Maggie's Farm

The Old Flame

My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -

Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.

Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.

A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!

No one saw your ghostly
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.

Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.

Everything's changed for the best -
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!

Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,

we heard the plow
groaning up hill -
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road.

Dodd Heckled Back Home In Connecticut After Obamacare Vote (Video)

Via Rasmussen's tracking poll report:

A commentary by Michael Barone
notes that it been more than 150 years since such significant but
unpopular legislation was passed through Congress on a partisan basis.
The political ramifications in 1854 were so significant that it led to
the creation of a new political party, the Republican Party.

Related: The O rips the American Way as he leaves for vacation

How long does it take before we surrender our common sense to experts? Dr. Bob

More on Christ and Socialism. Moonbattery

The Dem bill, among other things, will do this:

Primary-care doctors who refer patients to specialists will face
financial penalties under the plan. Doctors will see 5% of their
Medicare pay cut when their "aggregated" use of resources is "at or
above the 90th percentile of national utilization," according to the
chairman's mark of Section 3003 of the bill. Doctors will feel
financial pressure to limit referrals to costly specialists like
surgeons, since these penalties will put the referring physician on the
hook for the cost of the referral and perhaps any resulting procedures.

Coyote on Tiger Woods:

Paying lots of money to stop having sex with hot women seems an odd
thing to do.  From my experience he could take up playing Dungeons and
Dragons and have the same result for a lot less money.

Harry Reid on government control of medical care:

"We're going to hear an earful, but it's going to be an earful of
wonderment and happiness that people waited for for a long time."

VDH on Where do these guys come from? He begins:

I do not think it will be easy to delay Obamism. It is not just that both houses of Congress are under liberal leadership with ample majorities, with a White House and captive media egging them on. The problem is that now the entire engine of the federal government is harnessed in the most unapologetic way to pushing through a far left agenda. There is no shame, no hesitancy in using the full powers of the state.

Lots more of Tiger's photos if you scroll down his front page -

Our Christmas holiday, or feast day, or Holy Day, is a stew of thousands of years of solstice festivals with plenty of ancient gods in the mix.

Indeed, Christmas' pagan ancestry is just one reason Puritan (Congregationalist) Protestants made it a crime to celebrate it. (Another was that it was a Roman Catholic feast day.)

Here's the history of Christmas tree ornaments.

Here's Is Christmas a pagan holiday?

This Christmas Tree History site recalls:

The Puritans banned Christmas in New England. Even as late as 1851, a Cleveland minister nearly lost his job because he allowed a tree in his church. Schools in Boston stayed open on Christmas Day through 1870, and sometimes expelled students who stayed home.

The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when Catskill farmer Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900, one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and 20 years later, the custom was nearly universal.

That is good marketing.

Readers know that I love Christmas for all of its historical and current pagan, secular, and religious meanings.

I spent Christmas Eve, as usual, with dear friends and family - and candlelight at church. That is all magical for me and my family. We try not to over-spend.

May yours be merry and bright.

My favorite. This is St. Paul's, London:

From a post by Michael Novak:

Those of us who are of Catholic mind do not believe that the Enlightenment began with Kant (“What is Enlightenment?”), or Locke or Newton, or even with Descartes. We cherish Plato, Aristotle, Cicero. But the first Enlightenment began with Christ Our Lord.

It was only with the Christ that EQUALITY meant every human being, barring none. From then on, no one was “barbarian.” Each bore in his own soul the mark of being called to be a dwelling of the Father and the Son — being called beyond all other calls a son of God. Neither mother nor father, neither civil society nor state, can answer to this call for you or me. None has any deeper bond or precedence than the relation of Creator and human creature. It is a bond of Spirit and Truth.

Thus was revealed each human's LIBERTY primordial, and in that liberty, EQUALITY with all. No other but self can say to the the Father “No,” or “Yes.” That choice is for each single one of us inalienable. That choice brings each into the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of all who are equal in the sight of God.

And that is how universal FRATERNITY became a human principle and an object of our striving.

Moreover, a singular feature of the coming of the Christ is that all have access to him — rich pagan kings riding from the East, Roman centurions (those who would put him to death, even they), Jew and Greek, and those of every nation, station, and state of virtue or of sin. From Bethlehem went out the message of the First Globalization — the global call to become one human family. But only by the narrow path of the free choice of each.

This was the First Enlightenment. There has been no deeper nor more all-embracing since.

Whole thing here at NRO

A photog friend was skiing at Pico and Killington last week (thanks to global cooling) and took this snap. He didn't see the message until he got home.

The Lord is like that often, in my life. I miss Him and His blessing when he is right in front of me. Blind, but then I see...

(By the way, did you notice the Pileated Woodpecker holes in that tree?)

Here are the lyrics.

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He is nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

PJ O'Rourke. Parliament of Whores. h/t, Samiz

They should never be killed for food. Another challenge for ethical eating.

I say "Let the broccoli suffer."

