Maggie's Farm

Today, new big flat monitor, new potent Dell box/server, new everything -perfect for a blog editor and busy human being (but one who is a bred-in-the-bone Yankee and hates to spend money). Thanks to the Mrs. Bird Dog and to Larry The Local Tech Genius for the delightful surprise. I did not know what "fast" meant until this afternoon. Backed up automatically too, on the accessory hard drive, which has been a major headache in the past for some of my projects.

Happy Bird Dog. 

h/t, Winding Road

What's under the surface of the sea, or outside in the dark, or beyond the light of the campfire, or in the deep woods beyond the lawn and the woodpile? The human imagination populates the unseen with its inner visions - unless it knows from experience what is really there.

A few nights under the stars, for example, will rid one of all fears of what's beyond the woodpile at night - unless you live in Grizzly country.

Sippican takes a look at city folk in the country: Not Even a Concierge Can Save You Now.

Ormbsy in The NY Sun begins:

One fine late 18th-century morning, an affluent collector named Thomas Butts came to call on his friend William Blake and found the poet and his wife sitting stark naked in the summer house of their modest lodgings in Lambeth. The happy couple, "freed from those troublesome disguises which have prevailed since the Fall," as his early biographer Alexander Gilchrist put it, were reciting Milton's "Paradise Lost," with William taking the part of Adam and his wife Catherine the role of Eve. Butts was embarrassed, but Blake called out, "Come in! It's only Adam and Eve, you know!" If you or I did this, Gilchrist remarks, "it would be time for our friends to call in a doctor," but in Blake's case, he writes, a recitation of Milton in the nude served to demonstrate the "full simplicity and naïveté" of the poet's character. And yet, Blake was neither simple nor naïve. For him, the everyday world was only the thinnest band of a vast spectrum which extended from the smallest grain of sand to all eternity. To become Adam in the Garden — or, for that matter, Moses or Socrates — he needed only to open wide the eyes of his imagination.

Read the whole thing.

The hottest Christmas item I have heard about this year is this Nespresso single-serve espresso/cappuchino machine sold at Bloomingdales.

I do not want one.

While persuing trips for next summer this weekend, the Mrs. reminded me of her long-time wish to visit the Shetlands and the Outer Hebrides.

On Harris, we found this great place - Blue Reef Cottages. It looks like Norway. Here's Visit the Hebrides. Here's a photo gallery of Harris, the home of Harris Tweed, natch.

Nearby, the Dunollie Hotel on Skye looks good. In the Highlands, we'd chose the Tulloch Castle Hotel. I love the way they say in the UK: "Pets welcome. No extra charge."

Photo: The Isle of Harris

Survived Thanksgiving with 23 relatives, and gave abundant thanks. Next comes Christmas Eve, my favorite night of the year. A delicious random photo from ye olde Maggie's Farm sideboard from Thanksgiving. Relatives brought their best stuff, but I bought a case of Jarhead Red.

Hey, Happy Holiday Shoppers!

As an aid to your Christmas shopping, Maggie's Farm offers a one-time, time-limited special offering to ease your Christmas hassles: Give all of your friends and beloved relatives a one-year subscription to Maggie's Farm!

The price is right! The value of our Blogroll alone is worth the low, low special price we are offering right now, plus we include our super-special and unique content at no additional cost! You don't even have to leave your filthy, beer-can-, pizza-box- and cigar-butt-strewn hovel or double-wide trailer to BUY NOW AND SAVE!

This special one-time offer will expire on an undisclosed date, so call now! Or just send all or most of the cash in your wallet or pocketbook to: MF Offshore Management LLC, 11 George Town Rd., Suite 32, Grand Cayman (Attn: Ms. Shirley Bongo).

And remember - donations to MF Offshore Management LLC may be fully tax-deductible according to Mozambique law. We all thank you in advance for your generous support!

From a NYT piece on the NEA report on reading that we linked yesterday:

...Mr. Iyengar noted that students who lived in homes with more than 100 books but whose parents only completed high school scored higher on math tests than those students whose parents held college degrees (and were therefore likely to earn higher incomes) but who lived in homes with fewer than 10 books.

and

Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all.

I guess this is new news: kids who have parents who like to learn also like to learn, but it's a crisis now. I blame global warming.

As a solution to the Reading Crisis, I suggest a $1 billion Federal education program called "Books Are Fun!," a fun-filled, interactive, fast-moving multi-media curriculum-enhancement module ("MMCEM"), to be designed by leading expert reading consultants from teaching colleges and then introduced into every Middle School "curriculum" by Federal law. Approximately 40,000 new union-certified "Books are Fun!" specialists will be hired to guide schools through the application of this exciting new kid-friendly program through every course of study. 

Crisis solved!

I think we linked this piece once, but I can't remember. It's from Munchkin Wrangler (h/t, Right Wing Prof), and begins thus:

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

Read the whole thing. Here's a nice piece on handgun selection for self-defence.

That hootenanny post reminded me of Christopher Guest's spoof of the Folk Movement, the movie A Mighty Wind. The film is good for a few poignant giggles, especially if you have even a vague memory of that innocent, goofy era.

Here's one clip with music, and, below that, another clip from the film.

While the Mrs. took the youngest Bird Dog theater-intoxicated and Shakespeare-intoxicated pup and her theatrical pal to the Vivian Beaumont to see the rarely-performed Cymbeline (the Beaumont is perfect for Shakespeare), my self-assigned chore was to clean up and polish ye olde farmhouse for the Thanksgiving hordes expected soon.

While finding many dust balls as big as alley cats, and some lost mail, magazines, a dried dog poo or two, and some important faxes under sofas, I cranked up my gigantic Legacy speakers for consolation.

They were the top of their line when I splurged on these darn things, delivered by an Airways Freight truck. 175 lbs. each, 5' tall, and they look like beautiful furniture. But what the heck was I thinking when I bought these monsters? (A movie-business friend told me I have the same ones Tom Cruise has in his house. Sheesh. That is not good.)

These speakers are powerful enough to knock down my walls or to blow a cow to the moon, but sensitive enough to capture the most subtle inflection of Dawn Upshaw's voice, like she is singing to you. The Messiah was on the CD player, from Eastertime. I listened to the whole thing while vacuuming, dusting, dog-poo-removing, polishing, and pickng up. How many Bibles do we have in this house? Well, I love that music and know every word, but I realized that I do music now on the computer. This dang computer-internets machine-thingy simultaneously shrinks and expands life.

I realized that I had not turned on that fine sound system, with the mega-ultra ultra amp, since Easter.

Unlike Hell's Kitchen which we posted about two weeks ago, NYC's Chelsea neighborhood has been on the gentrification upswing for over 30 years.

Now, it's as pleasant and cheerful as any neighborhood in the city. While it's known as a heavily gay area, it seems just more youthful than anything else. Tons of young professionals, and cozy 1800s townhouses. A darn civilized place to live in.

A street scene, last weekend: