Maggie's Farm

The dog days of July and August are
slow times for bloggers; reader  numbers are usually down a tad, and often writers feel less inspired, or are busy outside trying to do real life.

Our threat is this: If other bloggers don't blogroll us, and throw us a pity-link once in a while, and if our readers don't forward our blog with a hearty recommendation to all of their friends and colleagues and relatives and enemies, we will go on a Hunger Strike until Labor Day, limiting our diets solely to beer and pizza.

That includes breakfast.

We do make make such threats lightly - so be forewarned. Maggie's Farm is our name, and passive-aggressive is our game. No negotiating: Do what we demand - or else we will damage our health!

Look - I know we aren't the best blog in the world, but we are all proud to be listed in Harmons' World Weblog Review (Copyright 2006) as:

"Pretty good, with a varied and appealing front page. Sometimes interesting and informative, but basically intellectually lightweight and unfunny. Politically centrist, and thus dull. Pedantic at times. Occasional surprises. Plenty of links. A bit Jesus-oriented, but not over the top. They like Dylan, too, but offer little insight.  Highly reliable output, but quantity does not make up for quality.  Minimal T&A; no hunks. Quirkiness and odd interests a strong point. Thinking talent: C-. Research: D. Writing talent: B- to C+. Blog branding quality: B+ (unpredictable and eclectic aspect is good, but lack of focus, and lack of expertise and IQ might be a major flaw)."

If we find this hunger strike to be effective, we just might decide to continue it until war is eliminated from the earth, and all people find happiness. (Hope you enjoyed the Elevator piece - interesting basic info.)

In Kenneth Koch's Modern (1800-present) English Poetry class, the biweekly assignment was to produce a plausible imitation - but not a satire - of the poet in question.

It was a good way to try to get into the head and the rhythms and the images of a poet. Some were easy: Whitman, Eliot. Some were very difficult: Stevens, Yeats.

I see Auden imagined a world in which poets were so much in demand that they required apprentices to help out:

If poetry were in great public demand so that there were overworked professional poets, I can imagine a system under which an established poet would take on a small number of apprentices who would begin by changing his blotting paper, advance to typing his manuscripts, and end up by ghost-writing poems for him which he was too busy to start or finish. The apprentices might really learn something...

Whole piece here.

Humbug unveils photos  (see photo on
the right) which confirm what many of us have long suspected: there was no Apollo 9, and no moon landing. It is all as phony as the WTC "attack."

Furthermore, Humbug has performed a series of SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTS which prove that it is impossible to get to the moon with a rocket.

I'm convinced.

And, by the way, didn't Coke taste much better in those glass bottles? Coming dripping out of an ice cooler in front of a gas station? Coke from a can is like wine from a paper cup.

The below came in over the transom. I think I have seen it before:

After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form called a gripe sheet, which conveys to the mechanics, problems encountered with the aircraft during the flight that need repair or correction. The mechanics read and correct the problem, and then respond in writing on the lower half of the form what remedial action was taken, and the pilot reviews the gripe sheets before the next flight.

Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humour. Here are some actual logged maintenance complaints and problems as submitted by Qantas pilots and the solution recorded by maintenance engineers.

By the way, Qantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident.

(P = the Problem logged by the pilot.)
(S = the Solution and action taken by the mechanics.)

 *******************************************

P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tyre.

 ********************************************

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

**********************************************

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

**********************************************

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

**********************************************

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

 ***********************************************

More on continuation page - the last one is the best. BTW, Qantas is the acronym for the Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service.

Raven likes to do weights, as do many
women these day. I think
it is great for women to be strong and fit.
But it can be overdone.

On the other hand, we can always use someone on the farm who can lift an engine block out of a car singlehandedly. Or carry a sick cow back to the barn. Maybe Miss Muscles should give The Farm a jingle.

I find this look slightly scarey. And, no, that's not Raven.

One of our favorite movies of all
time has given its name to a
Hosta.

As amateur hosta collectors, we gotta get this one. How cool is that? Almost looks like rhubarb.

Wayside has it. Red October.

Our buddy last week, in south Texas, with a  265 lb. tusker shot with a 338 Win Mag at 85 yards. Pig goes to the local church for their summer pit barbecue. Wild pig is always in season, and no-one complains.

Villa Balze, in Fiesole, last fall. It's Georgetown's Italian campus. The hills of Fiesole overlook Florence. We have concluded that staying in Fiesole, rather than downtown Firenze, is a good idea. Just hop on the bus with the nuns and the schoolkids for a 20 minute ride to town. And, yes, I am proud of this photo.

Re-posted from July 26, 2005:

Great Connecticut towns, Plus Loot from the annual super-stupendous Pequot Library Book Sale - worth a drive if you and your family like books.

Photo is one of the many early 19th Century sea captain's houses in elegant Southport, the loveliest and most exclusive town in CT (with runners-up as Litchfield and Old Lyme, but not to omit the understated, historic, and noteworthy havens for tasteful and genteel Yankee gentlemen and gentleladies - da gentry, ya know -  in Roxbury, Washington, Sharon, Kent, Warren, Essex, Norfolk, Salisbury, Sachem's Head, Granby, Harwinton, Farmington, Pomfret, Centerbrook, Avon, Southbury, Woodbury, Southington, Greenfield Hill (in Fairfield), and Lakeville, among a few others that do not jump to mind). 

