Maggie's Farm

From Le nozze di Figaro (h/t, Reader). When Figaro was first produced in Vienna in 1786, the mockery of the aristocracy was shocking. Shortly thereafter, however, Emperor Joseph ll had to set a limit of 9 encores, because the 4-hour opera was running too late at night.

A Do-it-Yourself Test for Sociopathy

"I was nowhere near there." Neurotic Guilt and Politics

The Connetquot River (a trout stream on Long Island)

Tempest in a B cup: Boobs, bosoms, and tits (no p*rn)

By the way, can you name that library in the photo?

One of the most beautiful sights in the world: A reserved clay court at 8 AM on an August Saturday morning.

I've seen lots of bonnie lassies travellin' far and wide,
But my heart is centred noo on bonnie Kate McBride;
And altho' I'm no a chap that throws a word away,
I'm surprised mysel' at times at a' I've got to say

Chorus:
Roamin' in the gloamin' on the bonnie banks o' Clyde,
Roamin' in the gloamin' wi' ma lassie by ma side,
When the sun has gone to rest, that's the time that I like best,
O, it's lovely roamin' in the gloamin'!

One nicht in the gloamin' we were trippin' side by side.
I kissed her twice, and asked her once if she would be my bride;
She was shy, and so was I, we were baith the same,
But I got brave and braver on the journey comin' hame.
Chorus:

Last nicht efter strollin' we got hame at half-past nine.
Sittin' at the kitchen fire I asked her to be mine.
When she promised I got up and danced the Hielan' Fling;
I've just been to the jewellers and I've picked a nice wee ring.
Chorus:

This "traditional" Scottish song was written and performed by the entertainer Sir Harry Lauder. "Gloamin'" is twilight. Here's the music in midi.

The Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem, Brennan on the Moor. Only Liam remains of the original group. A piece by Rick Moran here.

The big sale is on until the end of August.

Long-time readers know how much we all love the Teaching Company. It's one of the ways we all try to continue to learn. But it's much more fun than school, because no single school could contain so many suberb and enthusiastic communicators - plus no tests or term papers. We use the CDs in the car and while working out.

I cannot praise these people enough. Look through their catalog to find the gaping holes in your education. In my family, we trade them around, but we only buy them during the sales.

h/t LGF. The Brit Left is shocked!

Like him or not, he is an impressive and accomplished fellow. h/t, RCP. I like Fred, but I suspect Giuliani wants the job more. The nation might be ready for a black president, but is it ready for an Italian? Not many Italians outside of the Northeast, and even I cannot spell his name. OK, OK - we're all Americans, I know.

Put this sticker on your car, and no eco-nazi will key your new  Esplanade. Good protection.

I am going to buy one for the Barrister to put on his new Ford F-250.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Woody Allen

I cannot explain why we are re-posting this bit from last year's Bovine of the Week Series. Just accept that there is a good reason.

Yes, unlike the Musk Ox, the Yak is a bovine, and a cousin of the ancestor of our Western domestic cattle, the mighty Auroch.

Yaks come in a wild and domesticated form. 85% of these cold-climate creatures are said to be in China, and are still used for plowing, meat, milk, wool, and as beasts of burden. They are capable of hybridizing with domestic cattle, yielding a breed which is commonly used as a pack animal in Tibet.

Why yurts with yaks? They begin with a Y. Yurts are Mongolian houses, of course, but I recently learned that you can buy plans for them, and the structures, from several American manufacturers, such as Pacific Yurts. Cozy dwellings for snowy places, cheap and practical - but I'll take a log cabin.

Robert Frost's notebooks have been published. A quote from Ormsby's review at New Criterion:

As the Notebooks show, Frost was a sophisticated reader of philosophy; he knew the Greeks from Thales on and had read Hegel, Schopenhauer, William James, and Bergson (a particular favorite), among others. Here he isn’t making a case for some relativistic notion of truth (indeed, he isn’t making a case at all but having what he liked to call “a think”). Instead, he is winkling out the capacity of poetry to capture, in a single dramatic image or synechdoche, a “confluence” of colliding truths. The object of a poem wasn’t to concoct some slick “unity of opposites;” it was to find those words—“words that have been mouthed like a common tin cup,” as he put it—through which multiple oppositions could flash forth from a single point of compression. An early jotting states, “I thought I was an {acromatic} lense. I’m afraid I am a prism” (his brackets and spelling). Metaphor was one obvious “prismatic” device but for Frost’s purposes, the aphorism, the proverb, and, especially, the figure of synechdoche, offered higher powers of refraction.

Texas guide for a dove shoot: "Hey fellas, let's shoot some of them crows for warm-up practice."

Sport: "Sure, why not?"

The guide calls the crows into range and the sports shoot some crows.

Guide: "OK, I'll just go pick up them crows to take home, and we'll go find them doves."

Sport: "Pick them up? What for?"

Guide: "To cook 'em."

Sport: "Eat a crow? What do they taste like?"

Guide: "Well... tastes kinda like owl."

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

Woody Allen

Amazing footage. (a big h/t to Driscoll). I forwarded the YouTube to Dr. Bob, who has been doing a series of photo essays on the construction of the new bridge). Watch the guy rescuing his dog from the bridge. 

Pulling the army out of Northern Ireland, that is.

After 38 years of counterinsurgency  operations, they are turning it over to the local cops.