Milbank: An ugly finale for health-care reform

Hot Air: Don’t despair about ObamaCare

Classy: RI Dem Senator Calls ObamaCare Opponents Part of 'Aryan Support Groups'

Cash for Cloture: Harry Reid’s Vote Buying Cost Taxpayers $1.2 Billion

Trial lawyers get payoff in Dem medical bill

Democrats Risk Another Jacksonian Moment

Gordon Brown calls for new group to police global environment issues.

Related: There'll be nowhere to run from the new world government

Dems Break It, They Own It

From Driscoll:

“Sen. Whitehouse: foes of health care bill are birthers, right-wing militias, aryan groups.” Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin adds, “it will be crystal clear who, when the chips are down, tried to stop the largest big-government power grab and tax-a-thon in decades and who rolled over. The opponents of those Democrats who rolled over will have a plethora of material for their campaign ads.”

Birthers and Aryan groups? Sounds like us. Along with over 60% of Americans, I guess, who oppose this fascistic, ie government-controlled - monstrosity.

Betsy: Ben Nelson's selling price

 Powerline: Who's Meaner, Insurance Bureaucrats or Government Bureaucrats?

Healthcare Pork: Senate Bill Laden with Favors, Pet Projects for Democrats

Related, they did not omit the slacker kids, I mean, the adult children

Riehl remains an optimist.

This morning -

We have posted in the past about one of my favorite birds, the Peregrine Falcon. They are "peregrine" because they breed in the north, summer in South America.

They are partial to cliffs and mountains, which is why they are comfortable living in cities with their abundant source of pigeons and sparrows, and nesting on tall buildings and urban bridges. 

The recovery of their populations east of the Mississippi is a wonder to conservationists and a tribute to what man can do to renew wildlife populations.

Photo is from an update on New York City's Peregrine Falcons at Smithsonian.

Walker Percy fans, of whom I am one, recall the protagonist in The Last Gentleman setting up his fancy telescope in Central Park to watch the falcons. (I am also a Dickens fan, a Wallace Stegner fan, a Mark Helprin fan... ok, I am not going to keep going down this track.)

An email from our Aliyah doctor friend in Israel:

I am still not used to things like this: as I am leaving one of my classes, a young woman - perhaps 22 - bends over to hoist her backpack; her sweater pulls up in back, revealing a holstered Beretta in the back of her belt.

Beats a tramp stamp, in my book.

The bulk of the snow fell south of New England, but I think we have enough here to last through Christmas.

Lots more Christmas weekend random photos below the fold -

A tree late last night -

More below -

Cute, but not great like some of his stuff:

Author David Foster Wallace (whose books I have never read) talked about Life and Work to the 2005 graduating class at Kenyon College. Mr. Wallace, 46, committed suicide in the fall, 2008.

One quote from his speech:

The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

The speech, it seems to me, is more the cry of a haunted midlife soul than something that eager and freshly-scrubbed college grads could use or even hear. In addition to a shrink, it sounds like the guy lacked God in his life. That quote reminded me of Zevon's Detox Mansion:

...it's tough to be somebody
And it's hard not to fall apart
Up here on Rehab Mountain
We gonna learn these things by heart.

"Norman Maclean, the great Montana writer, had a worse experience. He complained that an editor turned down his masterpiece, “A River Runs Through It,” because it had too many trees in it."

Quoted from the NYT on the 16th

Photo yesterday morning, before the snow. 

h/t, Sippican

Since "the time for talking is over," we will try not to post further about the joke that is Copenhagen for the rest of this pre-Christmas weekend - except to note these observations:

Obama sez 'Time for talk is over.' China and India Say, "O Shut the F Up Bozo!"

Obama braves blizzard to preach at the Church of Climate Scientology

and, of course, big early blizzard predicted from DC to New England. Great! Somebody needs to remind me again: "Weather isn't climate."

A Bird Dog pup took an oath today. He took a vow this past summer, so he is now up to his ears in oaths and vows.

I looked up the etymology of "oath," which I rightly suspected to be of Scandinavian origin:

OATH,  a solemn vow.  (E.)   M. E. ooth, oth; Chaucer, C. T. 120.—A. S. áð, Grein, i. 17; the change from á to oa being regular, as in ác, oak, ár, oar. + Du. eed. + Icel. eiðr. + Dan. and Swed. ed. + Goth. aiths. + G. eid; O. H. G. eit.   ?. The Teut. type is AITHA; Fick, iii. 4; allied to O. Irish oeth, oath (Rhys); cf. W. an-ud-on, a false oath, perjury.

Here's "vow:"

The word vow (oath, assure) comes from the Latin voveo (I vow), which derives from the Greek verb ?????? (to assure, to promise with certainty; veveo).

I wonder how much our culture takes oaths and vows seriously in modern times. I like to think that I take all of my promises with the greatest seriousness - but don't we all?

When I think about it, the person to whom I have broken the most promises is myself.