Maggie's Farm

Maybe the Brits aren't dead yet. From the Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover Department: Susan sings.

One unkind question though: Why do Brit women in their 40s tend to look like Monty Python guys in drag?

Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

P.J. O'Rourke

A 30-minute video by Capt. Irving Johnson as a young man in 1929, capturing, in vivid black and white, the reality of sailing around the world on the Peking - including a Cape storm. h/t to Powerline for finding this remarkable record.

In the old days, going to sea was like going to war. Men died. John doesn't like the Captain's narration, but I love it. Sounds like he's from VT or NH, that old-timey Robert Frost sound. (Nope, Hadley, MA. I know Hadley well.)

The Peking is currently berthed at South Street Seaport, NYC.

Here's the real story about who is and isn't covered by medical insurance.

Not that the facts matter all that much in politics - and everybody wants a free Easter buffet.

Related: How the government plans to create its own medical insurance monopoly. (Just like public schools.) And once they have done that, they will drive through their rationing, rules, and controls. - and freedom in medical care will disappear. At that point, Doctor, your proud and noble profession will be transformed into involuntary servitude to the State rather than voluntary servitude to your patient and, at that point, patient, your treatment choices will disappear.

Then watch "doc-assisted" suicide for those over 60 become all the rage in government circles.

It's one more government power and money grab.

Of the three white egrets that breed in New England (American, Cattle, and Snowy) the largest is the Great Egret, which I persist in calling by its old name, American Egret.

A reader sent in these photos of one from this weekend in salt marsh in CT. You can see some of their fancy breeding plumage, for which these birds were hunted to near-extinction through the 19th and early 20th Centuries until the Audubon Society was created to protect them. More about the Great Egret in CT here.

The populations recovered fairly well, as long as they have safe places to nest in their tree colonies - usually on small islands or the tip of a peninsula.

At first, I thought this was a Monty Python-esque spoof. It's not. I hope the weapons were unloaded.

And just a thought - how about getting the SEALs to sneak some of this stuff into the water supplies of Wherizzitistan? Might make those Taliban happy and spiritual.

From a pleasantly rambling post by Dr. Bob,  Open Hands:

The walk of faith is said to be belief in the unbelievable, the fool’s way out of life’s challenges and disappointments, the easy path of cowards and knaves. It is in truth none of these things, but rather the very hardest of things: submission. It is to bend the knee; to trust when sight is dim or absent; to rely on the benevolence and wisdom of One who knows all and reject the false knowledge we tenaciously trust in our self-will, fear, and deception. If there is a God — sovereign, transcendent, just, good in ways we cannot begin to fathom, and above all passionate in His love for us — then there is nothing to do but trust, to submit, to rest. It is the Cross — in all its horrors, irrationality, agony, foolishness — and victory.

This week the church celebrates Holy Week, commemorating and meditating on that moment in history when darkness seemed triumphant, when earthly hopes were dashed, when the irrational ruled and evil gloated. In that dark moment, the glorious hopes of man haughty and triumphant were forever dashed on the stones of Golgatha; the blood of a failed prophet sealed their fate forever. Such is as true now as then; it is a timeless certainty, eternal despite all appearances to the contrary.

And so I must — we must — open our hands, and bend our knees. It is a time for prayer, for humility, for fasting, for simplification. It is time for turning over the foolishness of man and the corruption of a culture to Him who alone knows the ways of man and the wanderings of nations. We must lift up the country, its leaders; the culture; the church. It is not ours to seize nor to save. We must stand in truth, suffering what consequences we may endure.

They do not refer to the church as "the body of Christ" for nothing.

Read this before you head off for your fancy and decadent Easter Brunch with beautiful flowers and wine and Mimosas and Bloody Marys and ham and cakes and pies and Eggs Benedict and rare roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and rare lamb with homemade mint sauce and lobsters and shrimp and oysters and Cherrystone clams and squid salad and smoked salmon with capers and a mountain of cheeses and etc (which I am about to do): The Easter Lily.

Photo from the piece. 

Foreigners may pretend otherwise, but if English is spoken loudly enough, anyone can understand it.

P.J. O'Rourke

I had a very pleasant lunch and visit with our Roger de Hauteville (Roger ll of Sicily - not Roger l) and the heir, the young Prince of Sicily, this afternoon.

Roger knows a thing or two about big city politics (and many other things), and he made a strong case that Obama is relatively non-ideological; that he is a typical self-important ward-heeler who got "nailed to the bow of a big ship," anointed to figure-head the plundering pirate ship which is the Dem party.

In other words, it's all about getting jobs and money to your friends, and winning votes with jobs and money until nobody else can compete. Local one-party Chicago politics, gone national. O's "We won" just means "We got the money." The Lefty gestures are just to keep the Left on board. He also opined that the Tea Parties are "cute," but miss the larger political point of what is going on. I tend to agree with that.

He also asserted that Hillary, with her "Stalinist heart," would have been far scarier.

I am not entirely convinced by his whole thesis, but I hope he will condense what he said to me today for us to read. He said he already posted it under Welcome to the Plunderdome, but he didn't. Or maybe he did - but not in his own words.

On tribalism, from Gates. It begins:

“Irresolvable tribal differences cannot be considered to be mere political differences.”

The following essay by El Inglés is a sequel to the one published back in February. In this follow-up he extends his observations about tribal differences in modern Britain — and the rest of the Western world — by examining various tribal fractures which may be widened and inflamed during conflicts engendered by Muslim communities against their host society.

