cook the heck out of a nice 1 1/2-inch-thick Costco pork chop anymore. Trichinosis is a thing of the past. Pink inside is perfect.
I was doing some cleaning up to clear some space for my computer expert who needed to do a few essential jobs for me. Had to move some things out of the way, eg vacuum cleaner, book piles, chairs, piles of papers, baby stroller, etc.
Also two gun cases. That's what did it. Gun cases mean, to him, the best fun in the world. Find the bird! Reacts the same way when I pull boots out of a closet. I hate to disappoint a good dog, but he is going to Cape Cod in a few weeks and he'll get plenty of salty-dog swimming with the family out there. No hunting, alas.
NEW ENGLAND’S BLUE-STATE BLUES - Once known for its stiff-lipped prudence, the region is now a case study in fiscal insanity:
If not for the NYC bedroom communities in Fairfield County, Connecticut would probably be as destitute as Rhode Island. The Nutmeg State has the forty-second worst tax climate and the forty-fifth worst business climate in the nation.
And what little life remains in the Connecticut economy is being squashed by its monolithically liberal lawmakers.
After Obama became a U.S. Senator, his wife, Michelle, told a reporter, “Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”
140,000 used books. Impossible not to find some fun surprises. I tend to focus on out-of-print folksy memoirs of wars and of Yankee life, plus some architecture books. And a few thrillers
In two hours, I splurged and spent a grand total of $17.50. Then we got hot dogs at Rawley's in Fairfield - best hot dogs in the world.Give them a try - right off I-95. Trust me on this because everyone I have ever taken there loves it, including Mrs. BD.
We must be stupid. Year after year, we invest gardening effort to produce delicious home-grown varieties - and, if we're lucky, get to eat them for maybe 6 weeks. And part of that time, you are elsewhere.
Does that make sense? No, but it makes hobby-sense in the same way that trout-fishing does. Hobbies are not economic - which is why we term them hobbies. Do the math.
All that those good garden tomatoes do, for a few weeks from August to September, is to make you hate store-bought cardboard ones and restaurant ones for the rest of the year. Nobody in my large gardening family has harvested a single tomato yet this summer (OK, it's been a cold summer due to climate change), not even a single cherry tomato.
There are lots of vegetable crops one can grow successfully up here, and harvest sometime between June/July to frost in October: rhubarb, peas, beans, summer squash, winter squash and pumpkin, greens of all sorts, fruit trees of course and grapes, berries, root crops, onions, cucumber, corn, etc. Why bother with all that when those things are dirt-cheap at the store? What we really grow best in our gardens are fat deer, fat chipmunks, fat rabbits, and fat woodchucks.
Tomatoes? Not a one yet. I love a tomato sandwich: white bread, mayo, salt and pepper, and fat slices of tomato hot from the garden.
Why do we persist? I think it's about the power of intermittent positive reinforcement from a few of those tomato sandwiches. That's how fishing and hunting work, too.
We New England Yankees may have no sense, but we have our traditions and our seasonal habits which are the fabric of our lives, rational or not. Well, not rational at all if you value your free time above zero.
One tip for those in my situation: Buy big fat beefsteak tomatoes at the supermarket and grill them, sautee them, or bake them. Some flavor appears. Better than nothing.
"Fishiest of all fishy paces was the Try Pots, which well deserves its name, for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, til you begin to look for fish bones coming through your clothes. The area before the house was paved with clamshells. Mrs. Hussey wore a necklace of polished codfish vertebrae and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in superior old shark skin. There was a fish flavor to the milk, too, which I could not account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fisherman's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking very slipshod, I assure ye."
Herman Melville, Moby Dick. It is The Great American Novel. There is no need to try to compete with him, so don't bother trying. Give up. That job is done.
13:31 He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;
13:32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
13:33 He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
13:45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;
13:46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
13:47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind;
13:48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.
13:49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous
13:50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
13:51 "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes."
13:52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."
The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his Heaven - All's right with the world!
Those famous lines are from Browning's 1841Pippa Passes. It's Pippa's song. Pippa is a silk mill worker in Asolo, and has three holidays per year. The poem goes through the morning, noon, evening and night of Pippa's day off. She treasures her precious free time. This is from "Morning":
Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, A mite of my twelve-hours treasure, The least of thy gazes or glances, (Be they grants thou art bound to, or gifts above measure) One of thy choices, or one of thy chances, (Be they tasks God imposed thee, or freaks at thy pleasure) My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure, Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me! Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing, Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going, As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood All shall be mine! But thou must treat me not As the prosperous are treated, these who live At hand here, and enjoy the higher lot, In readiness to take what thou wilt give, And free to let alone what thou refusest; For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest Me, who am only Pippa, old-year's sorrow, Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow. All other men and women that this earth Belongs to, who all days alike possess, Make general plenty cure particular dearth, Get more joy, one way, if another, less: Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven, Sole light that helps me through the year thy suns! Try, now! Take Asolo's Four Happiest Ones And let thy morning rain on that superb Great haughty Ottima; can rain disturb Her Sebald's homage? All the while thy rain Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane, He will but press the closer, breathe more warm Against her cheek; how should she mind the storm? And, morning past, if mid-day shed a gloom O
O'er Jules and Phene, what care bride and groom Save for their dear selves? Tis their marriage-day; And while they leave church, and go home their way, Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be Sunbeams and pleasant weather spite of thee! Then, for another trial, obscure thy eve With mist, will Luigi and his mother grieve? The Lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth, She in her age, as Luigi in his youth, For true content? The cheerful town, warm, close, And safe, the sooner that thou art morose, Receives them! And yet once again, out-break In storm at night on Monsignor, they make Such stir about, whom they expect from Rome To visit Asolo, his brother's home, And say here masses proper to release A soul from pain, what storm dares hurt his peace? Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard! But Pippa just one such mischance would spoil Her day that lightens the next twelve-month's toil At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil! And here I let time slip for nought! Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam caught With a single splash from my ewer! You that would mock the best pursuer, Was my basin over-deep? One splash of water ruins you asleep, And up, up fleet your brilliant bits Wheeling and counterwheeling, Reeling, broken beyond healing Now grow together on the ceiling! That will task your wits! Whoever quenched fire first, hoped to see Morsel after morsel flee As merrily, as giddily . . . Meantime, what lights my sunbeam on, Where settles by degrees the radiant cripple? Oh, is it surely blown, my martagon? New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple, Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk bird's poll! Be sure if corals, branching 'neath the ripple Of ocean, bud there, fairies watch unroll Such turban-flowers; I say, such lamps disperse Thick red flame through that dusk green universe! I am queen of thee, floweret; And each fleshy blossom Preserve I not (safer Than leaves that enbower it, Or shells that embosom) From weevil and chafer? Laugh through my pane, then; solicit the bee; Gibe him, be sure; and, in midst of thy glee, Love thy queen, worship me!
Worship whom else? For am I not, this day, Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day? My morning, noon, eve, night how spend my day? To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk, The whole year round, to earn just bread and milk: But, this one day, I have leave to go, And play out my fancy's fullest games; I may fancy all day and it shall be so
The entire piece is here. Yes, Browning specialized in the dramatic monologue. I can easily imagine Pippa as a one-person stage performance. Off topic, but I always got a kick out of the name of Pippa Passes, KY, aka Caney Creek.
Feeling old? Not Dark Yet (1997). It's some sort of personal hymn or prayer, I think. Just another Dylan masterpiece, hauntingly-rendered, and it can bring a tear if you aren't careful.
A Kate Bush 
Where Do 
It's summer squash season around here, a two -to-three- month squash explosion during which little zucchinis turn into 1 1/2-foot Zucchis seemingly overnight.
Photo via 
Image from 
Photo: A friend's pic of a fruit dish for a baby shower 
The two best uses of big Quahogs are Stuffies and Chowda. 
It took me a little while to realize why.
We must be stupid. Year after year, we invest gardening effort to produce delicious home-grown varieties - and, if we're lucky, get to eat them for maybe 6 weeks. And part of that time, you are elsewhere.
Politicizing