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.
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."
No man loves marshes and bogs more than I do. The variety of life they contain, protect, and support, from protozoans to minnowsto bass to amphibians to snakes to deer to woodpeckers to geese and ducks to eagles to bears is astonishing, and feels primeval.
Except for river-fed or run-off-fed marshes, though, most sizeable fresh-water marshes are ephemeral geographical features. In the northern US, most are the remnants of post-glacial ponds and lakes, gradually filled in with plant detritus and, just before they become the damp meadows that the Moose enjoy so much, the sphagnum bogs which, in Canada, are the source of most of our soil-enhancing peat moss.
The only sources of new marshes in the US are man (who is more inclined to fill them for building lots than to create them or rehabilitate them - except for Ducks Unlimited), and the Beaver:
And that is one reason we appreciate the remarkable beaver so much. He not only creates marshes, but he recycles them. I doubt that there is a single beaver marsh in the US which has not been used, on and off (until they have eaten or cut down everything they can find) over the several thousands of years since our last Ice Age buried Manhattan under a mile of ice.
Here are some of the critters I see (or hear) most often in the immediate vicinity of our small (8 acre) beaver marsh in western MA over the past few years - off the top of my head and probably omitting some:
Beavers (of course) Otter Black Bear Raccoon White-tailed Deer Red Fox Coyote (alas)
Wood Duck (nesting) Black Duck (nesting) Mallard (nesting) Canada Goose (nesting) Pileated Woodpecker Downy Woodpecker Hairy Woodpecker Red-bellied Wodpecker Ruby-Throated Hummingbird Veery Wood thrush E. Phoebe Wood Pewee Great Blue Heron Green Heron Tree Swallow Barn Swallow Kingfisher Swamp Sparrow Grasshopper Sparrow Song Sparrow Barred Owl Screech Owl Great Horned Owl Baltimore Oriole (Northern Oriole) Marsh Wren Turkey Goldfinch (nesting) Warblers of all sorts (during migration) Turkey Vulture Red-Tailed Hawk Sharp-Shinned hawk Red-shouldered Hawk Broad-winged Hawk Sparrow Hawk (Kestrel) E. Bluebird E. Kingbird Ruffed Grouse Cedar Waxwing Catbird
Wood Turtle Eastern Painted Turtle Snapping Turtle Garter Snake Eastern Water Snake Black Snake
Bullfrog Eastern Newt (and their Red Efts by the trillions in the adjacent woods) Leopard Frog Green Frog American Toad Wood Frog Spring Peeper E. Gray Tree Frog
I like to keep track of our wildlife. It is one way of loving and embracing this world.
The word bites like a fish. Shall I throw it back, free Arrowing to that sea Where thoughts lash tail and fin? Or shall I pull it in To rhyme upon a dish?
"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture .... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man."
Adolph Hitler, 1933. There is no doubt that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a Socialist movement. The only thing about it that could be construed as at all "rightist" was its ardent nationalism.
My question is this: If the National Socialist Party had left the Jews alone, would the Nazis have been heroes of the Left, as Stalin was?
You spray a little stuff on the stains, then throw it in the dryer with the special paper thing. She says it works well for her skirts, jackets, and sweaters.
Mrs. BD is good with flowers and other things. It always amused me that she thought she invented flat flower arrangements until a flower arrangement judge informed her that her multi-level blue-ribbon construction was pave (with accent aigu), but inventively layered to a 6' height. Pave, once a popular avant garde style, is commonplace nowadays. It's good because it does not block cross-table conversation.
I was fortunate to recently hear a noted quartet play one of Brahms' masterpieces, his Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op.25, in an intimate setting. I am fortunate to live where there is plenty of live chamber music, and I am always happy to go listen.
I love chamber music as much or more than orchestral (too bad chamber music didn't have drum sets, though) but, with my tin ear and my slow brain, it takes me several hearings to get the structure, intent, and the direction of a composition unless I have studied it in advance. (Folk, blues, and pop are easy for my brain.) I mentioned this disability to Mrs. BD in reference to the G minor, and she replied "What do you mean? This is as clearly structured, developed, and disciplined a chamber piece as I have ever heard. The structure is transparent."
Listen to the whole piece for a day or two, if you need that as I do. It's a musical journey.
Here's just the familiar Finale, Movement 4 - the Rondo alla zingarese - a dance piece if there ever was one:
Mrs. BD and I have been taking the William and Mary course in Medieval History (with the delightfully Asperger's-ish Prof. Daileader via The Teaching Company) and we are enjoying it immensely. I do not like to sit unless I am at work, but this course gets me into a chair after work. (We live and thrive on the Teaching Company courses at my cottage, as readers know.)
The Prof says that the wealth of the Middle Ages came from a combination of trade and the renewal of currency in the form of the Italian Florin, the introduction of the heavy plow, the replacement of slavery with serfdom, a doubling of Europe's population - and the Medieval Warm Period which made it possible to grow better crops much further north than in the Dark Ages - and further north than today. Greenland was farmland.
The Warm Period was far warmer than the world today. People benefited. That's why we pray for Global Warming (but also doubt that humankind will be so lucky. With our luck, we'll get the next Ice Age and all be screwed except for Dr. Merc).
It was after morning recess in Mrs. Winter’s sixth grade class at Mapleton School. I remember the moment precisely, when the boy behind me, right in the middle of the lesson, leaned over his desk and my shoulder to whisper in my ear that if I’d take a nickel down to Woolworths at Broadway and Pearl, I could buy this fishing “thing” with which I could catch lots of fish out at East Dagues Lake.
The weakness of all Utopias is this: that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motorcar or balloon.
G.K. Chesterton (h/t Dr. Bob, who seems to have quit writing)
Well, so are all dog breeds, until someone gives them a breed name. But Brittanys aren't really true Spaniels (here are the main spaniel varieties - more of 'em than you might have thought), which is why we call them plain Brittanys. They are more pointers, or setters, or something. A mix of various random things that happened to come together well.
Who cares what you call them. In our neck of the woods, Brittanys are the best all-purpose dog for the field, and maybe the most popular gun dog. They point birds, they retrieve, they do not mind water retrieves; they are bundles of energy and affection, and they are easy to train - a cross look is usually enough to get your point across to these emotionally-sensitive critters. The larger American version can handle the large spaces.
But you need at least two of them. One Brittany isn't a fully happy dog. They need the exercise and the company they can give each other. Every hunter, or every human, can use a few sweet Brittanys around the place.
While she was flying down the road 20 miles over the limit, a woman passed by an overpass only to find a cop with a radar gun on the other side lying in wait.
The cop pulled her over, walked up to the car, and with that classic patronizing smirk we all know and love, asked, "What's your hurry?" To which she replied, "I'm late for work." "Oh yeah," said the cop, "what do you do?" "I'm a rectum stretcher," she responded. The cop stammered, "A what? A rectum stretcher? And just what does a rectum stretcher do?" "Well," she said, "I start by inserting one finger, then work my way up to two fingers, then three, then four, then with my whole hand in. I work from side to side until I can get both hands in, and then I slowly but surely stretch, until it's about 6 feet wide." "And just what the hell do you do with a 6 foot asshole?" he asked. "You give him a radar gun and park him behind a bridge..."
Traffic Ticket $95.00 Court Costs. $45.00 The Look on Cop's Face. PRICELESS
One more: Things not to say to a police officer...
When he pulls you over and says,"I think I smell alcohol. Have you been drinking?" Do not say "I think I see powdered sugar on your face. Have you been eating jelly donuts?"
If it’s good, the government should subsidize it. If it’s bad, the government should ban it. If outcomes are in any way perceived by any group to be sub-optimal, then the government should regulate it. Anyone who opposes these bans, subsidies, and regulations must therefore be a supporter of bad outcomes, hate poor people, want people to get sick and die, etc.
Read about the good old eastern US Red-Shouldered Hawk, the lover of wetlands and swamps, at Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Like the Barred Owl who keeps the little wetland critters on their toes at night, this bird likes the kinds of places I like. Wild, wooly, and wet.
I may have posted a photo of what my buddy's tumble-down get-away place in the wilds of upstate New York looked like when he bought it a few years ago. Saplings in the yard. Busted windows. This place had no door, clapboards with all the paint worn off or broken, and holes in the roof. Fallen chimney, I think.
The old farmhouse, in deer- and turkey-hunting territory, looked like a lost cause to me. A "scraper," as they are called around here. The guy is handy with guns, but I had no idea he was so handy with house renovation. Looking really good now. Not only a good new roof, but a power line too! Power is good.
I think I may volunteer my landscaping services in exchange for some turkey hunting. For starters, this place needs some apple trees.
Like me, you all are probably still engaged in some slow and tedious post-Christmas clean-up. I tend to use the shopping bags and small boxes to start my morning fires.
Some of the bags I used for fire-starting said "Michael Kors." What's that? Guys would not know. I checked it out:
It's fashionable shoes and dresses and stuff. Who got that stuff? I dunno, but it seems pretty nice.
Many people today are obsessed with food, what to eat and how much. Government wants to get in on the game and to tell you what to eat, but the experts have no answers. So governments just make it up.
...several top medical scientists have concluded that the government’s carb-heavy guidelines may actually have harmed public health. In 2008, three researchers from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine—including the associate dean of clinical research, Paul Marantz, and a former president of the International Hypertension Society, Michael Alderman—observed in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine that since 1977, Americans have largely followed the government’s advice, doubtless as conveyed by the doctors they consulted. Men, for instance, cut their fat intake from 37 percent of their daily calories to 32 percent and increased their carbohydrate intake from 42 percent to 49 percent. Yet over the same three decades, the fraction of American men who were overweight or obese increased from 53 percent of the population to about 69 percent. The doctors wondered whether this correlation was an unintended consequence of telling the entire population to change its eating patterns. “In general,” the doctors wrote, “weak evidentiary support has been accepted as adequate justification for [the U.S. dietary] guidelines.
Read the whole thing. My sense is that you can eat whatever you want unless you have some special illness like diabetes, and it won't make a darn bit of difference. Food is not medicine. All we really know is that no food is bad, plenty of food - but not too much - is good.
Well, so are all dog breeds, until someone gives them a breed name. But Brittanys aren't really true Spaniels (here are the 
Many people today are obsessed with food, what to eat and how much. Government wants to get in on the game and to tell you what to eat, but the experts have no answers. So governments just make it up.