Maggie's Farm

The road out to our village in the Berkshires. It is indeed over the river and through the woods. Woods, fields, and swamps:

View from the upper barn. Trout stream down there in the valley. Those are our woods up on the hills too - insofar as anybody can "own" woods. The hawks, owls, deer and and bears own them, really. Well, God owns them, but I can harvest firewood there. You can see the White Pine infestation in the upper meadow. We have been at 'em, but it's a lot of work to cut them down. It's a shame that you cannot really burn White Pine in the fireplace. Too much resin, burns too hot.

We owe it to King Camp Gillette for making it easy to be a well-groomed gentleman without cutting your head off, or having to visit the barber.

He was a clever tinkerer and, apparently, an equally good marketer of his "safety razor."

Since his invention, razors have seen many modifications to Gillette's basic idea - not to mention electric razors (do any guys use those anymore?).

When the Gillette products got too expensive for my taste, and I couldn't keep track of each new type of razor and the costly blades that went with them, I opted for buying cheap disposable razors in bulk. The one pictured is $10.49 for 100.

Depending on your testosterone level, one is good for a week - at least. Longer if you can put up with minor discomfort.

Added benefit: No problem if a daughter borrows your razor. Who cares?

The other night I became distracted by reading the series on radio soap operas which James Thurber wrote for The New Yorker in 1948. "Soapland" is in Thurber's The Beast in Me and Other Animals.

I envy Thurber's clarity, simplicity, and directness of writing, whether he is doing humor or regular reporting. Liked him better than EB White, with whom Thurber collaborated in writing the spoof on self-help books, Is Sex Necessary?, in 1929.

If you have never read Thurber, you are missing a real delight. Start with The Thurber Carnival. I could not find any of his toons on line, but I didn't spend much time searching.

Here's a good summary of the history of the radio soaps. Thurber's piece on the topic is a masterpiece of straightforward New Yorker-style reportage; the kind that can make any random topic fascinating because it is so well-written.

Check out the stuff we posted over the weekend. Some fun stuff, I think.

Did a bit of driving around this weekend. Took some lousy photos. We did drive past a doctor's office in Norfolk, CT: Dr. Ralph Emerson. We all agreed we'd be glad to go to him. (In some areas the leaves were wonderful, and in some spots not so good, but we were not looking for leaves.) This is Canaan, CT:

 The Housatonic Valley, Route 7 in Western MA:

 More random road photos below the fold:

The pup who works in NYC is studying for her GMAT. It sounds like a rightly demanding and discriminating exam.

She says the grammar correction sections are extremely subtle aspects of complex sentences, and that the two-part interactive math problems only give you two minutes each if you want to finish them. If you get one right, the computer gives you a more challenging one. It ramps up fast, she says, to try to find your limits. That's a great idea, like an automated oral exam where they can push each line of questioning until you are totally stumped and crushed with humility. The two-part math questions involve something like Which of the following additional pieces of information do you need to solve this problem? A,B, Both, Neither.

Brain swirls. These sorts of logical challenges quickly separate the men from the boys.

There are two essays also. Sounds like good fun to me, but I like exams. No. I love exams, whether offered by schools, institutions or, most importantly, by real life every darn day.

The pup does too: she is busy re-memorizing her exponent and square root tables to save time on the exam. She has great fun doing it, and says "It will never hurt you in life to have 9 to the 5th on the tip of your tongue." She began with 1-12 to the third and is working her way up.

No calculators allowed for this exam. Good on them for that.

I am in the middle of Conroy's new book, South of Broad, which is set in Charleston.

Being a Yankee, I had no idea what Benne Wafers were. Here's the recipe.

It's nice to know that there are still places in America where ladies routinely have teatime with homemade tea cookies. It is civilized and civilizing, like so many old Southern habits.

Regarding other low-country foods, She-Crab Soup is fine and dandy, but this summer I discovered how much I enjoy Shrimp 'n Grits (and I don't even love shrimp. I like it with the smaller shrimp).

Our occasional contributor Kondratiev posted this recipe as a comment the other day:

Cooked this one last night using venison backstrap (loin):

Seared Venison Steaks with Baked Pear and Red Wine
Serves: 6

Ingredients
3 bosc pears (1/2 each)
1 small cinnamon stick, broken
5 black peppercorns
½ bottle red wine
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 trimmed 6 oz. venison steaks
Salt and ground black pepper
1 shallot, finely diced
1 tablespoon red currant jelly
2 oz. butter, plus extra for greasing

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter an ovenproof dish. Peel, core and halve the pears. Arrange snugly in the dish, hollow side up. Tuck in the cinnamon and peppercorns, then pour in half the wine. Sprinkle with sugar and dot with butter. Crumple up and wet a sheet of greaseproof paper, then lay it over the dish before covering with foil. Seal tightly and bake for 1 1/2 hours, or until the pears are tender. Turn the pears after the first hour. Keep warm. You will need their liquid for the sauce.

