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.
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."
This guy is a new breed of preacher. Here's an engaging sermon for ya today (h/t reader). Two quotes: "If you're married, you are married to somebody with quirks." Also, "The lack of fighting in a marriage worries me."
Will serve my ceviche in shallow bowls, on Boston Lettuce, using one large shrimp each as a garnish along with orange slices and avocado slices. Hope I used enough jalopeno and garlic. Bowl of salty chips, of course, and I am ready to make both virgin and regular Margueritas. Watermelon for dessert.
Mrs. BD got me some cool Marguerita glasses in Mexico which she likes to use for fruit with tiny scoops of Haagen Dazs coconut gelato on top.
Update: It was very good. Next time, more red onion, more garlic, more salt, and more jalapeno.
Pic is some of my young relatives, on Cape Cod. High tide on the ocean beaches keeps people mostly out of the water. Low tide is for swimming, body surfing, and lolling in the chilly water. The Cape Cod Bay side is sort of the opposite, and plenty warmer too, so it all works out.
Their ugliness seems to be escalating day by day, and with it the dishonesty, distortions, and bullying anger of their mainstream-media fellow travelers. There’s a reason for this, I think. It’s the increasingly apparent failure of Barack Obama. With the notable exception of Osama bin Laden’s execution, the Obama presidency has resembled nothing so much as an episode of Mr. Bean, one slapstick misadventure after another.
It's a good day to take a nude dip off the stern of ye olde yacht.
Thanks to olde Mr. Sun, we have some summer heat going up here. No complaints. Photo below was the view from my deck this weekend. Watched a Red Fox hunting marsh voles out there early in the morning. He did catch one, too, with the cat-like pouncing they also use in the snow.
Photo below is Wellfleet Harbor - the outer harbor, really a bay within Cape Cod Bay. The Pilgrims stopped by, stole some Indian corn, and moved on across the bay to Plymouth where there was a Plymouth Rock, a Cumberland Farms, a Dunkin Donuts, a McDonalds, and a Pilgrim Welcome and Information Center with guys with funny hats:
In contemporary America, poverty is not so much a material condition as a spiritual one, often characterized by drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness and illegitimacy. Until voters have a better understanding of what today’s poverty is and is not, it will not be possible to craft effective solutions to the very real problems–mostly behavioral–that afflict a significant portion of our population.
The End of the Growth Consensus - America added 44 million jobs in the 1980s and '90s, when both parties showed they had learned from past mistakes. The lessons have been forgotten.
Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.
Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.
I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'.
We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.
Latinos are Republican. They just don't know it yet.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.
The taxpayer - that's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.
The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
Hearing that heat index makes you feel hotter, same as the wind chill factor makes you feel colder when you hear it. How about treating me like a reasonably intelligent person and just giving me the temp, the humidity, and the wind speed?
You don’t usually yearn for someone because of who they are, but because something about them triggers your needs. They’re rich or beautiful or make you feel very, very good. Friends, on the other hand, are usually great to be with because they don’t trigger strong needs, so you feel comfortable being yourself.
Wellfleet MA has a good harbor and a fair variety of boats. None of the fancy stuff like Newport or Nantucket, though. The town is not social enough to attract that crowd, but it is social enough for everybody to get in line for a Harbor Freeze cone on the pier every night after supper. (It is Mac's now, but I still call it Harbor Freeze.) I have seen people on that line from NYC that I haven't seen in 20 years.
There is plenty of dock space, and a large anchorage. It still has a small commercial fleet, more engaged in lobstering or in dragging for quahogs and sea clams than in fishing. The big-time fishing boats berth in Provincetown, where they have quick access out of Cape Cod Bay to the ocean.
I can not imagine living too far from the sea, and I feel that swimming in fresh water or overly-warm water is sort of disgusting. Chilly salt water is what works to cleanse and re-baptize my soul.
Do normal guys like to hang out with guys and act stupid? Of course. In some ways, we never mature past age 7. In Teddy Roosevelt's case, age 6. Young women, often, do not comprehend the developmentally-arrested aspects of the male psyche.
We are a smaller blog, for sure - but not exactly a political blog. I am not sure what we are, which is why I refer to us as a boutique site despite the lame sound of that. Do we want to be Big? Darn right we do, but our audience grows in fits and starts. I think we need an Asian office.
One of my friends voluntarily attended an event recently, one that I wouldn't go to for a million bucks (well, maybe a million bucks). It was called Erasing White Privilege.
WHAT IS THE "CORRECT" AVERAGE TEMPERATURE? Don’t we need to know this first before we can determine what deviance is detrimental?
This is a question that used to have been answered. There is a period known as the "Climate Optimum" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum around 9,000 – 5,000 years ago. The temperature was up to 4 C warmer than now and the Sahara was fertile, supporting, if cave paintings in the central Sahara are to be believed, all sorts of animals including hippopotamus.
Holocene might be pleasant enough, but I don't even get the idea of a planetary average because, with so many climates on earth, and so many human-influenced microclimates, I would think an average would lack meaning.
What's not to like? She is ready for a summer trans-Atlantic sail to Ireland on your vacation, or, better yet, a cruise to the Med via the Canary Islands, with a quick stop at Bermuda and the Windwards en route. (You can hire people to sail her back home to the US while you and your sweetie-pie First Mate - or second - wander around Portugal, Spain, and Morocco.)
It's been a long time since I have heard this one. It takes me back...so innocent. ""Kathy, I'm lost,' I said, though I know she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why..."
Those heavy volumes have become as obsolete as buggy whips.
I brought my 10+ year-old set of the Brittannica over to the book exchange, and they told me they were "household waste." That set was expensive.
When I was a student, I always looked up every topic in the Brittannica before looking at a textbook, to get the overview. I am lost without a broad overview.
Wikipedia just doesn't do it, no matter how handy it is for our website. You can subscribe to Britannica online.
Other corporations joined the plot, lobbying Congress to croak a product Americans overwhelmingly like and compel them to buy the more expensive substitute the industry was eager to sell them. The entire scheme, a lobbyist for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association testified candidly in 2007, was “at the industry’s initiative.’’ Unable to convince consumers to voluntarily abandon Edison’s light bulb, Big Business got the government to force the issue. “Of such deals,’’ remarks Bloomberg columnist Virginia Postrel, “are Tea Parties born.’’
Sippican has published his first book, and it's about time. He calls it "flash fiction." As many of our readers know, the guy knows how to repair a chair and to spin a yarn.
It's the time of year when the Box Turtles have emerged from hibernation and begin to roam, like singles on the East Side of Manhattan, looking for food, drink, and one-night stands.
There are several versions of this charming turtle - the Florida, the Eastern, the Ornate, Western, and the Gulf. Within each type, the coloration is highly variable. The above male Eastern happens to be highly colored.
The Eastern is under a good deal of pressure, especially in the Northeast, where development, "progress," dopey humans, pet collectors, dogs, and lawn-mowers impinge on its ancient habitat, or just plain kill them. In much of their range, especially in the Northeast, they are either endangered or "of special concern."
Land-dwelling, but not true tortoises, Boxies like to have water nearby, enjoy shady woodlands, and can swim a little bit if they have to but never live in water. They can live over 60 years in an area smaller than a football field, and they learn their way around it very well. Since they rarely encounter one-another, the females are able to store live sperm for up to 6-10 years, it is thought, using it as needed. Very feminist and modern. Still, they tend to live in "colonies," more or less.
If you see one on the road, please stop and help it across so it doesn't get squashed. I have been known to barely avoid multi-car pile-ups to help a Boxie across the road. If your dog gets one, punish the dog harshly so that it will never want to bother a turtle again, and let the thing go free. They are wonderful and lovely critters, and endangered in New England. Very few of their young survive to adulthood, so a wild adult is a rare and precious thing that has survived many obstacles, but it was not designed to cope with roads and cars. Don't take them home - they are wild animals and not pets, and where they are is where they belong, unless you are working on a population transplant project.
If you are lucky enough to have Box Turtles living near you, learn more about them, also here.
Cape Cod girls ain't got no combs 
It's a good day to take a nude dip off the stern of ye olde yacht.
Going to college offered me the chance to play football for four more years.
How animals 
Sippican has published his first book, and it's about time. He calls it "flash fiction." As many of our readers know, the guy knows how to repair a chair and to spin a yarn.
It's the time of year when the Box Turtles have emerged from hibernation and begin to roam, like singles on the East Side of Manhattan, looking for food, drink, and one-night stands.