Maggie's Farm

I did promise that I would pre-post some interesting things while I am away.

If you read this piece, you get a sense of how little that part of the Middle East has changed.

Shorpy's comment: "Washington, D.C., 1920. 'Penn Oil Company, Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol.' National Photo Company Collection glass negative."

I like the 1920s-era a/c.

A fairly common Eastern woodland migrant and breeder, but often missed, despite the male's dramatic color, because they often forage up high in the oaks, way above eye-level. 

Read more about this handsome bird:  All About Birds

Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette.

Leonard Bernstein's acclaimed 1973 lecture series at Harvard, The Unanswered Question, was directed towards a general audience rather than towards musicians.

You can buy the DVD at Amazon, or ask your library to buy them.

Here's a sample:

Our post on how flies manage to land on ceilings a while ago was such a hit that it inspired me to do another fly post.

In the fall Cluster Flies head for houses to spend the winter in dormancy. When you turn on the heat, they wake up and clamber around disgustingly, often in clusters around windows.

When that happens to us, we get out ye olde vacuum cleaner.

You can read about their natural history here (they leave their winter shelter and lay their eggs on earthworm holes at this time of year. Their maggots live on earthworms).

An official distinction between formal and informal essays.

We mostly do the informal, here.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

Fyodor Doskoevsky

St. Johnsbury, VT is about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, and with a population around 7000 it is the main town in Vermont's rural Northeast Kingdom. Calvin Coolidge went to school there and Dr. Bob of AA fame grew up there.

You drive through St. Johnsbury on the way to somewhere else, such as grouse hunting in NH or Maine. It's a sad, run-down old town today, with plenty of poverty and few jobs, and it gives you the feeling that those with the inner resources to leave, do so.

Except for the farmers, the logging truck drivers and the Maple sugar bottlers, it's lots of folks on Vermont welfare who would have much better lives if they took a deep American breath and left the squalor behind by taking a bus to Atlanta, Alabama, or Arizona to find a new life and a real job where they could be of use.

This 1900 fixer-upper pictured can be had for $89,000. I wouldn't take it if you gave me $89,000, unless it was wintertime and I was desperate for shelter. No amount of money could make this house charming or homey, but shelter is shelter and, in VT in the winter, ya gotta have some and to hell with charm.

Why are New Yorkers the way that they are? Joan Acocella in Smithsonian.

And an annoyed response by the Chicagoan Huston.

Reality is only an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Albert Einstein

This 1866 Currier and Ives print depicts the "miniature ship" Red White and Blue. Details as listed on the print:

Length 26 Feet. Breadth of Beam 6 Feet 1 Inch. Depth of Hold 2 Ft. 8 In. 2 33/100 Tons Register. On her Voyage from New York to London, August 1866 with Capts Hudson & Fitch & dog Fanny. Sailed from New York July 9th arrived at Margate, August 16th 1866

Gene Autry (1945):

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car."
-Author Unknown

Advice for the day: If you have a lot of tension and you get a headache, do what it says on the aspirin bottle: "Take two aspirin" and "Keep away from children."
-Author Unknown

"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
-Drew Carey

"The problem with the designated driver program, it's not a desirable job, but if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it.  At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house."
-Jeff Foxworthy

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base."
-Dave Barry

"Relationships are hard.  It's like a full time job, and we should treat it like one.  If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, and the day before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp."
-Bob Ettinger"

A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: "Duh."
-Conan O'Brien

"Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant??  I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God...I could be eating a slow learner."
-Lynda Montgomery

"I think that's how Chicago got started. Bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.'"
-Richard Jeni

"If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead."
-Johnny Carson

"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."
-Paul Rodriguez

"My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that's the law."
-Jerry Seinfeld

"Remember in elementary school, you were told that in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic in that? What, do tall people burn slower?"
-Warren Hutcherson

"Bigamy is having one wife/husband too many. Monogamy is the same."
-Oscar Wilde

"Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Afghanistan "
-A. Whitney Brown

"You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says,  'My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!'"
-Dave Barry

Do you know why they call it "PMS"? Because "Mad Cow Disease" was taken.
- Unknown, presumed deceased

"Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer."
-W. C. Fields

- G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

This is an elegant 2003 70' Hinckley. Hinckley builds sailboats to order, but it makes sense to buy a used one. Her details here. They are asking $3,400,000., and worth every penny.

