Maggie's Farm

It's kind of fun, but lacking in real content:

From Megan's retirement post:

...there is no conceivable system that is going to allow the vast majority of the population to spend a full third of their adult life in retirement, at anything like the same standard of living they had when they were working. 

Toon above via Powerline. See new surge of layoffs.

Never a bad idea: a summer visit to the USS Constitution, still commissioned in the US Navy. Old Ironsides (that was southern Live Oak) never lost a fight.

Bill Gates: watch for the disappearance of the physical university. Right now, you can eddicate yourself pretty good with The Teaching Company. We love their courses, but no term papers (bad) and no exams (good).

Legal Ins, to the Left:

Obama has accomplished as much as he could for you. He has put in place laws which will enable him to accomplish through regulation that which he could not accomplish through legislation. Obama is playing the long game, and you are short-sighted.

The savvy Leftists always keep their eye on the long game.

Majority of voters consider Democratic agenda “extreme”

Dalrymple on conservation and aesthetics

More violent rage from the Left: N.H. Dem Airs Palin Death Wish on Facebook. Where's the tolerance and sensitivity to differences?

Prof B: Coerced "caring" is not compassion

McArdle: The End of Retirement as We Know It. People used to expect to work until they keeled over. What's wrong with that?

Wrote this post back in January, before we finalized our travel plans - not going to the Veneto this year...maybe next year. Or maybe Provence...or if the Dems entirely ruin the country, nowhere fun and just farm drudgery.

Considering a visit to Padua (just a few minutes outside Venice) to see the Arena Chapel with its Giotto interior while visiting the Veneto and Dolomites this summer (maybe). It's a famous chapel - more famous than the Matisse and Chagall Church in Westchester - but it looks very much like the Giotto stuff in the chapels in Santa Croce, which I have seen.

I read that, to visit the Capella, you need reservations, decontamination, etc. Plus a time limit and no photos, as is usual in Italian historic churches. 

I guess I should have known that the title of that email was going to be a Canadian pharmacy hawking Viagra, but for a second there my crazy brain thought it might be about how to want to bed geriatric women.

You know, a Zorba-type thing. What a great movie. The inspiration for Mr. Tambourine Man, I have heard.

A buddy had an Aussie field biologist friend who used to like to get drunk and recite this potty-mouth ditty around the campfire to much merriment: The Bastard from the Bush.

It's a new one to me, but probably all Aussies know it by heart.

Liberals believe you build a good society from the top down; conservatives believe you build a society from the bottom up.

 Michael Medved, via Reb 

Our friend Sippican is having a major sale of his brand-new antiques. Serious markdowns.

His stuff is all solid wood, nothing fake, and generally consistent with Maggie's Farm style - all-American homespun with no Baroque or Rococo.

We have a couple of his pieces and they are handsome. Heirlooms (and if you happen to wonder about the etymology of "heirloom," it's just like it sounds).

Here's Sipp's furniture website.

Excellent brief reminder of the history of limited government

A fresh look at the Shakers. Today, I think we'd term them a cult. As a furniture cult, they had good taste.

She quits job, emails office with her erase board messages. Fantastic. I have heard of a MILF but not of a HOPA. Now that I know the term, I have to say I have seen lots of HOPAs. (Note: this is a dubious story, but good even if fictional.)

THAT WAS NO TEACHER… Unhinged Leftist Who Confronted Palin Is a Singer in a Drag Queen Band. Seriously. . (Note: this is also probably a half-true story)

Enraged over McNuggets. Speaking of McDonalds, Moonbats Continue Jihad Against Happy Meals

The Increasingly Self-Pitying Obama White House

The elites don't get it: 'We Socialists' vs. 'We the People':

It is insufferable (and will not long be suffered) to be lectured to and imposed upon by a ruling class that loathes our nation's history, values and accomplishments; by those who are not, in fact, our genuine betters. They are neither better educated nor more profoundly morally versed.

In fact, they are our intellectual and moral inferiors -- not superiors.

Let's start building some freaking small nuke plants. As I have mentioned, we have a small home-made reactor in the farm basement. Runs great except when mice get into the rods. When it runs a bit hot, we just spray it with a hose.

Bill Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys - Blue Moon of Kentucky. I tried to find Tom T. Hall's amazing Kentucky in the Morning on video, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere.

From Jules:

You know you’re nearing 21st century nirvana when you’ve left social networking behind and feel close to transcending rants and debates with complete strangers, extended blah blah blah into the ether. Because you know what they say, it is all nothingness …

To Jules: That's enough of paraphrasing Ecclesiates. Would you term our post on the Bog Turtle "nothingness"? Shame on you.

The smallest North American turtle lives in similar habitats to those of the Spotted Turtle (one of my favorite reptiles), and is a relative of the wonderful Wood Turtle. Nowadays, they have changed the official name to Bog Turtle.

(When I was young, I located a colony of Spotted Turtles in a sedgy marsh on the edge of a stream. On a sunny day, they'd be basking on the little tussocks, and splash into the shallow water when you walked by -not walked, actually - hopped from tussock to tussock in one's Keds. Spotted Turtles are listed as endangered too, now. Like Muhlenberg's, Spotteds seem to live in small colonies in specialized habitats which are senstive to human - and dog - intrusions.)

The Bog Turtle likes marshes with wet sedgy meadows in limestone areas. Despite their name, they do not live in acidic Sphagnum Bogs. They are rarely seen because they like to burrow in muck, but they are probably endangered. I have never seen one in the wild, even though our beaver marsh overflow is probably perfect habitat for them with its grassy hummocks, rivulets, beaver channels, damp meadows - and all of our Berkshire limestone and marble ledges and bedrock.

If you have ever encountered one, tell us.

The range of these turtles is dispersed:

Muhlenberg's Turtle was named after amateur botanist and sedge expert Gotthilf Henry Ernst Muhlenberg - an interesting character who played a role in the Revolution. Muhlenberg College in PA was named after his dad.

Good travel advice image h/t Theo

The world's great structures built with Legos

Rules for blues musicians (h/t, Synth)

Virtual democracy comes to the EU...as an alternative to real citizen participation in their "important work."

How many failed empires has history seen in Europe? Ths thing is just the latest, and I doubt that it will last my lifetime. It is too far from the people, and too condescending towards the people.

Help wanted, but no takers

Gutfield: A gay bar next to mosque for reconciliation and peace purposes. It's all about tolerance of differences!

My take on the mosque? It's obnoxious and incredibly insensitive, to the point of hostile provocation. Where's the sensitivity and respect? There is much more to civil behavior than determining what is legal. "Legal" is about the hard rules. "Civil" is about the soft rules. Except for criminals, most of life is about the soft rules.

Neo: Ezra Klein: cub journalist

The end of responsibilityFrom homeowners to government, the buck stops nowhere

More on the myths of preventive care. Villainous

...all this puts a terrible burden on a sycophantic media with a long tradition of trashing the slightest hint of aristocratic enjoyment on the part of first ladies (e.g., Nancy Reagan’s china). So, just as golf, around winter 2009, ceased to be an aristocratic distraction from the nation’s pressing problems, so too luxury on the Mediterranean must be a sort of federal employee’s deserved state vacation.

Anybody who took my advice about growing Montauk Daisies, the succulent daisy which is a cultivar of the Seaside Daisy (common on Cape Cod, and totally different from the West Coast's beach daisy), is missing one piece of info which I have learned only now.

Yes, these wonderful late-bloomers are worth growing, but they need to be prunced twice. First, cut down to 6" in the later winter, but then again to around 14-16" in May.  That's the trick to keeping them from becoming too leggy and sort-of falling apart.

I learned this yesterday. If you like these heat and drought-tolerant autumn-bloomers, remember that for next year. Mine are flopping all over now, before blooming as they always do, and I never bothered to ask a pro about it.

Like the Beach Rose, the Montauk Daisy originated in Japan.

Here's Dem pollster Pat Caddell on the mood of the electorate. Holy mackerel, this is powerful:

Turban Renewal

Critters that eat crude oil

VDH: A Rather Angry America

Related, Pat Caddell: Country's Mood Is "Pre-Revolutionary"

A simple, brief explanation of the Broken Window Fallacy

Real Moderate Muslims Speak Out Against GZ Mosque: OF COURSE It’s a Deliberate Provocation …  Duh.

Cato: Congress Ignores Middle-Class Service Sector

Another "jobs bill"? It's just union payback

Instead of turning up my nose at Baroque design, I decided to try to get into the heads of those who promulgated this heavily-ornamented style from around 1600 to 1750 in Europe.

Aside from some Italian kitsch, nobody has done new baroque for a long time. This remarkable book, Baroque: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, despite its abundance of photos, is not a coffee-table book. It is dense with text and scholarly detail, and 500 pages of small print which tests my eyes. There is no way I will complete this before I arrive in Vienna, but I will give it the old college try.

One idea which is coming through clearly is the notion of "the world as a stage." Baroque design is meant to be a stage set. It was meant to impress and/or intimidate and/or inspire - to convey power and wealth, but also to provide a grandiose setting for the highly formalized interactions and occasions of the high classes of the time. It does that, however fussy, overdone, and gratuitously gaudy it may look to a modern eye.

Another feature of Baroque design is that it moves. It has curves, details that jump out; interiors can be a "blooming, buzzing confusion" (the term William James used to describe his speculation about the experience of a human infant).

Versailles, St. Peter's Square (which is a circle), and the Hofberg Library are some classics of Baroque. Baroque is sensual, indulgent, extravagant, maybe grandiloquent. Like Bach. Bernini's 1650 Ecstasy of St. Theresa contains most of the elements of Baroque, especially the melding of sensual art with the grand architectural design:

Here's a short list of the main elements of Baroque design. 

Wiki explains how Baroque design has its roots in Mannerism, and how it was replaced, as a design fashion, by the aesthetic of Neoclassicism, which embraced restraint and cool "reason" as a reaction to a Baroque which had been taken to its limits.

We do not need to be enslaved to the aesthetic of our own time - or of any time. Baroque, however interesting, just isn't a Maggie's Farm, Yankee style. It's not in the blood.

Here's a Baroque era table, which I find both hideous and wonderful at the same time. It certainly moves, with those squigglies wiggling all over the inlay, and those sea slugs creeping up the legs:

I was working yesterday, so Mrs. BD visited a friend on the shore to do some kayaking (that was before she came home to do her weeding).

She reported that the sky was filled with Ospreys, and young ones were perched in the trees on the little islands, screaming for more sushi.

Her friend told her that there are now 19 pairs of Ospreys breeding in the immediate area. 20 years ago, none. That is a remarkable conservation achievement. 30 years ago, they were rare in the Northeast although they were never rare in Florida.

I love to watch them fishing, hovering then diving with their talons forward, and then struggling to free themselves from the pull of the water. The young ones seem to learn how to do it, but it's a wonder they don't all drown.

The Osprey has worldwide distribution. A summary of the magnificent Osprey here.

Driscoll: The ‘Diversity Economy’ and its DC Discontents. One quote:

...you can’t successfully govern when you’re trying to regulate the bejesus out of such a diverse 21st century economy. If you’re not already in a recession, the odds are very high you will be soon. Particularly when you’re also attempting to go Barack to the Future with a 1930s through 1960s-style command and control governing style that attempts a return to corporatism, and has enough hubris to imagine that it’s possible to run a wildly decentralized, demassified economy out of Washington DC.

I agree that our ruling classes are living in the 1930s.

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

1:1 The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

1:10 Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

1:11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

1:12 When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more;

1:13 bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation-- I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

1:14 Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.

1:15 When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

1:16 Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil,

1:17 learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

1:18 Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

1:19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;

1:20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Mrs. BD reports today, after trying Gibbs' recommendation, that a paste of vinegar and baking soda is quite effective for poison ivy. (Remember McGeek's case of poison ivy?)  

Mrs. BD is highly sensitive to poison ivy, but when she gets weeding she stops paying attention and just rips along like a weeding machine.

Gibbs is usually right about things. I made her take some Benadryl too. Partly to compete with Gibbs, I guess.

From Belmont, civilian casualties in the Pacific (h/t Tiger):

Hiroshima 70,000–80,000
Battle of Manila 100,000
Nanjing 300,000

Comparing the O with Lyndon Johnson. Daily Beast

Why they are calling her Michelle Antoinette

Global Warming, R.I.P

Observing increasing CO₂ levels and increasing temperatures, scientists assumed that the former must have caused the latter. How did the warmers know that it wasn't the other way around, and that higher temperatures caused higher CO₂ concentrations? Or how did the warmers know that there wasn't another process, a naturally occurring one, that caused the temperature rise, with increasing CO₂ just along for the ride? Answer: They didn't, because they never bothered to look. 

Via Reb

Something is going very wrong in Mexico to prompt more than half a million of its citizens to cross the border illegally each year. Impoverished Mexican nationals variously cite poor economic conditions back home, government corruption, a lack of social services, and racism. In other words, it is not just the desirability of America but also the perceived undesirability of Mexico that explains one of largest mass exoduses in modern history.

But why, then, would Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whose country's conditions are forcing out its own citizens, criticize the United States, which is receiving so many of them? And why, for that matter, would many of those illegal immigrants identify, if only symbolically, with the country that made them leave, whether by waving its flag or criticizing the attitudes of the Americans who took them in? 

Dino:

With 20% of prime age men without jobs, you’d think that the chief executive of the United States and his team would be all over the problem.

The list of things to do is rather obvious...

At Wizbang:

"It's not illegal" isn't a defense, it's a confession."

What Do Judge Walker and Justice Kennedy Have in Common?

A Fine Argument for Gay Marriage, but a Flawed Legal Opinion

Economy Stalls as Obama's Economic 'Dream Team' Hits the Skids

Intolerance of diversity: Attacks on black Conservatives

Governments seem to have forgotten that picking industrial winners nearly always fails

Dean: Individual Mandate Will Be Gone by 2014

Why the same-sex marriage ruling will stand.

Harsanyi:

...isn't it about time we freed marriage from the state?

We have written about Bryant here before," romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post." He was a prominent abolitionist, and a long-time resident of the Great Barrington area of the Berkshires. This is doubtless a Berkshire summer poem/

Summer Wind

It is a sultry day; the sun has drank

The dew that lay upon the morning grass,

There is no rustling in the lofty elm

That canopies my dwelling, and its shade

Scarce cools me. All is silent, save the faint

And interrupted murmur of the bee,

Settling on the sick flowers, and then again

Instantly on the wing. The plants around

Feel the too potent fervors; the tall maize

Rolls up its long green leaves; the clover droops

Its tender foliage, and declines its blooms.

But far in the fierce sunshine tower the hills,

With all their growth of woods, silent and stern,

As if the scortching heat and dazzling light

Were but an element they loved. Bright clouds,

Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven;--

Their bases on the mountains--their white tops

Shining in the far ether--fire the air

With a reflected radiance, and make turn

The gazer's eye away. For me, I lie

Languidly in the shade, where the thick turf,

Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun,

Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind

That still delays its coming. Why so slow,

Gentle and voluble spirit of the air?

Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth

Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves

He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge,

The pine is bending his proud top, and now,

Among the nearer groves, chesnut and oak

Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes!

Lo, where the grassy meadow runs in wives!

The deep distressful silence of the scene

Breaks up with mingling of unnumbered sounds

And universal motion. He is come,

Shaking a shower of blossoms from the shrubs,

And bearing on the fragrance; and he brings

Music of birds, and rustling of young boughs,

And soun of swaying branches, and the voice

Of distant waterfalls. All the green herbs

Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers,

By the road-side and the borders of the brook,

Nod gaily to each other; glossy leaves

Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew

Were on them yet, and silver waters break

Into small waves and sparkle as he comes.