Maggie's Farm

Getting there is half the fun. We decided to go to see the famous 20th century botanical gardens of Villa Taranto the hard way, hiking overland and up over the hill on the peninsula from the Pallanza ferry dock. As it turned out, our map wasn't as clear as it could have been, and it took us about two hours but, in the process, we stumbled onto some neat stuff. Thus there is a strong case to be made for leaving the beaten path when travelling, and letting yourself get a bit lost. Maybe that applies to life in general.

For example, we found this 1000 year-old church on a dead-end, on top of the hill overlooking Pallanza. I wrote the name down, but cannot find that scrap of paper.

 More photos of this hike on continuation page:

Who is Obama? TigerHawk.

I tend to think that he is a Marxist with a Left-Liberal facade, but you cannot get elected as a Marxist.

On Friday morning, the Fourth of July, we hustled the baby of the Bird Dog litter, age 16, down to JFK for her flight to Heathrow. This young world traveller is going on her third solo European trip, this time to study in an advanced Shakearean acting course at Oxford. Acting in, and digging into the classics is her passion.

She's a lucky gal to be blessed with a passion like that.

Her video auditions for the program impressed even me - as did her admission essays. There are those moments when you look wonderingly at a kid of yours and you think "How the heck did I produce that?!?!" Of course, you didn't. God did it. I have had many such head-scratching moments with my kids.

As typically happens in the four days before such trips, we had to deal with a suddenly-made-aware-of lost passport (it evaporated during the recent driver's license ID process) - and then with her emergency root canal on Thursday morning. Terrifying visions of Brit dentistry!

Her first and almost immediate email after her arrival at Balliol College was to inform us that she had neglected to bring her precious, required, and essential Riverside Shakespeare with her. It was the only item she absolutely had to have. She needed it immediately. Actor-types are like that...

I considered driving to the shore and trying to toss it across the pond to her, but that Riverside Shakespeare is a weighty tome.

So she will have to solve that emergency herself.

"There is scarcely a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the people's money, then all their lands and then make them and their children servants forever."  

Benjamin Franklin

From Dubai, the fastest-growing city in the world. Some of this architecture is not for me: I do not like heights, or buildings that move:

Our Barrister must have a prosperous pal because the lines of that boat in his photo are pure Hinckley. (It's a good post, too.) In the Northeast, on salt water, few small power boats are more admired than the modestly-named and understatedly-designed Hinckley Picnic Boat. These peppy, preppy boats have a jet water drive, can be maneuvered with an un-nautical joystick instead of a wheel, draw only 18" because there is no prop, can get up to 29 knots and cruise at 25, can turn on a dime, and can stop in two boat lengths by reversing the jets. There is plenty of power and hi-tech engineering in that streamlined lobster boat:

Here's the Popular Mechanics piece on the Picnic Boat. Here's a used one, for sale. 

Wonderful toys. I admire them, but don't really want one because I wouldn't find the time to use it her enough to justify the substantial price tag. If you want something a bit larger but with the same jet drive, there's the stunning Hinckley 44' Talaria, reviewed here:

That photo I took ain't too bad. It does capture the feel of this charming place. On June 20th we rented a little two-door Lancia and drove west over the mountains from Lake Maggiore to the smaller Lake Orta, mainly to visit the antique and highly photogenic village of San Giulio (Saint Julius, in English), and to take a water taxi out to look at Isola San Giulio with its ancient church and active Benedictine monastery. (We will post separately on the church, because its artwork is so interesting. And the saint himself lies in there, under glass, visible in gilded splendor. I would not take a photo of that.)

Most of the streets of San Giulio are too narrow for cars, and they don't allow cars in anyway (except for deliveries). However, there is actually a parking garage up the hill for visitors.

The village has at least a handful of medieval buildings - the only definitely medieval buildings we saw on our trip (other than churches and towers). Major urban renewal took place in Europe during the 15th to 17th centuries.

This village also has the best trattorias we encountered.

We saw one guy taking modeling photos. She was an edgy-looking girl, from the front:

 More photos of this side trip on continuation page below:

More errors on continuation page below -

Dunes near Cahoon's Hollow beach on the ocean side of Wellfleet, MA (Cape Cod). I hope to get there in August, but those dunes and marshes are calling me right now.

Here's the real Fourth. Been there, friend. Related: On Cape Cod, nothing happens until the 4th

Is the "tiresome" baby boomer cohort beginning to retire from their faculty jobs? Neo hopes so.

Washington's boyhood home found.

Tiger growls at the NYT: Are they the rubes? (Yes, they are, outside of Easthampton and the West Side of Manhattan.)

More on My Alcoholism: Dean's World (h/t, Dr. Bob)

Largest re-enlistment in history.

Experience matters. Ask John Adams

Moonbats hate the 4th of July

An anorectic guy? Litigious little SOB too.

All Freedom pieces at RCP today

For the umpteenth time: Oil is a bubble. Same as many other commodities right now.

A good day to remember what these good folks do for us. 

God bless 'em all.

Yes, this is the central debate of our time, and of the past 150 years. The authors of this series believe that most political ideas can be divided into either Individualistic or Collectivist categories.

It's a good day to post Parts 3 and 4 of this enjoyable brief and straightforward series, which captures much of what Maggie's believes in. (Parts 1 and 2 here.) Again, a h/t to Dust My Broom for finding these. Please send these around.

Part 3: Coercion vs. Freedom:

Part 4: Equality and inequality under the law:

Well, largely irrelevant I think, but not completely.

For one thing, relatively few people read blogs. Even the "big" blogs we read, like Michelle and Insty and Powerline, are miniscule in the larger scheme of things. But every once in a while a blog will have a major impact on events, on the news - or on just one random reader who gets a new thought or a new perspective.

However, blogs with any strong political bent are usually preaching to the choir. We are fortunate in being eclectic and pleasant and useful enough that people of all stripes seem to read us, and we attempt to be friendly enough so as not to drive people away just because we think Barry Goldwater was a political prophet.

We are not a political blog. We obviously do discuss politics with a strong point of view: Freedom First. An individual freedom bequeathed by God, with justice and mercy, is the bottom line of our politics and our world view. There is no reason for the USA to exist otherwise. If anybody has a stronger foundation, let us know. We'll listen.

Reader Buddy once said something like "Consider Maggie's to be just one more small brick in the wall of Western Civilization." Very small, but a brick. I like that very much, and I try to bear his comment in mind as a source of inspiration.

A Happy 4th to all of our freedom-loving readers. We will keep stuff coming over this weekend. Maybe we'll do some fun re-posts from our archives, along with a little oddball new stuff.

It's the Puppy Tactic. And the head-scarf tactic.

How JFK's assassination changed things. Driscoll. Related, from a piece on patriotism at Powerline:

One of the basic problems faced by liberals, and the reason why they tend to get sensitive whenever the subject of patriotism comes up, is that a large majority of Americans share the conservatives' view of their country. Rasmussen Reports adds up the numbers: 75% of respondents are proud of America's history, while 13% are ashamed of it. 64% say the U.S. is a positive role model for human rights.

As always, these numbers break down quite differently based on party affiliation. 91% of Republicans are proud of our country's history, compared to 64% of Democrats. Not surprisingly, there is also a racial divide: 81% of white respondents, but only 44% of African-Americans, are proud of America's history. (It would be interesting to see the breakdown for other races, but for some reason Rasmussen doesn't provide it.)

Marry "Mr. Good Enough"? Single, and turning 30.

It's about time: McCain shakes up campaign. Related: Prager on Why I Support McCain. I agree with most of that.

Lefties go bonkers as Obama slips and slides towards the center. Also, Obama's Chicago deals.

Photo: That's our Dylanologist sitting on a water taxi in Baveno in June. He is now back in Rome.

From a letter from John Adams to Abigail on July 2, 1776:

The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

"I don't want to remake America. I'm an immigrant, and one reason I came here is because most of the rest of the Western world remade itself along the lines Sen. Obama has in mind. This is pretty much the end of the line for me. If he remakes America, there's nowhere for me to go – although presumably once he's lowered sea levels around the planet there should be a few new atolls popping up here and there."

Mark Steyn, stolen from a quote at Samizdata

Avon, CT (pop. 17,000) in the Farmington River Valley (up towards The Barrister's neck of the woods), was a quaint, semi-rural semi-distant Hartford suburb until the highways came and the prosperous moved further from downtown Hartford. 

Avon's schools rank #1 in CT, largely because of its homogeneous middle-upper and upper-middle class population (a town's school "performance" correlates exactly with parental education and income, rendering school comparisons meaningless). Wiki notes that Avon was listed as one of the preppiest places in the United States in the 1980s best-seller The Official Preppy Handbook. A guy can still wear plaid pants or Nantucket Red in Avon without getting stared at, or shot.

With growing prosperity and suburban sprawl, towns like Avon have lost their cornfields and woodlands and chicken farms and dairy pastures. At the risk of sounding like an obnoxious snob, those cornfields have been replaced by graceless architectural abominations - with no relationship or sensitivity to place, proportion, local history, or taste - like these below (many more here and here), currently priced in the $800,000-4,000,000 range, and usually on about 1-acre lots:

Mrs. BD thought there might be some interest in the subject of growing perennials - rather than annuals - in your containers. It's a bit late in the season to post this, but I will do so anyway, and re-post it next May, God willing.