The reference is to Southport's Pequot Library's famous annual used-book sale. (Last weekend of July.) Here's my loot - Christmas in July - at the request of The Dylanologist, hardcovers only: Life Magazine Photo History of WW2, The Guns of August by Tuchman, The Lost World by Crichton, The Atlas of Ancient Archeology by Jacquetta Hawkes, A Shropshire Lad by AE Housman, A Countryman's Woods by Hal Borland, Five Seasons by Yehoshua, Days of Awe by Agnon, Blue Highways by Wm Least Heat Moon, Clausewitz on War, Hotels and Country Inns in Italy, The Fatal Shore by Hughes, English Verse: Longfellow to Rupert Brooke, Restoration Poets: Milton to Goldsmith, A Travel Guide to Scotland and the Islands, The Great Gardens of Britain, The Master Sniper by Hunter, An Illustrated History of Firearms by Hogg, The Oxford Annotated Bible, Life in the Castle in Medieval England by Burke, The Encyclopedia of Rock Music (1994), The Atlas of Early Man by Jacquetta Hawkes, English Weapons and Warfare 449-1660, The American Heritage History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton, The Founding Fish by McPhee, The Complete Works of Paul Klee, Atlas of the Epic Land Battles of History, and about ten Robert Parkers. Plus about ten other misc. paperbacks. Could not find an excellent book on the identification of eastern trees, but I know most of them anyway. Total under $100.

If I had been around on Saturday instead of late Sunday afternoon, it would have been more. This book sale keeps me safely and harmlessly occupied for months. Remembered when I got home that I had already read the Hughes and the Tuchman - I guess I liked them. The Housman was a replacement for an overly-used and disintegrating paperback.

And no need to travel if you can read travel guides - a return to the amazing and hospitable Turkey is next on my list, but maybe after Provence. Then Scotland again for grouse-shooting and scotch-tasting - absolutely no golf - golf is for strivers and the Japanese - then Tuscany again. That's the long-range plan, not including routine hunting trips to Manitoba and New Brunswick or Maine.

Photo: One of the many fine 19th Century sea-captain's homes in Southport, CT

Editor's note:  Hope the Dylanologist is home from Montana this weekend to take a drive to Southport.

We have no idea why Al Gore refused to use this image in his movie. It graphs itself.

Is mass migration needed, now that women have quit having kids? A quote from Brussels Journal:

“Europe and Japan are now facing a population problem that is unprecedented in human history,” said Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau. Countries have lost people because of wars, disease and natural disasters but never because women stopped having enough children. Japan announced that its population had shrunk in 2005 for the first time, and that it was now the world’s most elderly nation. Italy was second. On average, women must have 2.1 children in their lifetimes for a society to replenish itself, accounting for infant mortality and other factors. Only one country in Europe – Muslim Albania – has a fertility rate above 2. Russia’s fertility rate is 1.28.

Writer Spengler in the Asia Times Online commented that demography is destiny: “Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death.” “The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe’s population will relive – in slow motion – that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050.”

Read the whole thing.

Re-posted from 7-5-05

Mark Helprin Update

Soldier of the Great War is my favorite of the four books of his I have read, but many know him only through his WSJ opinion pieces. An excellent interview, mini-bio, and update in Harvard Magazine. An excerpt from the piece:

No living authors influence his writing, Helprin says. Instead, his lodestars include Dante, Shakespeare, Melville, Mark Twain. There are indeed echoes of Twain in his new novel, Freddy and Fredericka, due out this summer. It narrates the journey of a wayward British royal couple rusticated to America, where they travel incognito and survive hilarious adventures that read, as the dust jacket has it, “as if de Tocqueville had been rewritten by Mark Twain (with a deep bow to Harpo Marx).”

Helprin is a classicist. He believes in history, tradition, and eternal verities. He values aesthetic symmetries and the literary forms the centuries have passed down to us. To Helprin, the principles of modernism are fatal to art, and he has no truck with the avant-garde. “The avant-garde are frauds,” he bluntly declares. “Modern literature is all cool and detached, even though a lot of modern writers are passionate about their politics. To me, passion should be for literature, and reason and detachment for politics.

“A lot of people hate heroes,” he continues. “I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool.”

Photo by Jim Harrison in Harvard Magazine

Update: Did read Freddy and Frederika this past winter. It would work for beach reading.

Please get rid of your log-ins for comments.

You would have triple the comments if you got rid of them. What's the point of creating an obstacle to comments? In my experience, the systems never work, and Blogger, for example, never lets me on, despite having signed up properly a year ago. If you want comments from our team of brainiacs, get rid of those dang nuisances.

Just delete obnoxious or unwanted comments or trolls - it's like vacuuming the house. No big deal.

Just reading the anti-spam letters is tough enough - I cannot even read my own - X and K and H are indistinguishable.