Maggie's Farm

Riehl found a series of excellent photos of the now-abandoned Weston State Hospital in West Virginia. Construction of this handsome building began before the Civil War.

Abandoned state mental hospitals are gathering dust across the country, due to the deinstitutionalization movement begun by President Kennedy, prompted in part by new effective treatments for chronic mental disorders and in part by horror stories of poor care and abuse of patients.

 Cramer often writes (recent example here) about some of the tragedies of deinstitutionalizing those who cannot handle life. Some significant percent of urban homeless would probably have been in institutions in the past. For schizophrenia, medicine can control some disruptive symptoms, but most schizophrenics still have a terrible time dealing with the demands of reality.

Our town has a "group home" for these people, with plenty of support and structure. It seems to work very well, but only for those who want the help and are willing to take their medicine.

Is there still a need for asylums? I don't know. They appear haunted to me.

The question at hand, in the photo essay, is whether these big old buildings are worth preserving, and can be put to any use.

We have already linked to both of these City Journal essays, but they deserve to be linked on the same post as our reader suggested, and as Viking and Betsy have done:

The Peace Racket, by Bruce Bawer

Why Study War?, by Victor Davis Hanson (who we usually refer to as VDH)

No time to pick out quotes right now, but please read 'em if you haven't.

Ours are in bloom now, and will continue through September. These small trees will survive up through Zone 6, but in Zone 6 they prefer some shelter from the winter winds, and they are slow to emerge from dormancy (they look dead).

They are common in the South, but up here people are stunned by such a brilliantly summer-blooming tree and don't know what it is.

They like to be pruned properly, and heavily mulched, and need full sun to produce those blooms. A little fertilizer, too.

This is a young plant, with three main stems. I much prefer them with multiple stems rather than with a single trunk.

The exfoliating bark is interesting too.

51 varieties here, with photos. Most of our cultivars are of Asian descent, but there are native species. More photos, and how to grow them, here.

Growing plants on or above their zonal limits is always an interesting challenge for us gardeners. A fully-rational person would not bother.

Some buddies were fishing in Ontario last week, mainly for Small-Mouth Bass, which I did not know was a Canadian fish.

They fished out of Lake Herridge Lodge, about 5 1/2 hours north of Toronto, which they liked very much. There is a chain of five large lakes, with portages or channels between. The largest is about 5 miles long and a mile wide. 

We brushwack each half of this meadow only every other year, for the benefit of the wildflowers and the wild critters. It is full of milkweed, goldenrod, daisy, Black-eyed Susan, Queen Ann's Lace, Indian Paintbrush, asters, etc. It is also full of large protruding boulders which which make mowing a challenge. It is best to have somebody march in front of the tractor to spot boulders, turtles, stumps, and other hazards. I am gradually planting junipers, apples, Chinese Chestnuts, etc. next to each serious boulder, to mark them.

If it were fenced, it would make a decent cow pasture or, as the yougest daughter opines, a good llama pasture.

Our next project in this meadow is to push back the White Pines which were invading the meadow like Burnham Wood during a period of lazy mowing a while back. At this point, it's a big chain-saw job: probably need about 50-100 trees down to restore the meadow's original edges.

From Indians to Pilgrims to Yankee fishermen to Portuguese fishermen to artists to tourists to gays, Provincetown has seen a lot over the years.

Maybe the yuppies will be next, and gentrify it like they did to the Hamptons and Nantucket.

My favorite restaurant there: The Lobster Pot. Lots of Portuguese stuff, like Kale Soup with linguica, baked stuffed Haddock with molho tomate (strong cumin) and onion, and Squid Stew. They also do a great job with tuna belly (toro) on the grill, when they can get it: it's the best - burnt on the surface, rare on the inside, and dripping with fat.

My Mom, proper and refined Yankee lady that she is, likes to schedule our annual drive up from Wellfleet to P-town and the Lobster Pot to coincide with the Gay Carnival Parade. She thinks it's a hoot.

P-town in the 1940's: Sippican

Trickled home last night and found an alarming, sulfurous odor in the office wing of the house.

Electrical fire? Sniffed all around the place. Noticed it was strongest where the windows were wide open. Stepped out into the backyard. Aha!

The powerful rotten-egg odor of skunk discharge had been wafting in the windows. I should have known.

We enjoy our local Striped Skunks. We have watched Mom, with her kits, dancing and prancing in the spotlight on the lawn out back. Skunks were thought to be members of the Weasel family, but there is doubt about that now. Probably related to the European Polecat. Ours are nocturnal, omnivorous, and solitary except with their kits. Their main predators around here are probably Great Horned Owls.

I think we have two local skunks: One lives under a small outbuilding, and one in an abandoned woodchuck hole. They are good neighbors if you leave them alone.

And yes, the dog did get skunked. His first time, and probably his last. He did not sleep on my pillow last night, and, if it's still bad today, he will get the traditional tomato juice shower/bath.

Jeremiah 23: 23-29

²³Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? ²⁴Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. ²⁵I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” ²⁶How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? ²⁷They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. ²⁸Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the Lord. ²⁹Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?

with David Rawlings. You know her song Orphan Girl, dontcha?

The Americans With No Abilities Act of 2006

Clear-cutting and Conservation

Shelby Steele on White Guilt

The Dog's Sense of Smell

The Ruffed Grouse

Photo: Name that actress

"People like to say today that 'diversity is our strength.' It's almost like a State Religion. But diversity isn't our strength: freedom is our strength. Uncontrolled cultural diversity is the story of the Tower of Babel."

Tom Tancredo, as heard (paraphrased) on the Monica Crowley radio show on WABC a few weeks ago.

We have often addressed "diversity" and "tolerance," words which in their pomo incarnations represent appalling if not insane ideas. (For a few examples, No Lux, No Veritas, Scared by His Own Research, Trust Cues and Tribalism, and Steyn on War, Demographics, Multiculturalism, Tolerance, and the Masochism of the West.)

From Daniel Henninger in the WSJ yesterday, The Death of Diversity, a quote (h/t, Loyal Reader):

Diversity was once just another word. Now it's a fighting word. One of the biggest problems with diversity is that it won't let you alone. Corporations everywhere have force-marched middle managers into training sessions led by "diversity trainers." Most people already knew that the basic idea beneath diversity emerged about 2,000 years ago under two rubrics: Love thy neighbor as thyself, and Do unto others as they would do unto you. Then suddenly this got rewritten as "appreciating differentness."

George Bernard Shaw is said to have demurred from the Golden Rule. "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you," Shaw advised. "Their tastes may not be the same." No such voluntary opt-out is permissible in our time. The parsons of the press made diversity into a secular commandment; do a word-search of "diversity" in a broad database of newspapers and it might come up 250 million times. In the Supreme Court term just ended, the Seattle schools integration case led most of the justices into arcane discussions of diversity's legal compulsions. More recently it emerged that the University of Michigan, a virtual Mecca of diversity, announced it would install Muslim footbaths in bathrooms, causing a fight.

Read the whole thing. There's a video too. (Too bad he got the "Do unto others..." bit wrong - it sorta spoils a good piece, but you get the point.)

Image: I get a kick out of that old Benetton ad. which was on all of the busses when I lived in NYC.

Johan Galtung, father of the "peace studies" movement. Thompson.

People like this give me the creeps. I guess there are lots of kinds of "peace."

Before the SAT, colleges gave their own achievement tests to see whether you were prepared.

In 1926, the SAT was intended to be a "progressive", democratizing influence by testing your "aptitude" instead of your mastery of Latin, Greek, French, chemistry and trigonometry. At the time, the elite prep schools did the best job preparing kids for the elite colleges' requirements.

Charles Murray on educational testing, college admissions, class and genes. He suggests dumping the SAT, but keeping the Achievement Tests. His discussion makes sense to me: a college ought to be able to state what they expect in terms of preparation.

On the same subject, Ivy Leaguers take untimed SATs. ADD and dyslexia, ya know?

The Global Cooling Crisis. See the Newsweek piece from '75, at the bottom. h/t, Memeorandum

- Discussed further by Tigerhawk

There are 20,000 species of Sunflowers. This is one of them. This happy patch sprung up on the edge of our stream, and it is welcome to stay as long as it wants to.