As usual, it’s useful to remember that El Inglés’ analysis is descriptive, and not normative. That is, something similar to what he projects here is the inevitable shape of things to come if Britain’s feckless political leaders fail to wake up to the severity of the crisis that is at hand.

Whole thing here.

From the Dylan interview last week re life in general, and his new record:

BF: Are you a mystical person?

BD: Absolutely.

BF: Any thoughts about why?

BD: I think it’s the land. The streams, the forests, the vast emptiness. The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I‘m more at home in the vacant lots. But I have a love for humankind, a love of truth, and a love of justice. I think I have a dualistic nature. I’m more of an adventurous type than a relationship type.

BF: But the album is all about love – love found, love lost, love remembered, love denied.

BD: Inspiration is hard to come by. You have to take it where you find it.

Today is Holy Thursday. Our church holds a silent Seder each Holy Thursday, in remembrance of Christ's last supper.

No wine, unfortunately, but all of the traditional Seder foods.

We do not post things on this site on Good Friday because it is a day of prayer and reflection on the cross and its meaning to us.

The Jerry Garcia Band with Dylan's song (h/t, Env. Repub):

"Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good."

Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (h/t, Vanderleun). Moynihan was the kind of wise Dem for whom I could have considered voting.

Medved on Obama the Leveler. It's either a different view of the world, or it's simply a political strategy. 

Obama's immigration agenda on the way. Once again, it's either a different view of the world, or it's simply a political strategy. I suspect the latter.

AVI takes on the movie "Doubt" from the DVD cover, without knowing anything about it. A quote:

Doubt is the proper stance to take about anything religious. That way you can be conflicted and can’t ever judge anyone else’s actions, but you can still be a sensitive thoughtful good person and not have to commit to anything as solid as unbelief.

They are transparent to us. We are opaque to them.

More on how the Left is bewildered and upset by the Tea Parties. Remind me - how much money did ACORN get from the "stimulus"? Was it $5 billion? ACORN is a government-supported radical political organization. We hope the Tea Party movement has legs.

Lefty crybaby bloggers want to get paid by political orgs.  Lefties always want other peoples' money. (In the interest of fair disclosure, we must admit that MF, like most of us centrist sites, does receive $10,000/month from a low-profile RNC-related media org in return for mindlessly echoing the Repub talking points which are emailed to us daily from deep within a hidden bunker somewhere in the Real America. A pittance, but every little bit helps to keep us in beans and rice.)

Money image on loan from Wall Street Fighter

1 Corinthians 11:23-25  ²³For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, ²⁴and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." ²⁵In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."

The Last Supper is thought to have been a Passover seder.
Da Vinci's Last Supper in Milan (c. 1498). Unfortunately, the dramatic picture began deteriorating and flaking within years of its completion. It's not a fresco.

Mrs. BD had increasing pain in her right shoulder, then running down her biceps, for two weeks, finally keeping her awake at night. Gets an appointment with the #1 shoulder guy in the world at the Hospital for Special Surgery in three days (last Monday). He is a kind, caring fellow who takes time with her. She gets a shoulder MRI two days later. Gets the diagnosis of early frozen shoulder one day later. Begins physical therapy and anti-inflammatory meds one day later.

Feeling better already. Even Fidel Castro couldn't get that kind of care and help, nor could Obama get better. Do I want my neighbor to pay for this for me? No - but thanks so much for offering to pay her bill. I believe in taking care of my own.

The bad news for her: no tennis for at least 2 months. The bad news for me: I gotta do all the cleaning and scrubbing, right when it's time to begin enjoying yard and garden work.

Well, we have snow flurries today, thanks to global warming climate change, so I guess the gardens can wait a while.

Myron Magnet terms Alexander Hamilton Modern America's Founding Father. One quote from the essay in City Journal:

The New York that welcomed Alexander Hamilton had its own distinctive culture, too, whose uniqueness went far deeper than John Adams’s description of a town where “they talk very fast, very loud, and all together.” Its Dutch past, from Peter Minuit’s 1626 purchase of Manhattan to Peter Stuyvesant’s handover of the flourishing New Netherland colony to the British in 1664, left an indelible legacy. After decades of brutish religious war, the Dutch Republic had embraced tolerance with fervor and transplanted to its trading post on the Hudson its constitutional promise that “each person shall remain free, especially in his religion, and no one shall be persecuted or investigated because of his religion.” So, for example, when Governor General Stuyvesant wanted to limit the rights of 23 Jews who sought asylum in New Amsterdam in 1654, they petitioned the Dutch authorities, who commanded Stuyvesant to treat them with Dutch tolerance, reminding him also that Jews were big investors in the West India Company. And then—as if Jews weren’t bad enough—Quakers appeared in the Long Island village of Vlissingen. When Stuyvesant forbade the villagers, mostly English, from taking them in, they disobeyed, citing in their 1657 “Flushing Remonstrance,” one of the foundation documents of American religious liberty, the Dutch principle that “love peace and libertie” must extend even to “Jewes Turkes and Egiptians” and reminding him of their charter, which granted the right “to have and Enjoy the Liberty of Conscience, according to the Custome and manner of Holland.”

And so New Amsterdam became a melting pot like no other place in North America, with settlers arriving from all over the globe and not only living side by side but also marrying each other.