Maggie's Farm

In 1989, John Updike relfected on his political experiences during Vietnam: Long Read of the Week: “On Not Being a Dove” by John Updike (1989)

 It pained and embarrassed me to be out of step with my magazine and literary colleagues, with the bronzed and almost universally “antiwar” summer denizens of Martha’s Vineyard (including Feiffer and the fiery Lillian Hellman), and with many of my dearest friends back home in Ipswich, including my wife. How had I come to such an awkward pass? 

At Business Insider, which has lots more pics. Here's the intersection of Broadway and 8th Ave, 1861.

My Christmas present from Mrs. BD was a winter hiking and birding trip on Barbados. I'm not a big fan of the Caribbean, but what the heck.  Lots of good hiking along the 24-mile old railroad bed, and famous birding.

She gave me this 1640 book to go along with it: A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados.

The author, Robert Ligon, was a gentleman, highly educated and literate but a third son so given nothing but education.  After losing what little he had on a bad real estate investment in London, he headed to the Caribbean to seek his fortune. He found no fortune, but his book remains the best first-hand report of the Caribbean of the time.  An elegant writer too with interest in the geology, the soils, the fish, the trees and lumber, the birds, the architecture, the cuisine, the booze (French brandy for the planters, rum for everybody else including the slaves), etc.

And in the people. The Brit planters (sugar cane, thanks to Columbus) were mostly drunken whoremongers but some were not. Ligon befriended many of the slaves. He even taught them music. Ligon was a talented lutist, and felt the slaves could benefit from learning how to make tunes instead of just their African drumming for their Sunday dance and rum parties.

He also defended their wishes to become Christian. The slaves believed that Christianity seemed to impart wisdom. This was illegal at the time: you could not have a Christian as a slave. 

The latest Solzhenitsyn book to appear in English, March 1917, focuses on the great turning point of Russian, indeed world, history: the Russian Revolution. Just a century ago, that upheaval and the Bolshevik coup eight months later ushered in something entirely new and uniquely horrible.  Totalitarianism, as invented by Lenin and developed by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others, aspired to control every aspect of life, to redesign the earth and to remake the human soul. As a result, the environment suffered unequaled devastation and tens of millions of lives were lost in the Soviet Union alone. Solzhenitsyn, who spent the years 1945 to 1953 as a prisoner in the labor camp system known as the Gulag archipelago, devoted his life to showing just what happened so it could not be forgotten. One death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic, Stalin supposedly remarked, but Solzhenitsyn makes us envision life after ruined life. He aimed to shake the conscience of the world, and he succeeded, at least for a time.

In taking literature so seriously, Solzhenitsyn claimed the mantle of a “Russian writer,” which, as all Russians understand, means much more than a writer who happens to be Russian. It is a status less comparable to “American writer” than to “Hebrew prophet.”

Lazybeds are the original raised-bed farming. On the Isle of Harris, where almost nobody bothers to farm or garden anymore since the Medieval Warm Period, remnants of old lazybed "farming" - more like heavy subsistence gardening - are often seen where there is enough soil to plant. There is not very much soil for planting, and peat bogs can not be gardened. However, raised beds with good drainage (always sloping how towards the sea), enhanced with seaweed as fertilizer, could grow enough peas and potatoes for a crofter (who also had some sheep and cattle). Maybe some oats or barley, but not much.

Like Ridge-and Furrow farming, Lazybeds date back at least to Roman times in the rough parts of the British Isles. 

Today, on the islands, wool is the cash crop. The sheep just run wild until shearing time which is why so much of the landscape looks like a putting green. In fact, sheep originated putting greens. (The "rough" was, more likely than not, heather - which is very rough indeed.)

Below the fold, somebody in the Hebrides is still using lazybeds - and a view of what looks like a golf course with natural water hazard and sand traps

Leonardo da Vinci applies for a job

 Michelangelo's projects for the fortification of Florence

If you take a nice hike from the center of Florence across the Arno and up the hill to San Miniato (an active abbey), you will walk past and even clamber over some of the defensive walls designed by Michelangelo. The monks at San Miniato are friendly fellows, and they can sure chant the vespers.

Ocean liners, aka Cruise Ships, still dock on Manhattan's remaining Hudson River piers. The Normandie was one of the great liners but not the last one as the article wrongly suggests (eg The France, QE ll, the Nieu Amsterdam, the Queen Mary, the United States, etc)

The sinking of the SS Normandie at Manhattan's Pier 88 in 1942 is a story of one screw-up after another: The Sinking of The S.S. Normandie At NYC’s Pier 88

Not long ago, that was like saying "Filet mignon" on every supper table.  Connecticut's  Henry Saglio, 'Father' of Poultry Industry.

(h/t reader)