Maggie's Farm

Excellent mini-marts. If you need your morning caffeine fix, and you're in New England but there's no Dunkin' Donuts nearby, there's always Cumby's. Trouble is, they usually don't open 'til 6 and that is way too late for us early-risers.

This is the Wellfleet, MA shop on Route 6, next to the liquor store. This one doesn't sell gas. The teen-aged gals who work there are from Bulgaria, while the American teens sleep until noon, when they decide where to surf or windsurf that day.

The Opinion Journal's piece on Solzhenitsyn begins like this:

"The hammer banged reveille on the rail outside camp HQ at five o'clock as always. Time to get up. The ragged noise was muffled by ice two fingers thick on the windows and soon died away. Too cold for the warder to go on hammering."

Thus did Alexander Solzhenitsyn begin "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," his reveille for the world about totalitarianism. Published in 1962, in the brief post-Stalinist thaw under Khrushchev, the novel about a prisoner in a Soviet prison camp made Solzhenitsyn at first a Russian sensation and later the country's most famous dissident after the Kremlin reverted to brutal form.

And as quoted by Vanderleun,

"When all of the rest of the civilized world, as well as the Marxist world, was tossing God into the dustbin of history, Solzhenitsyn realized that only God really matters. He chided the West for embracing materialism and forgetting God, a lesson that is just as true today as thirty years ago." -

Nope. It's a bathtub. Good grief. More here.

They define them as those who seek to disrupt civil online discourse: The World of Web Trolling.

Just one more dumb hobby.

Love this photo from our Kentucky friend at Slower Pace:

This is a tale of minor woe, a "for the loss of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the loss of the shoe, the horse was lost..." story.

When a homeowner sees that ominous drip, drip, drip in the ceiling, coming out of some light fixture, his or her heart sinks. We all know that water and houses don't mix.

It turned out that the vibrations from the Jacuzzi tub had screwed up the drain. On further inspection, the dripping had rotted the subfloor. And, on further inspection, the underfloor in front of the shower was wet and crumbling too, partly because Mr. Shower Door installed the door opening out, not in. And the shower stall wasn't adequately vented. And, and, and...

This means plumbers, demolition guys, tile guys, new fixtures, dumpsters and carpenters. A new subfloor and a new floor for the bathroom, hopefully something less slippery than the shiny Italian tile we had. I think a marble floor is the idea.

And, since that is being done, let's take the vanity out and repaint it, and put a new marble top on it.

And since we have a great carpenter/contractor here anyway, why not have him move the non-supporting walls around in the master bedroom to expand the closets and expand the room the way we have always talked about? Yeah, why not? Not a big deal, right? You can move all your hunting gear to the basement.

And, since they're already doing that, let's finally put the fireplace in the bedroom. It can link right up to an existing chimney, after all. Cozy.

And since they're doing that, let's get rid of all the old carpet and replace it with good oak flooring upstairs. Let's do it everywhere upstairs. After all, it's not much more expensive than high-quality wool carpet.

And since the electricians will be around, let's replace all of that terrible hallway lighting, and then re-paint everything.

I guess one of the consolations of home-ownership is to know, as you watch your life savings evaporate, that you are helping to keep the economy going in your neck of the woods.

Were I single and childless, I could live in a shack in the woods, as long as I had a broadband connection. And a girlfriend or three for company.

Still life, 1883. You can read about this piece here.

Our blogmeister Chris is a sailboat man himself, but he knows nice powerboats when he sees them. In response to our Hinckley powerboat post a couple of weeks ago, Chris offered the opinion that they were too "common." He attached this photo from his yacht club as proof:

I happen to think that the Hinckley jet drive is cool as hell, but Chris prefers the Shelter Island Runabouts made by CH Marine. They built Billy Joel's commuter boat. Here's one of their Runabouts:

I always found the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" to be devoid of content despite the loveliness of the tune.

 For simple lyrics which have depth, here are three. First,

 Wow. How can so much be said about life in so few words?

Also:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!

The rest of that song is here. 

And one more, the verse that some claim captures everything about Christian faith:

Jesus loves me! This I know,

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong;

They are weak, but He is strong.

The rest of that song is here.

The Green Fad is done. Nobody is listening anymore and it doesn't sell: Moonbattery, whence the image.

That's what happens when you hysterically oversell something. This video we posted from 50 years ago tells the whole story.

And the earth is cooling. That is really scary.

Before my brain's hard drive deteriorates, a few more random thoughts about our northern Italy trip a few weeks ago, a trip which has been more-than-amply photo-documented here.

1. An ottica in Verbania fixed my glasses, for free. The nose-thingy fell off, and she put two new ones on. She was young, blonde, and lovely, and wore high black leather boots and a short-short skirt under her lab coat. My thanks to her.

2. Each morning from my balcony in Baveno I watched two families of Grebes, with their young'uns, paddling around the edge of Lago Maggiore. About the size of our Western Grebe. The chicks were just beginning to learn to dive. Sometimes, one would try to climb on Mom's back the way young grebes too, but they were really too big to fit. The Dad hunted for minnows to feed the chicks, and the Moms herded them so they wouldn't wander too far.

3. Wherever you go in Italy - city, town, country village, or farmland - you are being watched. There will be an old lady peeking from behind a curtain watching you go by. Just stop for a moment to admire somebody's tomatoes, and you will see the curtain move and an old face peer out. It never fails. Italians have a paranoid streak to them. Some old lady is always watching you. She thinks I might steal her zucchini.

4. The church choir rehearsal in Baveno. Pure magic.

5. Gelato? An overrated item, in my opinion, although the hazelnut is very nice indeed. Any dessert is always welcome. I have visited Italy several times, and keep hoping that I will discover the specialness of gelato, but Haagen Dazs is better. The local wines are more fun to sample.

It's a quick water taxi ride from Orta San Giulio to Isola di San Giulio. The basilica on the tiny island was first built in 926 but has had many revisions and renovations since then. It's part of an active Benedictine monastery.

Here's a brief history of the island.

Most interesting to me were the frescoes, which ranged in age from early medieval to Renaissance. This one, on a pillar, looked Byzantine in influence. I was sure I took more fresco photos, but I don't find them on my camera. Maybe I spaced out.

Here's a site with more photos of the frescoes.

A few more of my photos from the island on continuation page.

A re-post from 2005:

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassin Nicholas Taleb

My favorite quote from the book: "If you're so rich, how come you ain't smart?" From an Amazon review - it's better than I could do:

If the prescriptions for getting rich that are outlined in books such as The Millionaire Next Door and Rich Dad Poor Dad are successful enough to make the books bestsellers, then one must ask, Why aren't there more millionaires? In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a professional trader and mathematics professor, examines what randomness means in business and in life and why human beings are so prone to mistake dumb luck for consummate skill. This eccentric and highly personal exploration of the nature of randomness meanders from the court of Croesus and trading rooms in New York and London to Russian roulette, Monte Carlo engines, and the philosophy of Karl Popper. Part of what makes this book so good is Taleb's ability to make seemingly arcane mathematical concepts (at least to this reviewer) entirely relevant in evaluating and understanding everything from the stock market to the success of those millionaires cited in the aforementioned bestsellers. Here's an articulate, wise, and humorous meditation on the nature of success and failure that anyone who wants a little more of the former would do well to consider. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards