Sunday Fishing

A teaser which will keep you following Maggie's Farm: Last Sunday morning, 6:30 AM. I am out in the garden in the semi-dark, working, digging, weeding, transplanting, drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee and content to be alive. Along comes John and a bunch of my best buddies in his politically incorrect Suburban. "Hurry up. Get in the car, as you are." I guess I missed his call - I do miss some calls. So I grab my camera (without battery), and do so, of course, guiltily aware of missing church and church picnic, etc. Photos, and mysterious story of a death at sea, to follow...

Bush Hates Texas

With his nefarious Pentagon Racist Hurricane Joy-stick, he is aiming Rita towards Texas. I guess Rove - Bush's Brain - is trying to make amends for aiming Katrina towards black New Orleans. What a sneaky guy that Rove is to aim a minor storm at the whites. Like he can fool us.

Semicolon Wars

It seems like a fine thing to have a debate raging which has nothing to do with politics. Where do you stand on the semicolon issue? Some love 'em, some hate 'em, and, difficult as it may be to believe, some people are actually indifferent to the subject. I happen to enjoy colons, semicolons, ellipses, dashes, parentheses, and any other things on the keyboard, but I sometimes wonder whether some of that is pure laziness, or lack of time for editing. From a piece by Butterworth in Financial Times:

Big deal or not, there is really only one use of the semicolon that is “more or less mandated”, says Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware and author of About Town, a monumental account of The New Yorker magazine (whose history is marked by fractious debates over the placement of commas). And that is to separate series elements containing commas (for example, “The cities represented were Albany, New York; Wilmington, Delaware; and Selma, Alabama). The other principal uses, says Yagoda, are discretionary: “That is I might, with total grammatical correctness and without changing my meaning in the slightest, choose any one of the following: 1. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; and that is why it is worth examining.’ 2. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash, and that is why it is worth examining.’ 3. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; that is why it is worth examining.’ 4. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash. That is why it is worth examining.’” Deciding which of the four to choose is strictly a matter of sound and rhythm, says Yagoda - that is to say, personal style. “Writers who like (consciously or unconsciously) to stop and pause, and/or who are under the influence of Hemingway, choose 4. Those who like balanced rhythms might choose 3. Those aiming for a ‘transparent’ style might choose 2. And those who are a little bit enamoured with the sound of their own voice might choose 1.”

Read entire.

Teal are small ducks which, in migration, appear as fast, low-flying small flocks. Duck hunters know well how quickly they can appear over the reeds using their ground-hugging radar, and be past you before you know they are there. Early migrators, both species of teal have moved from their northern marsh breeding grounds to their homes in Central and South America by the time fall hunting season begins in the northern US. I doubt that we will bag any teal in our trip to Manitoba during the first week of October - they will be south.

The Blue-wing is the second most common duck in North America - after the mallard. (The blue wing patch is only visible in flight.) One of these days, we will get into the subject of duck plumage, an interesting subject because ducks have two plumages, breeding and non-breeding (or "eclipse.") Duck photos tend to show the colorful breeding plumage of the males, as in this photo, rather than the drab eclipse plumage which beginning birders and hunters find confusing.

During migration, both teal species are found in fresh-water or brackish ponds and marshes, often standing around on mud flats, looking bored but content. More on teal here.

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

New Orleans refugees finding better lives

From neo-neocon:

Some telling statistics: for two-thirds of those people whom Ladov and his friends flew to Denver, it was the very first time they'd ever been on an airplane. And all of those evacuated to northwest Arkansas were given the following choice: stay in that part of Arkansas, move back to New Orleans, or relocate elsewhere. Ninety-five percent chose to stay in Arkansas, an extraordinary percentage.

Read entire Kindness of Strangers

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not; the world is full of educated failures.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge

Country Pie

Ophelia gently blew through here yesterday, resulting in a literal windfall of nearly-ripe and ripe peaches. Peaches ripen in late Aug-Sept. up here in Yankee-land. The yard guys must have eaten a dozen yesterday, juice running down their chins, (I don't spray 'em), but there are a couple of bushels more, on the ground and on the tree. Plenty enough to spare some to the squirrels and possums and box turtles that love 'em.

So the splendid youngest daughter made her dad a peach pie. Wow. Crust from scratch, too. Nothing better. Can't dare dilute it with ice cream...plus I didn't see any in the freezer. Now to yard work and maybe fishing later.

(Listening to: Sweet Melissa, Allman Brothers)

This photo reminds me of John (Gigolo-John, AKA "Gig-John") Kerry's most famous quote during the campaign: "Whom among us does not love NASCAR?" 

9th Court of Appeals finds Pledge unconstitutional.

God just doesn't seem to get the message that He is unconstitutional, and unwelcome in the Modern America of the ACLU and California's 9th Court. Isn't it true what they used to say, that "A gentleman always knows where he is not wanted"? Can't God tell that they just want him to go away? God is a downer, man. Obsolete Creator. Creation is done. Now it's our turn, right, Brother Cain?

But why doesn't the 9th just go all the way and declare America unconstitutional? Then they can declare the Constitution unconstitutional (or has that already been done by the Supreme Court?), at which point they will have achieved their goal.

We shouldn't elect a President; we should elect a magician.

Will Rogers

Fair Chase

Ducks Unlimited, along with other hunter-conservationist groups, has begun a "Hunt Fair Chase" promotional program. "Fair Chase", for you non-hunters, refers to the ethics of hunting. Yes, man has a weapon and the animal does not, but there are many ways to apply ethics and respect to the ancient and honorable tradition.

For me, one of the primary ethics is to support conservation measures, and to do it - not to wait for the government to do it. That's why I love Ducks Unlimited, the Nature Conservancy, and a few others.

The General principles, as expressed at the DU website:

Fair Chase allows the hunter to pursue game, using hunting skills, knowledge of wildlife & outdoor savvy, without putting the game animal at an unfair disadvantage.  The principles of fair chase encourage hunters to: show respect to landowners & managers; respect wildlife; obey game laws; show courteous to other hunters and those that don't hunt; clearly identify your target; and remain ethical and safe at all times.

And the only sound that's left,
After the ambulances go,
Is Cinderella sweeping up,
On Desolation Row.

Tourists to return to NO in six months? Tourists maybe, but what about people?

Where facts are few, experts are many.

Donald R. Gannon

Covering the Coverage

Now that the people of NO are safe, the blog-news cycle turns to coverage of the coverage - always a worthy task for newsy blogs, one of whose primary functions can and should be to try to keep the MSM honest...a sisyphusian task.

It is widely agreed that coverage was not only hysterical and lacking in facts, but it appears to have been used in an effort to bloody President Bush's nose via distortions, selective use of facts, etc. - something which the silly Sheehan story failed to do, despite their utmost efforts to make this poor benighted soul the spearhead of a 60s-style antiwar movement.

LLBS has a very fine rant about all of this (Thanks for the tip, Classical Values). One paragraph - but read the whole thing:

"...I don’t have the faith in Bush’s and FEMA’s godlike power to make everything all right that they have apparently betrayed I am unable to sympathize never mind empathize with this hyperbole. I wouldn’t be president in this unstable, infant-brained country for anything; sitting in the Oval Office must be like sitting in the middle of a giant nursery, and every baby has a full diaper."

Ben Stein on the Media Riot

"What is the real story of Katrina is (I suggest) not so much that nature wrought fury on land, water, people, property, and animals, not at all anything about racism, not much about federal government incompetence. The real story is that the mainstream media rioted."

Read the whole thing.

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

William Ellery Channing

From New Orleans to Cape Cod...waiting for Nantucket to step up to the plate

The evil racist American system, which created a hurricane at the secret Republican/KKK/Israeli/Saudi hurricane-generating machine at a top-secret oil platform in the Caribbean to destroy black New Orleans, has brought hundreds of refugees to Cape Cod, along with their arrest records, thanks to Mitt Romney (is he running for anything?). They will like Massachusetts, except for the winter, and the lack of jobs, and a Cape Cod culture which is about as far from the NO view of the world as you can get. Fitting in might take a while, but not because of skin color. John "Gig-John" Kerry's Liberal Nantucket ought to be good for about a thousand of these refugees, don't ya think? ("Gig-John" - short for Gigolo-John - you already knew that, right?) The world is waiting... and waiting to see whether Bush will create an anti-white hurricane. Doubt it - not that racist Bushitler monster....but if there is a white hurricane, it will be a Rove deal - to create an illusion of fair-and-balanced weather. Hey - it's easy to figure things out - just get a bit paranoid and connect the dots. (You get to pick your own dots in this game.)

Exactly what I thought

from Paul at Powerline:

"Jack Kelly supplies the information about hurricane response time that the MSM is too biased and lazy to provide. For example, he quotes Florida National Guardsman Jason van Steenwyk, mobilized six times for hurricane relief, who states: "The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne." Indeed, Kelly makes a good case that the response to Katrina represents "the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history." If true, then the MSM's coverage must rank among the most monumental and (thus far) successful frauds in the history of journalism."

There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'

Frederick L Collins

Minimal Blogging

A number of us at Maggie's are off to Nantucket for a wedding this weekend. My Nantucket photos are on the other computer and it is too much trouble to move them, so I'll offer a photo of my favorite town in Cape Cod - close enuf, with fewer yuppies and fewer Hummers (meaning the auto - not the "thing") than Nantucket, which used to be a distant, rough-and- ready Yankee place but sure has changed into a new East Hampton, which I do not approve of. Photo of downtown Wellfleet. Need a good photo of the Cong. Church but they never came out very well - always rainy or foggy etc. It rings ship's bells - not regular time. Curved pews - not a bad place to connect with God. As is any other place on earth, if one's head is in the right place. Well, really, the place hardly matters.

For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong. 

H L Mencken