2. Pour the oil into a non-stick frying pan and set over a high heat. Season the steaks and fry for 2-3 minutes on each side for medium-rare. Remove the steaks and keep warm. Reduce the heat and gently fry the shallot before adding all the wine, including that with the pears. Boil vigorously, scraping the pan as you do so, until it has reduced by half. Microwave the jelly and, once it has melted, then stir it in, remove the pan from the heat and quickly whisk in the 2 oz. butter. Strain into a warm sauceboat and serve immediately with venison and warm pears.

To get a taste of central Ohio, we stayed at the very pleasant Honey Run Inn outside Millersburg in Holmes County, the heart of Ohio Amish country where every other name seems to be Yoder. Excellent dinner menu there, but pricey. 

If you don't get lost, it's only a 45-minute beautiful country drive down to Gambier in Knox Co. Gotta watch out for your turns, though, on those nice two-lane county roads or you can end up far from your destination with no gas station anywhere.

When I visit a new area, I like to get a close-up feel for the woodlands and their outdoors, so I took a couple of early morning hikes up there in Holmes Co. I'd say the bird life and the tree life are similar that of southern New England, and the woodlands are similar hardwood forest - except that the density of nut and mast trees is remarkable: Walnut, Beech, various oaks, Hickory, Shagbark Hickory, Butternut, Ash. When you walk through the woods in late Oct. as I did, you hear the startling thunk of walnuts falling constantly. Also different - I saw no pines and no birch. Plenty of majestic Tulip Trees as one sees in southern New England, and Maples all over.

You cannot have familiarity with a woodland without knowing each tree, and I try to do so. Was mann weiss, mann sieht.

4000 years ago much of Ohio was short-grass prairie and full of Bison. A cooler, wetter climate since then has made possible the hillside woodlands of today (everything flat seems to be farmed) - plus there are no more Indians to burn the prairies to suppress woodland growth.

From the size of the trees, this patch of hilly woodland below was pasture 40 or 50 years ago. Why I did not see or hear lots of Wild Turkeys I do not know, but these woods definitely hold plenty of deer.

 A few more snaps from my hikes in the morning drizzle below the fold -

I like my kids to get out of the Northeast for at least some part of their education, and they all have done so. I am delighted to have a pup at Kenyon College. She loves it, and I am pleased and relieved about that because through secondary school she spent every free moment banging around NYC, going to theater, museums, concerts, street fairs, theater internships, pubs, etc. I had come to think of her as a city girl.

My overall impression of the Kenyon kids is clean-cut, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, cheerful, studious, not overly Maoist, and very engaged in all of the activities of the school. For one example, the pup tells me that she does not know one kid who is not involved in some musical activity, and that the intro Theater course is the most heavily subscribed, with four large sections.

Small liberal arts colleges in the countryside tend to feel like Prep Schools to me, and Kenyon does have that feeling. If a kid went to school in the relatively isolated countryside or to a place like Exeter, Andover, Hotchkiss, Choate or Deerfield, I don't think they would find Kenyon to be an exciting change of pace. (With around 1600 kids, Kenyon is half the size of the BD pup's high school.)

Kenyon was founded as an Episcopalian seminary and college by Dartmouth grad Philander Chase in 1824 when Ohio was pioneer country. It remains, technically anyway, an Episcopalian school.

Kenyon grad Paul Newman built them a wonderful new athletic center with pool, gyms and work-out rooms (which are shared with people in the town). He didn't need to build them a theater, because they already have three: a black box, a small theater, and a high tech large theater - plus a large music performance auditorium in Rosse Hall. That's enough for 1600 kids.

I took some snaps of the cozy campus, of course.

The pup's favorite classroom, in Ascension Hall:

Lots more snaps of the Kenyon campus below the fold - 

Plenty of Amish on the roads with their lively, quick-trotting rigs.

Lots more road snaps and scenic vistas below the fold, including cornfields by the mile (why no pheasants?) -

I had never spend any time in Ohio, except passing through to other places like most people do, but I just spent a few days banging around Knox and Holmes counties, and found it to be like a larger-scale New England - but the New England of three generations ago. This area is thoroughly agricultural; most of the places are very well-maintained and the farms are well-manicured and appear prosperous; it's hillier than I expected; the autumn foliage matches that of Vermont and New Hampshire, and the towns resemble New England towns minus the old mills.

But that figures: most of the settlers of Ohio came from back east for better farming land - and found it.

It's the kind of place that feels like the real heartland of America. We were there for Parent's Weekend at Kenyon College (about which more, later) in Gambier, which is a few miles outside the fine town of Mount Vernon, Ohio and a little more than an hour or so from Columbus, if you drive 80 mph on 71 - which everybody does.

Yes, this area is Amish Country to a degree. Plenty of them moved to central Ohio and up in Holmes County they do a lot of funiture business and wood-working, along with horse-breeding, farming, and the making of jams, preserves, baskets, etc.

Most of America is appealing in its own way, but the feel of central Ohio is strong for me in the comfortable, undramatic hominess of the towns and landscapes.

I will post lots more snapshots over the next few days, as I find the time.

From scholar Richard Rubenstein's The Religion of Sacrifice and Abraham, Isaac and Jesus:

Judaism never entirely rejected the idea that God demands the sacrifice of the first-born son. However we evaluate the existence of child sacrifice in ancient Judah, Israel, Canaan, and the colonies of Canaan-Phoenicia, it is evident that we are dealing with a God who demands the death of children. In reflecting on the issue of child sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, Levenson comments, “…the mythic-ritual complex that I have been calling ‘child sacrifice’ was never eradicated; it was only transformed."

A prime example of that transformation is the pidyon ha-ben ritual in fulfillment of the commandment already noted: “You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.” (Exodus 34:20) In this ceremony, the father presents his first-born son to a cohen or hereditary priest on the thirtieth day after his birth whereupon the priest asks the father, "Which do you prefer, your son or your money?" The father declares that he prefers his son and presents the cohen with five silver dollars, the symbolic equivalent of five biblical shekels, in order to "redeem" his son. The priest accepts the coins with the ritual formula, "This (the coins) in place of that (the child). This in exchange for that."

Read the whole thing. We Christians often refer to Christ as "the lamb of God;" "Lamb" because a "spotless lamb" was one of the ritual Jewish sacrifices of the time, used as a symbolic substitute for human sacrifice like Abraham's ram in the thicket.

Christians view the sacrifice of Christ - God's "son" - as the final and essential sacrifice needed to redeem a fallen mankind. Thus the ancient themes of blood and human sacrifice endure and give deadly serious substance to our worship today.

My August photo of the stone urns in Carthage which contained the ashes of firstborns sacrificed to Baal:

You may have seen these photos of Hitler and the Nazi era when first published by LIFE.com, but I missed them.

I think seeing these photos in color makes them more ominously ordinary - the banality of evil and all that. In other ways, they look more like a WW2 movie. What's your view?

Here's the story of the photos, from LIFE:

Between 1936 and 1943, German photographer Hugo Jaeger was granted unprecedented access to Adolf Hitler, traveling and chronicling, in color, the Fuhrer and his confidants at small gatherings, public events, and, quite often, in private moments. Here, and in several other galleries on LIFE, we present never-before-published photographs from Jaeger's astonishing -- and chilling -- collection.

... in 1945, when the Allies were making their final push toward Munich, Jaeger found himself face to face with six American soldiers in a small town west of the city. During a search of the house where Jaeger was staying, the Americans found the leather suitcase in which Jaeger had hidden thousands of his color negatives. He knew he would be arrested (or worse) if the Americans discovered his film and his close connection to Hitler. But what happened next astonished him.

Inside the suitcase that held the Hitler images, Jaeger had also placed a bottle of cognac. Happy with their find, the soldiers proceeded to shared the bottle with Jaeger and the owner of the house. The suitcase was forgotten.

After the Americans left, Jaeger packed the slides into 12 glass jars and buried them on the outskirts of town. In the years following the war, Jaeger occasionally returned to his multiple caches, digging them up, repacking, and reburying them. He finally retrieved the colllection for good--2,000 transparencies, all of them, amazingly, still in good shape -- and in 1965 sold them to LIFE.

Many of the photos can be seen at LIFE.com. 

We have a few more below the fold - more of LIFE's stash can be found at various places online.

Either the Emerald Ash Borer, or more likely Ash Yellows, killed a 100 year-old majestic White Ash which provided welcome shade to our place.

The wonderful Ash is under seige from diseases spreading across the country. It's a damn shame, because these shade trees were fairly good substitutes for the old Elms that succumbed to the Dutch Elm disease.

Photo is some sort of Ash, but I'm pretty sure it's not our Eastern White Ash from its shape.

A friend asked me where the most beautiful women were on my summer trip.

I had to think hard about it. I'd say Lucca first, Mallorca second, and Barcelona third. Or maybe Barcelona second...or maybe Nice second...

It's a blessing and a curse for guys that this world is so full of charming, posed poised and graceful females. (I'll bet they wish we ordinary guys could make ourselves so appealing, but we can not and will not.)

Anyway, the Ukraine girls really knock me out.

I haven't thought about this old-timey Yankee diner dessert for many years, but someone brought it up the other day, and I am now hungry for one.

As I recall, the last time I had a slice of one was at a diner with my grandfather. Cannot think about the pie without remembering that polo- and poker-playing, shootin', fishin' slacker gramps of mine, who preferred shopping for horses, and dealing in sailboats and Elco yachts (leaving his real business to others) to regular work - and who died way too young of a series of MIs, at 63.

Boston Cream Pie is Yankee-simple, unfashionable, unsophisticated, and darn tasty, and it's a cake, not a pie, with potent if short-lasting anti-depressant properties.

You can make it yourself if you can't find it in stores. Easy to do.

An email from a good pal, with photos (Harley is the Lab, Yankee is the Large Munsterlander with the white chest. I don;t know the name of the other Large Munsterlander.):

BD -

Enjoyed your posts on “Where I wasn’t”, and have very fond memories of the trip to Manitoba with you all. I just returned from a week in Saskatchewan for ducks/geese and then an upland hunt with my Large Munsterlander dog club.  Attached is a photo of the Abby Hotel (built ca. 1913) where we stayed, and a couple of the dogs and birds.  That’s Yankee with the Hun on the fence post.  Harley probably made his last trip.  Tired, but happy.

C.

PS  On the “tailgate” picture, ignore the biodiesel bumper sticker.  Truck belongs to a friend who is a bit liberal.  Makes for some long road trips, until we agree to disagree.

Hey - I know what that is like. Been there. Gotta stick to other topics, like the meaning of life and shotshell loads.

Between online stuff, books, magazines and journals, I probably do as much non-work-related reading each day as anybody does who also has a day job. I am a rapid reader, except when something forces me to ponder or imagine - or to look something up.

I appreciate a good information-conveyor, whether the info is news, opinions, deep-thinking, alcohol-inspired insights, personal musings and experiences, or plain information of all sorts, including the profoundly-informed and most widely-knowledgeable.

The websites which I frequent are all quite competent - or extremely good - at doing this. There is a definite craft to the pithy, linking, mini-essay (or mini-rant) whether the style is graceful, ironic, lyrical, obsessive, humorous, sly, academic, somber, crude, or whatever. We do not claim to have mastered the craft, but we aspire to do so.

However, real writing is a much rarer, God-given talent to which we would not even presume to aspire. Off the top of my head, I can only think of three website folks I read regularly who are true writers: Sippican (an explorer of mysteries and the creator of the felicitous term "intertubes"), Vanderleun (the often world-weary blogger and poet manque), and Iowahawk, the diabolical mimic, satirist and one-time Presidential candidate who skims the surface of reality before rising above it like a swallow chasing bugs over a lake.

This from Iowahawk's recent treatment of Andrew Sullivan, Dial "M" for Maternity:

I let the Ruger down slowly and put on the safety. Ma Palin was a Northside moll who had worked her way to the top of the Christianist syndicate. She was too violent and stupid for the Ivy League, but she was an expert at the two things that got you made in her gang -- shooting guns and making babies. I had long suspected some of those babies were fakes. If I could prove it, it would spark an internal war among the Christianists -- and bring down their iron-fisted control of the marriage rackets.

"I'm all ears... what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't."

"Suit yourself. Now let's hear that nursery story."

Well, whatever kind of writing one produces, every post needs a hook of some sort because the Hook brings you back. Here's my Hook for this post:

It doesnt matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel that Ill convey
Some inner truth of vast reflection
But Ive said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it dont matter who you are
If Im doing my job then its your resolve that breaks

Because the hook brings you back
I aint tellin you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely

Mrs. BD and I love to go to new places, and we love the Eyewitness Travel Guides. If you haven't used them, please given them a try. They give you the history, the climate, the local culture, the local foods to try, shopping ideas, good advice on how to get around, plenty of ideas off the beaten track - in short, a great introduction to a place you haven't visited before - with tons of photos for all of us ADD survivors.

(Disclaimer, per the FTC: The publisher of the guides was kind enough to pay us $3.7 million for this recommendation.) 

I know that we have a few readers who are interested in urban design and architecture from the comments we have had about Jane Jacobs in the past. Even insofar as many of us are suburbanites or exurbanites, we are fans of the liveable, lively city.

I was made aware of Leon Krier last night by a pal who has been reading his The Architecture of Community. Andres Duany says of this book:

"This is the compendium of common sense that has flowed from Leo''s pen for over forty years. From first to last, none of it has aged; and none of it will age. It is the one indispensable book on urbanism." (Andres Duany, co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism)

Here's the Amazon list of Krier's books.

Wiki notes: "...Krier sees the modern planner as a tyrannical figure.^"

Congrats to the BD pup, who found out that he passed the bar today and who is having some good fun writing some real new case law for the judge for whom he is clerking.

With your wedding to a true sweetie in August, a new place to live, and a cool job - you have been blessed this year.

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young

If you want to bring a Screech Owl family to your neighborhood, put up a nest box. They will find it, if you have any in the vicinity. They don't mind suburbia at all as long as they can find open places to hunt.

We like the Coveside products. Of course, other critters might want to use them - flying squirrels, Kestrels, etc., but you might get lucky with a nesting pair of Screeches.

(Note to the FTC: Coveside paid us $475,000 for this product  endorsement)

Wrote this early in August, before my trip, but forgot to post it -

I am studying up as I gradually learn about the places I am scheduled (by my tour planner, Mrs. BD) to visit over the next couple of weeks. I regret that our contributor, Roger de Hauteville, King of Sicily, cannot accompany us because I am sure he would have some good historical reminiscences.

The Mediterranean world went through some or most of these cultural phases (or empires) which you can mix and match according to location:

Native folks
Greek imperialists/colonists and/or Phoenician mercantilists
Romans
Byzantine Romans, Saracens, Vandals and other civilized barbarians
Moslem invaders from the East, and later Ottomans
Vikings/Normans
European medieval and later Kingdoms (eg Hapsburgs, Bourbons, Dukes of Savoy, etc).
Modern nationalism (with their own periodic wars of conquest)

Sicily experienced pretty much every bit of that sequence, which is how the Norman Roger de Hauteville became King of Sicily.

Best as I can tell thus far (I have a pile of books I am getting through), Sicily's high point was around 200 BC when it was still a Greek culture (Syracuse was considered the finest city in Magna Graecia), when the Syracusan Archimedes was busy discovering and inventing things in the old Greek way.

It's been downhill for Sicily since the kingdoms were abolished in the 1860s during the unification of Italy as a nation. But never unified, really. The "maffia" filled the power vacuum, and today they basically run the island. (Most people in Sicily speak Sicilian, if not Italian also. "Maffioso" is Sicilian for an entrepreneurial braggart or bully. It has been estimated that 80% of Sicily's businesses pay protection money to the Mafia, and Sicily's main exports are oranges, lemons, population (impossible to build a new biz there due to the mob "tax", so energetic people leave for the US and northern Italy and Europe) - and organized crime.

Despite their Greek history (genetically, Sicilians are a mix of European, Greek, and African), most Europeans to the north (which is all of them) look down on them just as the Romans look down on the Neapolitans, and the Italian Swiss look down on Romans - and even the Tuscans.

It's a lovely island, with around a 5 million population. The rural areas, the active volcanoes, and the well-preserved Greek ruins are the main attractions, and I plan to explore them.

Photo: Mount Etna -

Readers know that I like to hunt on the northern end of Lake Winnipegosis in the first week of October. Having just returned from a 2-week trip to Europe, I couldn't really do another week so soon. Thus Gwynnie and some other Maggie's Farm pals are up there without me.

Here's the old private duck hunting club where we stay. It's an old log structure with rough clapboard covering.  Open only 6 weeks per year. Females not allowed except for the cook and housekeeper. It's 13 miles from the nearest "town," which consists of a tiny old general store (duct tape, chewing gum, cigarettes, batteries, work gloves, wool hats, rope, Coco Puffs, milk), a liquor store, and a gas station, all on one dirt parking area. Mostly Indians up there, and some Ukrainian farmers.

One of the equipment shacks - a 100 year-old log cabin:

 More photos of the fine old club below: