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.
Mint is a weed if you let it loose in your garden. It needs to be grown in pots, or out loose in a field but it is also one of the most pleasant flavorings which exist.
In the eastern Med, it's a major herb. In Turkey and environs, they mix it with yoghurt for a sauce for roast meat and fish. In Sicily, they served boiled taters with chopped mint. Quite pleasant, and an improvement on parsley. No recipe needed.
An occasional Mint Julep is pleasant, too, and I like to dry the leaves coated with sugar for treats on top of ice cream. Have to give those arabs credit for what they added to Med cuisine - but even more credit to the food explorers of the Americas: tomato, potato, squash, maize, avocado, peppers, beans, cocoa, etc., etc. These things were worth more than the gold, in the end, from a culinary standpoint. What the heck did they eat without those things?
...liberty is not an economic good, but an existential one. The economic good is a mere bonus. The argument that liberty is good for economic activity or for growth of the system feels lowly and commercial (an argument used by consequentialists). If you were a wild animal, would you elect to be in a zoo because the economy is better over there than in the wild? Liberty is my raison d’être.
I heard one, and finally saw him high in an Ash Tree, while working with an outdoor work team on Saturday morning.
Probably breeding around here, but possibly passing through. His call is said to resemble that of "a Robin who had singing lessons." Great description.
This not-uncommon Eastern songbird, which likes deciduous woodlands, is like a large finch. They are even known to visit bird-feeders sometimes. The male is dramatic, while the female looks like a large sparrow with a large beak.
You can read more about them, and listen to their song, here.
Reading Plutarch (especially in English), is a delight. Plutarch on Demosthenes.
When you read his biographies, you learn as much about Plutarch (c. 75 AD) as you do about his subjects. His somewhat-contrived Parallel Lives was a best-seller of its time, and it is still selling.
1:6 So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?"
1:7 He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.
1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
1:9 When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
1:10 While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.
1:11 They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."
1:12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away.
1:13 When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.
1:14 All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.
A speck that would have been beneath my sight On any but a paper sheet so white Set off across what I had written there. And I had idly poised my pen in air To stop it with a period of ink When something strange about it made me think, This was no dust speck by my breathing blown, But unmistakably a living mite With inclinations it could call its own. It paused as with suspicion of my pen, And then came racing wildly on again To where my manuscript was not yet dry; Then paused again and either drank or smelt-- With loathing, for again it turned to fly. Plainly with an intelligence I dealt. It seemed too tiny to have room for feet, Yet must have had a set of them complete To express how much it didn't want to die. It ran with terror and with cunning crept. It faltered: I could see it hesitate; Then in the middle of the open sheet Cower down in desperation to accept Whatever I accorded it of fate. I have none of the tenderer-than-thou Collectivistic regimenting love With which the modern world is being swept. But this poor microscopic item now! Since it was nothing I knew evil of I let it lie there till I hope it slept.
I have a mind myself and recognize Mind when I meet with it in any guise No one can know how glad I am to find On any sheet the least display of mind.
My nonprofit for schoolteachers, Stossel in the Classroom, offers free videos that introduce students to economics. This year, we ran an essay contest inviting students to write on the topic "Food Nannies: Who Decides What You Eat?"
I was happy to see that many students understood that this debate is about more than safety. It's really about freedom. Sixteen-year-old Caroline Clausen won $1,000 for her essay, which contained this sarcastic passage: "Congress shall have the power to regulate the mixing, baking, serving, labeling, selling and consumption of food. Did James Madison's secretary forget to copy this provision into the Constitution?"
There is genius in action here. Even he has no idea where his words came from, which is what I have heard from others blessed with astonishing inspiration.
All modern presidents of both parties have been too much with us. Talking incessantly, they have put politics unhealthily at the center of America’s consciousness.
George, they have put government unhealthily at the center of American life
The final stop on our 2-week driving travels was Syracuse. I neglected a lot of Sicilian food in my previous Sicily posts, but I will catch up with that below the fold along with other interesting stuff.
The links to my previous Sicily posts in the recent weeks:
Over the past year, Mrs. BD and I have been listening to NPR in the car, and I have been back to reading The New Yorker every week after boycotting them for many years.
Their appeal is their substantive content, not their political messaging. When it comes to news or politics, just mute the radio or skip the article to protect the heart from sudden, dangerous blood pressure rises. They each still have lots of other interesting stuff for the enjoyment of the effete and the elite like us Yankee rednecks.
Do I feel that NPR or PBS should exist? No, not unless entirely listener- or other-sponsored.
Way I think about it, Maggie's Farm has interesting stuff too, besides politics.
Our political discourse assumes, sometimes implicitly but often explicitly, that there exists a predictable, linear, straightforward relationship between the formal enactment of a given policy and the real-world outcomes that will be experienced as a result of it. This is a convenient fiction, and sometimes even the authors of that fiction roll their eyes at their own work, as when the Congressional Budget Office scored the Affordable Care Act and then added the caveat that its analysts did not believe that the policy would be implemented the way the law’s authors intended and the White House promised, thereby communicating that its report should be consumed only in saline solution.
Politics is mostly words about words, but it has real-world consequences, and death is not an uncommon one. The truth, which in Washington is an unspeakable truth, is that almost the entirety of our conversation about politics is predicated on a fundamental error in our understanding of reality. Unlike a certain Entity with Whom presidents and senators sometimes seem to confuse themselves, politicians cannot speak reality into being. (“Let there be . . . health care.”) The situation at the VA should not surprise us; what did we expect, having no way of even knowing what we should have expected? This outcome was at least as likely as any other, and certainly more likely than one in which reality matched policy through some obscure divine office unknown to us.
...climate scientists are trying to create some kind of weird world where model results have some sort of independent reality, where in fact the model results should be trusted over measurements when the two diverge. If this is science -- which it is not -- but if it were, then I would be anti-science.
Re-posted because I failed to follow my own instructions and my rhubarb patch bolted. Dealt with it today - a bit too late.
I am a fan of Rhubarb. It's tangy. Best rhubarb dish? Rhubarb cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Rhubarb won't grow much in the southern US. It requires cold winters and does not enjoy long, hot summers. A good thing about the plants is that they are perennial and last for many years. In fact, a rhubarb patch will last forever if you divide the plants every few years. They are fairly heavy feeders and like a good dose of manure regularly. The leaves are so dense that a patch doesn't really grow weeds.
When I was a kid, my Mom had the rhubarb patch right outside the horse barn, and she would routinely toss some horse poop on it. The fresh poop did not seem to bother the rhubarb.
The only problem I have had with growing rhubarb is its bolting and rapidly going to seed. That needs to be prevented by cutting off the flowering stalks promptly before they grow tall.
Down Under, the Immigration "Rules Have Changed"; "Anyone seeking to illegally enter Australia … will never make Australia home
Making School Lunches Healthier Doesn't Mean Kids Will Eat Them - A new study found that less than half of students took a vegetable from the lunch line and ate some of it.
We attended a family funeral on Saturday down in NJ. All of the vets' graves had flags. There were so many that it looked like a field of flags. The husband, my uncle-in-law, of the sweet gal who died was in the Normandy invasion, and in the war until it ended. By the end of the war, he was one of four surviving from his original platoon. Still in good shape. His war stories are remarkable - taking a castle! I sat next to a cousin-in-law USAF Col. at the funeral lunch. Vietnam Vet. All Irish, all warm and amusing - and all fairly sober.
2300 Americans died in that invasion. Did the Sicilians want us there? Of course not.
At that point, I think it was the most massive invasion by sea in history.
I reflect on all of the historical invasions of Sicily by sea - the Greeks, the Phoenicians, the Moslems, the Norman Vikings, the Spanish (barely an invasion), and the take-over by Italy (again, hardly a serious invasion but Italy did send military forces to annex Sicily). Uniquely, the Allies didn't invade to own it and had no aspirations to, but it was a strategic, temporary necessity.
(Reader reminded me that I omitted the Romans and the Byzantines. Too much to keep track of. Everybody wanted to own Sicily, and all of that history is still right there, right down to the Phoenician fortifications, the Greek temples, the Norman castles, the Roman cities, and the couscous and the mosques - and even Greek temples - converted to churches.)
Image is the historic flag of Sicily - most interesting flag in the world.
17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.
17:23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
17:25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,
17:27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us.
17:28 For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'
17:29 Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.
17:30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
17:31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
Mint is a weed if you let it loose in your garden. It needs to be grown in pots, or out loose in a field but it is also one of the most pleasant flavorings which exist.
Blue marlin 
The 
I heard one, and finally saw him high in an Ash Tree, while working with an outdoor work team on Saturday morning. 
Warning label for 
A Considerable Speck 
A book: 
Dallas Willard's
I forget where I found that image (ok, reader reminds that it was our friend 
The good news for today: 
Since it's Sicily Month at Maggie's, on this Decoration Day weekend I am reviewing the