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 recall that Manhattan's elegant Park Avenue was build on top of the railroad lines (The old New York, New Haven, and Hartford line, which still runs down to Grand Central Station, underneath, and carries thousands of commuters to NYC every day - numbers that the highways, roads, and parking could never handle. Plus people get work done on the trains.)
Yes, indeed. Party of Lincoln. We Conservatives want opportunity for everybody and an end to dependency. The American Dream. Who could argue with that?
Beer used to be fresh - and locally-brewed. One reason the beer tastes so good in Germany and Austria is because they throw it out after a week. Unpasteurized, of course, and not bottled.
Each chapter is the story of one man, his dilemmas, his challenges, the deaths of those close to him, his defense of his family and land. These soldiers relate vivid and compelling accounts of their lives and their experiences, including attempts to maintain their sense of humanity in the face of inner and outer battles and stresses, while still becoming better soldiers at the same time.
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
In his famous 1968 interview (the very year of protest) conducted for Sing Out! by his friends John Cohen and Happy Traum, Dylan was asked by Traum: “Do you foresee a time when you’re going to have to take some kind of a position?” Dylan answered in one word: “No.” Traum, obviously upset, argued that “every day we get closer to having to make a choice,” because, he explained, “events of the world are getting closer to us … as close as the nearest ghetto.” Dylan’s answer: “Where’s the nearest ghetto?"
When he got to the issue of the Vietnam War, Traum told Dylan: “Probably the most pressing thing going on in a political sense is the war,” and that artists like him “feel it is their responsibility to say something.” Dylan responded by telling Traum: “I know some very good artists who are for the war.” He then added that this painter he knows is “all for the war. He’s just about ready to go over there himself. And I can comprehend him.” Moreover, when Traum suggested he argue with the painter, Dylan asked, “Why should I?”
This is a man who will not be pwned, and he has never needed to be told to "Shut up and sing."
When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the "dream stage". But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a "frustration stage" as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a "nightmare stage" as everything goes wrong, culminating in an "explosion into reality", when the fantasy finally falls apart.
We think that in prayer we speak to God, and we are not wrong to think so. But the heart of prayer is that God speaks to us. It is not God whose mind is changed by our prayer, but we ourselves, if we would but cease to speak, and would instead wait upon God, and listen to him. It is the prayer of silent expectation, whereby we who love God wait upon him, like the prophet Elijah who did not hear the Lord in the storm or the whirlwind of the earthquake, but rather in the still small voice, and he hid his face in holy fear.
It happens to me each Lent, settles over me like a dark cloud of self-scrutiny and self-reproach. It's not deliberate. It just happens to me ever since I had my eyes opened.
I am no axe-murderer, but I have my human share of sins, irresponsibilities, cruelties, lazinesses, selfishness, insensitivities, dumb rationalizations, narcissistic defenses, lies, self-indulgences, and plain old unthinking stupidities. All of the flaws.
Unlike the Psychiatric depressions, my Lenten depression, I think, is a gift of sorts. A gift from the Holy Spirit. Painful, but I would not want to medicate it away because it tells me things I need to hear. Our Christian God is a God of Truth and Grace. The Truth part can hurt. God or Grace or something holds up that dark mirror for me, and it's all true and it's all difficult.
It's like the 4th Step.
Pastors advise us to leave it all at the foot of the cross, but I have to go through the dark journey to know what the "it all" is first, and I have to say it all out loud in prayer. I view it as my annual healthy depression.
Retriever got some great shots of baby Great Horned Owls yesterday, in a nest about 25' above the ground in New England. Great Horned Owls nest early, laying their eggs while the snow flies. These babies are probably raised on delicious rats and crows, and the occasional squirrel, skunk, and house cat for variety.
The nest itself is probably a renovated crow or squirrel nest, since Great Horned Owls do not build nests themselves, as far as I know. Most likely squirrel, with all of the leaves in it.
11:1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
11:2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
11:3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."
11:4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."
11:5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,
11:6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
11:7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."
11:8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"
11:9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.
11:10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them."
11:11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him."
from Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, by William Wordsworth, 1798:
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was When first I came among these hills, when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved.
Entire poem below the fold - for some reason, you need to scroll down to get to the body of the poem -
I just wasn’t cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I’m more of an Irish Setter Dad. Here are some of the things my daughters, Muffin and Poppet, and my son, Buster, were never allowed to do:
In a way, this is part of the same story as Libya, and I'm not so sure that in the long run it isn't the more important part. Islam will readily acknowledge our technological superiority: If you want to operate a no-fly zone over Benghazi or send an unmanned drone into Waziristan, we have the capability and they don't. The difference is that Islam thinks our technological superiority doesn't matter - because we're unmanned drones in a more basic sense: we believe in nothing except the most transitory and dreary self-gratification, an endless adolescence that begins with a push-up bra at eight and continues through free government condoms for 30-year olds. Not only do the surging Muslim populations in European cities have no wish to "assimilate" with such a culture, they do not believe they will have to - for they have bet that such a society cannot survive.
Are they right? A hyper-sexualized society becomes, paradoxically, sexless, and certainly joyless. Listening in recent weeks to young women in both New York and London complain that the men they meet would rather look at pictures of them naked on the Internet than actually see them naked in the same room reminded me of The Children Of Men, in which P D James' characters, liberated from human fertility, find sex too much trouble.