I've never understood the passion for the boiled or steamed Blue Crab on the Atlantic coast. Too much work for too little reward - though they are by far the tastiest crab in the world, and a true Maryland Crab Cake is the best.  A lobster rewards effort better, but lobsters do not live in Maryland.

(Sauteed soft-shelled - moulting - Blue Crabs are another matter entirely. Great stuff.) Spelling note: "moult" or "molt" are both acceptable spellings, but apparently "molt" is more American.

Some Blue Crab links:

The Peoples' Lobster

A little natural history of the Blue Crab

How to correctly "pick" a crab

How Blue Crabs moult

Two plus two equals five is not without its attractions.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

Jim at Wild Goose Lodge on PEI is a good friend of Ducks Unlimited and is generous in his donations of trips to our fund-raising events.

To accommodate the increased costs of travel, he is reducing your 4-night package cost by $350 this year, while predicting another excellent year of waterfowl hunting.

Before the Renaissance, artists (like composers and songwriters) were artisans and did not sign their work, similar to illustrators and jingle-composers today. The "Master of St. Cecilia" decorated churches in Assisi and in Florence from around 1300-1320.

This fresco is from his Legends of St. Francis, #27 (A heretic confessing) in the Upper Church, San Francesco, Assisi (1300)

A re-post from last spring:

Mohonk. My Gramp's favorite place, and one of my Pa's favorites, if you don't include Tuscany or Norway. When you arrive, your first view of the place in the woods�is astonishing. Great rock-climbing in the Gunks.

Tanglewood. Stay in Lenox, or at the 200 year-old �Red Lion in Stockbridge, not too far from Maggie's Farm.

Chatauqua.�Yes, it still exists and is going strong, with mental stimulation.

The Mount Washington Hotel. A grand year-round place, if you ski or snowshoe.

Chatham Bars Inn.�Mostly summer, on the elbow of the Cape. My preference for the Cape is early September: water is warm, the crowds thin out, and the migratory birds are everywhere.

Monhegan Island. Get away from it all, even more so than Cuttyhunk.

Wellfleet. The real old regular-folks Cape, without the nouveau riche of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard and their Hummers.

Photo: Monhegan Island, from this guy's photo site

Pre-posted for your reading pleasure, like all of Bird Dog's posts this week:

Are men boring? Women think so. They never met me.

Inconspicuous consumption. The less money your peer group has, the more bling you buy.

Giving poor kids laptops does nothing for them.

Saudi-run VA school teaches hate. But if some cultures hate, then isn't tolerance of hate multiculturally tolerant?

The utopian origins of Dilbert's workspace

The few, the proud. Harvard's 5 ROTC grads

Politics and religion: Permitted, but not encouraged?

The Myth of Equality: Bynum in The New English Review

Why the FCC should not exist

Get ready for the oil price drop

Boortz never actually delivered this comencement speech, which he wrote in 1998 to protest never having been asked to deliver one. Here's a sample of it:

Now, I realize that most of you consider yourselves Liberals.  In fact, you are probably very proud of your liberal views.  You care so much. You feel so much.  You want to help so much.  After all you're a compassionate and caring person, aren't you now?  Well, isn't that just so extraordinarily special.  Now, at this age, is as good a time as any to be a liberal; as good a time as any to know absolutely everything. You have plenty of time, starting tomorrow, for the truth to set in.

Over the next few years, as you begin to feel the cold breath of reality down your neck, things are going to start changing pretty fast... including your own assessment of just how much you really know.

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality:  

Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes.  Then, compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives.  From the Left you will hear "I feel." From the Right you will hear "I think."  From the Liberals you will hear references to groups -- The Blacks, the Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate.  From the Right you will hear references to in dividuals.  On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really:  Liberals feel.  Liberals care.  They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics.  Conservatives and Libertarians think -- and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual.

 You can read the whole thing, with the background, at Snopes

Some Father's Day eye candy, courtesy of Theo:

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. ²He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. ³He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. ⁴Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. ⁵Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” ⁶And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” ⁷Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. ⁸Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.

⁹They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” ¹⁰Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. ¹¹Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. ¹²So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” ¹³The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” ¹⁵But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”