Maggie's Farm

Her farewell ABT performance yesterday, in Romeo and Juliet - video clips here. (You have to click on the Alessandra Ferri photo link.)

How does that look, for a retirement performance? You could mistake her for a 20 year-old.

"A kind of fierce love" from her audience for this passionate prima ballerina.

Photo: Alessandra Ferri. Not sure what dance that photo is from, but will try to find out.

                Because she smells like a new truck.

Daily Telegraph (The cartoon involves Mr. Tim Blair)

The bill is unpopular, but powerful forces — businesses, journalists, officials in both parties, and racial pressure groups — are determined to push it through. They do not mind if a few senators vote against the bill for the cameras while greasing the track for it when it counts.

With the interest in old time traditional cast iron cookware on our piece on A Darn Good Steak, (in which I learned that lots of folks prefer fried to grilled steak), here's a little cast iron cookware info.

Lodge is a good source, and you can buy directly from them. I like the assist handle and the pouring lip. Here's their advice for care and feeding of iron. I think two sizes of skillets ought to do it.

I know darn little about the subject, but I see that Wagner bought out Griswold, and that both brands are now owned by American Culinary Corp., which now produces a Wagner line.

Here's another source of cast iron cookware care.

Grabar takes on Hitchens' atheism at TCS. Q quote:

How odd, then, for Hitchens to invoke literature as he does:

"We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books."

But Hitchens must be banking on a readership that has not read Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. These Christian authors dramatized the themes and stories of the holy book that Hitchens disparages. Shakespeare has Iago explain the materialist origins of his wickedness:

"Virtue? A fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens."

For Shakespeare, the sociopath emerges from a materialist conception of the self, from the rejection of the spiritual -- specifically, Christianity.

Lots of stuff about unhappy feet recently. For one, there was that teen in Kentucky who lost her feet on an amusement park ride.

Here's neoneo on ballerinas' feet. The pain and destruction are worth it, she feels.

And here's John Hawkes on cosmetic foot surgery: "Now I can wear whatever shoes I want."

Photo: Croc shoes. Our readers seem to like them. Is it comfort, or the anti-fashion thing? Or is it a rubber shoe fetish, like wearing latex clothing?

"My first daughter is married to a NYFD firefighter, my second daughter is married to a NYPD officer, and my third daughter teaches in a Catholic school. It's like a New York triple crown."

A caller on NYC's Religion on the Line radio show today.

I know it's grilling season, but I took a tip from The Prof and tried his blackened steak recipe - minus the salad part. (I have nothing against a salad course, but I am morally, spiritually, and philosophically opposed to serving salad with meat as they do in restaurants these days, like that revolting but ubiquitous Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad. They give you crappy bland slices of chicken, an out-of-the-can Caesar dressing, and expect you to like it because it is supposedly low-cal.) 

I had a 1" supermarket sirloin, coated the sides generously with a mixture of ground black pepper, salt, cayenne, thyme, garlic powder, and paprika and let it sit a little bit. Then I dipped both sides in melted butter and threw it on a maximum heat pre-heated ungreased iron frying pan on my gas stove. About 3 minutes per side made it perfectly rare and failed to set off the smoke alarm. Black and crunchy on the surface, but still trying to walk back to Kansas on the inside. As good a steak as I have ever had, and much tastier than steak on ye olde charcoal grill.

From now on, steaks get cooked in the pan, and the grill will be for butterflied lamb, chops, London Broil (a tasty but un-chewable cut), chicken, burgers, hot dogs, sausage, bluefish, tuna, etc. After all, aren't grilled steaks always slightly disappointing unless they are from a premium butcher and extremely full of fat? They smell good, though.

The stupidity of the Beautiful People. The Shelf. A quote:

There is no doubt that entertainment effects the development of the younger generation. I see it everywhere when I'm out and about and as my children get a day older every 24 hours I get more and more worried about this influence on them. It is important that we play a large role in the lives of our children. They need to learn about life and it's mysteries from us, not Sheryl Crow or Rosie O'Donnell. Values are timeless, yet pop culture changes their interpretation every decade or so. The popular consensus of what is good and bad, right and wrong are changed slightly every so often by that dirty tactic of "pushing the envelope". Where did the envelope come from and who said we wanted it pushed? The values that were taught to my father and his father are the values I should teach my children. Right and wrong does not change, so why do the Hollywood elite feel the need to mask it as if it does?

Photo: Sean Penn, a "Beautiful Person"

Isaiah 40: 1-11

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. ²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

³A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. ⁴Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. ⁵Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” ⁶A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. ⁷The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. ⁸The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.

⁹Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Judah, “Here is your God!” ¹⁰See, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. ¹¹He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

Historical background on Isaiah 40 here. It is often thought of as predicting the ministry of John the Baptist, who "prepared the way" for Jesus.

Image: Michelangelo's Isaiah from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

Fish Chowda'

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

Fun with Fallacy: The Sin and Art of Nonsense

Mowing

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound--
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labour knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

Surrender or die. Exciting. I'd like to be in Michael Yon's shoes, but I could not fill them: he is a retired SEAL.

It sounds like there is a major problem with Iraqi laziness and incompetence, but that isn't news.

Al Quaida's plan is to outlast American defeatists. America's plan is to kill them first. Encircle and enclose them.

Also, WaPo filed a report from Patrol Base Murray. The press is realizing that the real battle for Iraq is finally underway.

Photo is a Stryker combat vehicle.

Rounding up illegals, illegal criminals, and gangs on Nantucket. Who knew? (h/t, Wizbang)

When will they come to round up and remove the yuppies? The yuppies are the "root cause" of the problem because they don't want to do their own work.

I can remember when Nantucket was a remote, rugged Yankee place that nobody wanted to go to, before the glitz invasion from New York, Dallas, Greenwich and Hollywood. I guess East Hampton got too crowded, and private jets have become more commonplace.

What's left? Good old un-yuppified Cape Cod, and, of course, Maine (but you can't swim in Maine).