Our North Africa trip, with Egypt, plus Israel and a bit more of my beloved Turkey (southern coast) plan for September has been cancelled because Egypt, Tunisia, etc seem iffy right now. A shame. I wanted to get back on a ship. Readers know I love ships and boats, and I was in the mood for an exotic trip.
Mrs. BD also vetoed my alternative notion of a big house in Provence, to invite friends and family - and all of our Maggie's readers - to visit. She wants to give the kids time to get a bit more settled in their lives first.
She wants the land of the Umbri, with just grumpy Bird Dog and a rental car. Assisi, Orvieto (I do not like their wines), Perugia, Todi, Spoleto, etc. Etruscan walled cities and Hannibal's victories at Lake Trasimene, and Roman highway towns on the Via Flaminia. Maybe a day trip back up to Siena. OK by me. Love Italia, as my Brit cousins do - as long as there is no pasta or red sauce. And Mrs. BD has been working hard on her Italian. Dove cabineto?
Next year, God willing, either a south of France villa like this one, or the North Africa trip, but this seems not the year for that. Who makes the plans calls the shots.
I'll bring cameras of course, to bore our readers with my travel pics, but I'd be surprised if any of the old castle and rustic villa agritourismo inns Mrs. BD has picked out have Wifi. (When places say they have it, it's usually not working when you are there.)
Photo above is Assisi, a major tourist trap thanks to St. Francis' marketing skills.
An esterni view of one of the old inns where Mrs. BD informs me we'll be staying - Abbazia San Pietro in Valle :
Such places are good reasons to save one's pennies. It all looks good to me. I am always happy to be banging around Italy (except Rome), although I have already done a lot of it. Thanks, Mrs. BD, for taking the time to plan it so thoughtfully.
I am sorry we cannot meet up with my wife's late cousin, Archbishop Prata, on our Italian trips anymore. I think of him every time I head for Italy. He was full of vitality and full of the joy of the Spirit - and could make doors open like you would not believe with a flash of his ring. Besides Jesus, the Church, and the Mass, he loved opera, food, wine, his relatives, Limoncello, Hazelnut gelato, and Italian pastries. An intellectual sort, he had been a professor and university president before they brought him back to the Vatican. My lad and he used to chat in conversational Latin. Very cool for them. We all miss Gennaro.
Should the middle class get health care at public expense? No, there is no one to pay for our health care but us. We can pay out-of-pocket; we can buy private insurance to cover catastrophic risk and thereby get some control over how much health care we buy for ourselves. We can pay taxes to the government which it will then use to decide how much health care we can get; but it will still be us paying for it and decisions will still have to be made as to how much care we get; we'll just lose all control over how much we spend on health care as opposed to, say, food or education.
Seems to me that there are three main drivers of high insurance costs: low deductibles (ie insurance that tries to cover everything including the sniffles, routine exams, and elective things like Viagra and hormone replacement); fear of malpractice lawsuits which is why everybody with a headache gets a $1200 CAT scan; and the frequently insane costs of end of life treatment such as catastrophic strokes or the millions for things like terminal cancer.
It seems quite likely to me that vouchers are going to be better at controlling health care cost growth than a central committee. Every committee decision that cuts off a potentially useful treatment (and I’m afraid it can’t all be back surgery and hormone replacement therapy) will trigger a lobbying explosion from affected groups. Each treatment is a decision with a small marginal cost to the taxpayer; it’s in aggregate that they become expensive. Which means that the congressional tendency is always going to be to override–and while there are supposed to be structural barriers against this in the bill, they aren’t very strong . . . about like trying to quit smoking by hiding your cigarettes from yourself.
Friend just surprised me with a gift in the mail - a first edition of Massachusetts author Louise Dickinson Rich's 1942 We Took To The Woods. Knew about it, never read it. I will.
Now I am older. I have met with poverty, flood, famine, hurricane, brutalizing labor, and illness, on extremely personal grounds. I have seen the sudden and tragic deaths of those nearest and dearest to me. I have had to shoulder responsibilities, for which I am ill fitted, and the much more difficult burden of sudden, if brief, fame. I have been hard pressed for money, as we say in Maine. I’m not whining. I’ve had a wonderful life, with the joys far outweighing the sorrows. But still, in all, there have been times when I was fair to middlin’ desperate.
There was time when my husband and my year-old son and my mother-in-law and I had one meal a day. We ate baked potatoes and salt. It didn’t do us adults any harm, and my neighbor woman, Alice Miller, provided me with six oranges and six quarts of milk a week—she kept two cows—for the baby. She said her doctor’s book said that babies needed it.
Then there was the time in December. My husband and I were laughing together over a silly joke in the evening after dinner, relaxed in our slippers before the open fire. We’d spent the day snugging down the cabin for winter, and we felt good knowing that there were forty miles of lake and impossible road between us and the nearest settlement. We were having fun. “Louise, you gorgeous fool,” he said, and died.
Not from The Onion: 
It's about the lives of Israeli citizen-soldiers. 
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
From Radosh's Dy
Dylan works around China’s bosses?
Should I Bag or Mulch the Clippings?
Friend just surprised me with a gift in the mail - a first edition of Massachusetts author Louise Dickinson Rich's 1942