Since it might cost $50 to pack a good-sized container with annuals, and since perennials are generally more attractive and interesting, it might be worth a try. We have occasionally been happily surprised to see perennials in containers coming back to life in Spring. The trick is overwintering them.

Here's a site that explains it all.

Photo is one of my containers, filled with about $40 of annuals. Should have tried some perennials.

Fact is, we love newspapers. I worked for one for over a year, and our News Junkie works for one now. What we do not like is purportedly credible and objective newspapers being used as propaganda mills.

I do not mind newspapers like Il Manifesto, on every newsstand in Italy, which is a Communist paper. You can assume they slant their reporting and cherry-pick their facts to support their political agendas. Their readers want their views reinforced, and not challenged. One reason Conservative blogs exist is because the MSM so frequently overlooks inconvenient truths.

Glenn, who rarely writes anything resembling a blog post, today discusses newspapers.

Related: The Great media Depression

A quote from the piece in Smithsonian Magazine of the above title:

As a young man, Muir felt he was a student in what he called the ‘University of the Wilderness,'" Gisel said. "Yosemite was his graduate course. This is where he decided who he was, what he wanted to say and how he was going to say it."

When he first strode into Yosemite in the spring of 1868, Muir was a scruffy Midwestern vagabond wandering the wilderness fringes of post-bellum America, taking odd jobs where he could. In retrospect, visiting Yosemite might seem an inevitable stop on his life's journey. But his later recollections reveal a young man plagued with self-doubt and uncertainty, often lonely and confused about the future. "I was tormented with soul hunger," he wrote of his meandering youth. "I was on the world. But was I in it?"

Global warming as mass neurosis: WSJ. We all know AGW is to blame for everything, and now the NYT adds decreasing penguins to the list - even though Antarctic ice is increasing. And, for utter looniness, Prince Charles runs his Aston Martin on surplus wine. I have no idea what "surplus wine" means.

Does it mean his extra cases of Margaux '91 that he'll never get around to drinking? (1891, that is.)

It reminds me of the Simpson's episode in which people believe the end of the world is coming, so all the patrons of the bar run over to the church, while all the congregants of the church run over to the bar.

AVI, on irony

In my post on The Centovalli Train, I asked "Where are all the people?" Many of these towns in Italy look neat, clean - but deserted, which adds to the stage-set feeling.

Maybe it's the time of day, but part of the answer is No babies in Euroland.

When reflecting on my re-post yesterday on Lionel Trilling, I realized that I had neglected to reference what is perhaps his most-read work, The Liberal Imagination. It's still worth reading:

“The Liberal Imagination (1950) applied the dialectical method to cultural themes by exploring the ways in which literary masterworks deflated the pieties of trendy left-wing politics. Trilling, who identified himself as a liberal, called for a new kind of criticism that 'might find its most useful work not in confirming liberalism in its sense of general rightness but rather in putting under some degree of pressure the liberal ideas and assumptions of the present time.' That statement was almost a blueprint, or prophecy, of the neoconservative creed.” –The New York Times

And my allusion to Jacques Barzun, who as far as I know is still alive and retired in Texas, reminded me to reference his sweeping book, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500-Present. Via Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly

Now 92, Barzun, the renowned cultural critic, historian and former Columbia provost and professor, offers much more than a summation of his life's work in this profound, eloquent, often witty historical survey. A book of enormous riches, it's sprinkled with provocations. For example, Barzun contradicts Max Weber, arguing that the Protestant Reformation did not galvanize the capitalist spirit. With feminist ardor, he depicts the 16th century as molded and directed by women "as brilliant as the men, and sometimes more powerful" (e.g., Queens Elizabeth and Isabella). His eclectic synthesis is organized around a dozen or so themes--including emancipation, abstraction and individualism--that in his judgment define the modern era. Barzun keeps up the momentum with scores of snappy profiles, including of Luther, Erasmus, Cromwell, Mozart, Rousseau and Byron, as well as of numerous unsung figures such as German educator Friedrich Froebel, inventor of kindergarten, and turn-of-the-century American pioneer ecologist George Marsh. Other devices help make this tome user-friendly--the margins are chock-full of quotes, while vignettes of Venice in 1650, Weimar in 1790 and Chicago in 1895 give a taste of the zeitgeist. In Barzun's glum estimate, the late 20th century has brought decadence into full bloom--separatism in all forms, apathetic electorates, amoral art that embraces filth or mere shock value, the decline of the humanities, the mechanization of life--but he remains hopeful that humanity will find its way again. This is a book to be reckoned with. First serial to American Scholar; BOMC selection.

Both books well-worth reading, if you haven't.

Would either of these great Columbia profs, who knew almost everything about almost everything, be welcomed on any campuses today?

Part 1:

Part 2: