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.
We barely made it out of Yankeeland in a blizzard last week (thanks to our fine drive service with 4 WD Lexi limos), and barely made it home last night in another snowstorm (thanks, fine driver).
I will post some of my travelogue pics and fun info from the only Caribbean island and the only elite boutique hotel (35 rooms) there that Mrs. BD likes (no computers, no WiFi, no TV, no cell service, no pool, no lifeguards, no clocks, no A/C, no windows - all open to the tropical breeze - no phones, no salespeople, no elevators because all the totally-private and jungle-surrounded little villas are one-floor, the best diving and snorkeling in the New World - and you can leave all of your valuables on the beach - wallet, watch, cameras, etc all day without any concern, for hours) when I get organized.
In fact, this pic is a mid-1700s French sugar cane plantation manager's house, now embedded in jungle a 45-minute jungle hike from one of the resort's two little private beaches. Thanks to the mountainous volcanic terrain (unlike most of the flat coral-based Lesser Antilles), St. Lucia has a rain forest habitat but it happily has mostly sunny days with occasional spitting light showers which you ignore.
We're having 30 friends over here at Maggie's Farm HQ for a casual wild game dinner tomorrow night. Perfect for a 10 degree (F) winter night. I'll have all three fireplaces burning.
Three of us guys now do the cooking for these events, and lucky are the invitees.
Hor's doevres: Slices of rare charcoal-grilled wild venison filet mignon and slices of rare Canada goose breast, en croute, with a dab of horseradish.
Entrees: One hunting pal is making his favorite venison curry with rice. My Louisiana-born and bred hunting buddy is making wild duck gumbo. I am making wild duck breast with dried cherry sauce, with cheese grits. Or maybe a warm duck breast salad. Can't decide.
Somebody offered to bring a big salad, and somebody else graciously offered to bring home-made desserts. I supply the beer, and everybody will bring a bottle or three of red wine.
I'll provide pretty good cigars too, for them what wants 'em. In my experience, women never complain about guys and cigars when men do the cooking and party planning. We'll have to set up a few extra tables in the living room to do this, because this ain't no palace (but not a trailer either). The persnickety Mrs. BD just hates it when a plate of gumbo or a tankard of Pinot Noir gets spilled on her furniture.
Everybody likes pancakes, especially with a side of bacon, sausage, and/or fried eggs.
Readers know that I like to throw a handful of frozen cranberries into the batter, and that I am particular about Maple Syrup - Grade B, not Grade A.
I also like to make cornmeal pancakes (as in photo). I tend to overweight the cornmeal/flour ratio, and I like to throw some canned corn or frozen corn into the batter. Good stuff.
Kids love it. They will grow strong, healthy, average or above-average, and attractive on this feed.
By the way, have you ever used molasses on pancakes? It's delicious, especially on cornmeal pancakes.
5:13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
5:14 "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.
5:15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
5:17 "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
5:18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
5:19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
I'm looking forward to visiting there this Spring.
Sicily has had its native tribes, then the Greeks, the Phoenecians/Carthaginians, the Romans, the Muslims, the Normans, and is currently occupied by European powers. What next?
Gourmet pizza nowadays often comes without tomatoes and with all sorts of other toppings, but it was the basic tomato-mozzarella mix that made pizza so popular, beginning in the 1950s, in the US. It was made for beer.
That basic format relied on the importation of the tomato - originally a yellow fruit, the "pomi d'oro," from Mexico to Europe in the 1500s. Cortez brought more than gold to Europe.
From its Greek origins to Chicago's Pizza Uno, the story of pizza is about immigration, entrepreneurialism, and invention. Now, "93 percent of Americans eat pizza at least once a month."
Modern pizza originated in Italy, although the style favored by Americans is more a friend than a relative of the traditional Neapolitan pie. Residents of Naples took the idea of using bread as a blank slate for relishes from the Greeks, whose bakers had been dressing their wares with oils, herbs, and cheese since the time of Plato. The Romans refined the recipe, developing a delicacy known as placenta, a sheet of fine flour topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves. Neapolitans earned the right to claim pizza as their own by inserting a tomato into the equation. Europeans had long shied away from the New World fruit, fearing it was plump with poison. But the intrepid citizens of Naples discovered the tomato was not only harmless but delicious, particularly when paired with pizza.
Cheese, the crowning ingredient, was not added until 1889, when the Royal Palace commissioned the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three contenders he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pie swathed in the colors of the Italian flag: red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella).
Read the whole American Pie at Am. Heritage. 1960s image of Miss Rheingold (a bigger deal in NY than Miss America) from the article. Extra-dry Rheingold Beer - the beer of New York baseball, brewed on the east side of Manhattan until the 1970s.
Parrish (1870-1966) was an enormously popular New Hampshire illustrator/artist whose prints and posters are readily available. For me, they are highly sentimental and corny in a charming way. He frequently decorated his landscapes with lovely nymphettes. This is River in Ascutney. That is Mount Ascutney in the background, and the CT River.
My Christmas present to Mrs. BD was piano lessons from a fine teacher who comes to the house. Mrs. BD had lessons in youth and had an incredible music education later. She is music-oriented, but now can only easily play basic things - Happy Birthday and Christmas carols and Auld Lang Syne - she reads music but wants and needs to be able to play chords, jazz riffs, serious pieces, etc., especially since we replaced the old and now have my late Dad's Steinway baby grand. What a sound! It fills ye olde cabin with rich noise. I don't care about missed notes or the sound of practicing. I love to hear it all, including the "damn, damn, damn."
Barking dogs, "damns" from the pianny, drier thumping, vacuum cleaner roaring, the scullery maids dropping pots, doorbell ringing, Blue Jays squawking outside, a young 'un yelling "Where's my sneakers?" - the lovely sounds of home sweet home.
Mrs. BD "gets" music, but pretty much dislikes pop music, country music, rock - and Dylan. She's not a snob, just finds them all annoyingly juvenile, unrefined, and stupid - except for a little Motown. What she loves is opera - and anything you can dance to. She wins Charleston competitions, and that's saying a lot, because the youth these days are into vigorous retro dance.
I am musically-retarded and tone-deaf but, in my wasted youth, a little cannabis plus a history of music course helped me hear, seemed to open my ears and, for some reason, that effect has lasted despite being drug-free since college. I still have to close my eyes to listen. You can get WQXR via the internets. Good fun.
When I grew up, we had an upright in the kitchen for kids' lessons, and a Grand or Baby Grand for the grown-ups in the parlor. I am told that the life span of a fine piano is 40-50 years if kept away from heat, sunlight, and given proper humidity - and then it's worthless junk, useless if not pretentious decor to put pictures on, or a $20,000 factory refurbishing. Unlike fine violins, old pianos are basically garbage which you have to pay somebody to get rid of. I placed Dad's in a northern corner of the parlor which has no nearby heat source except a fireplace that we only light up about 15 times per year for a few hours, for holidays and winter parties.
I am going to coat those windows with that UV stuff to protect the wood. It's around 25 years old, so it still has a good life left in it. My Dad would bang out Mozart for an hour a day on this machine, during cocktail hour. The good old days. "Damn, damn, damn" when he missed a note. Mom would do Christmas songs and children's songs with nary a "damn."
The previous family piano was a black Chickering Grand piano. Like all pianos, it aged and was junked.
Those excellent Legacy speakers? I can play pretty good Bach on the CD player and my old Denon record player. Recorded music mostly destroyed the American family music culture which was based on home-made music. Well, that plus radio and TV all turned Americans into inert and passive blobs.
OK class, take out a pen and piece of paper, I am going to tell you a bit about ICD 10.
First, don't be alarmed by the prophets of doom who say you docs will be required to use this carefully crafted taxonomy in order for the insurers to refuse to compensate you for your services. This is true. I had dinner with an oncologist friend who is in bankruptcy because even though his patient's insurance company gave prior approval for a $100,000 course of chemotherapy they maintained that did not obligate them to actually pay for the cost. He already had, and on multiple occasions.
Back to ICD 10. This document will allow you to kick back and have some laughs about the conditions you likely will not be called upon to treat. The Monty Python crew had a field day constructing this and they've arranged for the ICD 10 office to be right next door to the Department of Silly Walks. Viz:
V9733XA: Sucked into a jet engine, initial encounter V9733XD: Sucked into jet engine subsequent encounter (Should this person be allowed on runways?) V9733XS: Sucked into jet engine, sequelae ( this is for the litigators)
But, don't overlook, Index to External Causes of Injury Accident E919.1 Bore, earth drilling or mining
Land or seabed E919.7 Bulldozer E909.9 Cataclysmic: Earth surface movement or eruption
So, be grateful if you only have to deal with intangibles and won't get blood on your shoes.
I'll be back soon to discuss Scott Stossel's heroic battle with anxiety and transgressive therapists.
Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It reads:
A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazingly appealing. She believed him to be her dream guy and soul mate so much that she fell in love with him right then and there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.
Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?
A good friend left off this load of split Beech last weekend. I have to unload it, which is fine. An excellent gift. Beech is heavy as lead and as hard as nails, so hard that it destroyed saws so foresters left it alone until power saws came along.
All of the majestic old Beeches around here are dying of a bark fungus.
Somehow I completely missed Dylan's 2012 album Tempest.
From one review:
Tempest is certainly his strongest and most distinctive album in a decade. The sound is a distillation of the jump blues, railroad boogie, archaic country and lush folk that Dylan has been honing since 2001's Love and Theft, played with swagger and character by his live ensemble and snappily produced by the man himself. A notoriously impatient recording artist, Dylan seems to have found a style that suits his working methods. Drawing on the early 20th-century Americana that first grabbed his attention as a young man (and that he celebrated in his Theme Time Radio Hour shows) and surrounding himself with slick, intuitive musicians capable of charging these nostalgic grooves with contemporary energy, his late-period albums seem a continuation of his tours, as if he rolls right off the stage and into the studio and just keeps rocking.
The message here will be what it was in 2008 and to a lesser extent in 2012 — a chance to make history, this time by electing the first female US president. In fact, that’s all Hillary has. She has no track record of significant accomplishment in her eight years as a US Senator, and nothing at all to recommend her from her four years as Secretary of State. Even a Clinton ally like Lanny Davis couldn’t come up with a single data point in a tenure bookended by the “reset button” embarrassment and the debacle in Benghazi. Despite her outsize power in the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton is simply a weak candidate and a mediocre-at-best campaigner — and that’s why Democrats should be hitting the panic button.
... if the poor pay attention, they can learn from the rich and become better off themselves by investing in education, getting and staying married, and working full-time.
Do most Americans energetically pursue wealth? I don't think they do. People have other desires besides wealth, fortunately. Of course, few would refuse a windfall. Even Bill Ayers lives high on the hog, on his family fortune.
Here's the place where your editor Bird Dog spends many hours in work and study. Kids and wives wife were never really welcome in here except to search for books to read - but dogs, friends, and cigars are always welcome. No TV in here, thank you, but there is a radio and CD player.
I was experimenting with camera settings, and this was not really as sharp as I was aiming for. I was hoping to be able to capture the antique Eskimo animal carvings on the mantle, but it does give a general idea of The Inner Sanctum on a dark, snowy winter evening. A comfortable if humble study, perfect for me:
The American Robin is semi-migratory (populations edge southwards), and can be found almost anywhere in the US in wintertime. Here, our winter Robins are probably Canucks, while our local summer breeders are probably in South Carolina.
In the northern US, they live on old berries and fruits in the winter, usually foraging in flocks. Sometimes they get drunk on fermented rotten fruit. They do not eat bird seed.
This pic was from a readera while back, taken, as I recall, in Lenox, MA:
Football
Is Top Sport in U.S.: 1,088,158 High School Players - See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/football-top-sport-us-1088158-high-school-players#sthash.hjKC0UA2.dpuf
Charter
High Schools Increase Earnings and Educational Achievement - See more
at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/02/charter-high-schools-increase-earnings-and-educational-achievement.html#sthash.shWRN1wD.dpuf
Panelist
at Podesta's Think Tank on Common Core: 'The Children Belong to All of
Us' - See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/video/cnsnews/panelist-podestas-think-tank-common-core-children-belong-all-us#sthash.LUCyJ9E4.dpuf
ABC’s Slime-Time News- Did flashy reporting go too far when it stirred up hysteria over a common beef product?
Michael Barone: How ObamaCare Misreads America - The Washington elites who designed the law must be bewildered: Why doesn't everyone behave as they do?
Science changed dramatically in the 1970s, when the reward structure in the profession began to revolve around the acquisition of massive amounts of taxpayer funding that was external to the normal budgets of the universities and federal laboratories. In climate science, this meant portraying the issue in dire terms, often in alliance with environmental advocacy organizations. Predictably, scientists (and their institutions) became addicted to the wealth, fame, and travel in the front of the airplane...
Just this morning we were thinking about the former Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. He’s written books, has a heck of a CV, and has received oodles of honors from very prestigious institutions. And yet there’s something missing from the résumé of the Job Czar: he’s never had a job in the private sector. It’s a remarkable thing, and atypical of US history, though quite typical of today’s utopians.
New York’s failed expedition into governmental nannying is symptomatic of its class structure. Rich people’s scolding is really a form of snobbery masquerading as concern for poor people’s well-being. Rather than admit that the underclass repulses them, wealthy New Yorkers try to strip away their repulsive behavior by force of law. Expect the trend to continue through the de Blasio years.
It's the time of year when people fuss over nailing down their schedule for the year. Choosing and planning takes a lot of time and thought.
We have a few good ones lined up this year - one a lazy grand luxe, one an exploration of Sicily (pick up Costco rental auto at the Palermo airport, and head on out, meander all around, hike up Mount Etna, take a ferry to Malta, probably get lost a few times despite the GPS, then eventually fly out from Catania), and the annual family reunion in Cape Cod with all the sibs, kids etc. Plus I hope the list will include a hunt trip for me and pals in the fall. Maine or Manitoba. Carpe Diem.
Here's one of the tenutas we chose - Tenuta Cammarana - (near Ragusa and Lampedusa, and not far from the ferry to Malta). In Italy, we always stay in tenutas (agriturismos) and I highly recommend doing that. Usually you'll be the only Americans there, which is not a bad thing when traveling. Karen Brown has researched them all for you.
I will take pics of Roger de Hauteville's ancestral Norman castles. Those crazy Vikings went everywhere, didn't they? Adventurers and warriors by nature, those Danskers.
I am already ahead of myself, because for 2015 (the good Lord willing) it will be a multi-bedroom villa in Tuscany, or maybe the Midi, with pool, cook, rental vehicles, etc., for ten days with room for friends and all the Bird Dog crew and any significant others. Not expensive, but something I want to do for all before I reach deep middle age.
What adventures and trips have y'all planned for 2014?
Will Nicotine 
We're having 30 friends over here at Maggie's Farm HQ for a casual wild game dinner tomorrow night. Perfect for a 10 degree (F) winter night. I'll have all three fireplaces burning.
Everybody likes pancakes, especially with a side of bacon, sausage, and/or fried eggs.
Gourmet pizza nowadays often comes without tomatoes and with all sorts of other toppings, but it was the basic tomato-mozzarella mix that made pizza so popular, beginning in the 1950s, in the US. It was made for beer.
On His Blindness
