What did this week bring? Bitter cold and a real blizzard. Pitchers and catchers reported. I dreamed of spring. I thought of starting running after seeing me at 21. I still have not ordered my seeds even though I am four weeks away from mid-March when I could be planting them in the garden. I have not ordered my fig trees. We have to prepare as the evening now starts well past the drive home for the ending of this winter.
- Fellow Kingsman and New Brunswick journalist Brian Cormier had a great post a few days ago on the fate of PEI ferries, including the cutting up of one, probably for rebar, in India.
- Lew describes a drinking license for those 18 to 21. Given the number of US kids in active service, why there isn't a backlash against the puritanism of the legal drinking age there is beyond me.
- I think this post and the comments that follow contain some of the most refreshingly silly statements about the waste of time that is blogging including this range:
Blogging makes us more oriented toward an intellectual bottom line, more interested in the directly empirical, more tolerant of human differences, more analytical in the course of daily life, more interested in people who are interesting, and less patient with Continental philosophy...
I have been less patient with Continental philosophy lately but I though it was the extra weight I have put on in these years of plenty....blogging generally turns reasonable people into screeching and boring partisans. Present company excepted, naturally.
- I have decided that John Marshall Harlan is another one of my favorite guys.
- Why no plan? I will pick up mine at a leisurely pace later in the year - as I fly not - but why no plan at all?
- I have been thinking about games. Aside from this good reason to plan to raise them as luddites, even if the damn thing is around in ten years, there is something attractive about the idea of having kids well versed in Ball and Trap or Northamptonshire Skittles. Somewhere in the Cooperstown Symposium lectures I have a history of early baseball like games that notes a game of trapball (very close to 500 up) among 1812 prisoners leading to the shooting of American internees by the British guards when they tried to get a ball back that had gone over a fence. In North Marylebone, in 1772 there was a pub called The Jew's Harp House Tavern and Tea-Gardens:
It consisted of a large upper room, ascended by an outside staircase, for the accommodation of the company on ball nights; and in this room large parties dined. At the south front of these premises was a large semi-circular enclosure with boxes for tea and ale-drinkers, guarded by deal-board soldiers between every box, painted in proper colours. In the centre of this opening were tables and seats placed for the smokers. On the eastern side of the house there was a trapball-ground; the western side served for a tennis-hall...
We have to, however, live in the modern minor key and have to take solice as we can. I was happy to find a quality croquet vendor just an hour to my west. Is someone can explain the run-of-play scoreboard called a deadness board that would be helpful. Ask the people who, again, invert adjective and noun in naming the national body.
Comments
cm - February 16, 2007 8:36 AM
Morning, everyone. Drinking license? Unlike my drivers, I think I could pass that one first try. Although a whisky sour before bed seems to lead to bizarre dreams.
gr - February 16, 2007 9:21 AM
cm, there are those of us who consider whisky sours healthful, esp. in these flu-prevalent times (stay away from Gordo everybody).
Speaking of games, yesterday on NPR there was talk about hundreds of years ago, man, woman and child, village vs. village, hundreds vs. hundreds: football's rough precursor, sort of an all-out melee, no doubt well-fueled by ale drinkers over and under 18.
Gordo - February 16, 2007 9:27 AM
Alan, take the kidlets to Minotaur, downtown. They even sell Meccano!
gr - February 16, 2007 9:28 AM
Having looked now at Lew's post, I am reminded of the dangers posed by choosing music on the sound system, the large latte, the cell phone dialed and spoken into, the crying child in the back seat, (in my case) the two large dogs wrestling in the backseat (which is roughly how Stephen King got creamed), and lately: the vehicle driving down the street covered in snow....
You cannot underestimate America's love-hate relationship w/ alcohol. On the one hand, certain types push total abstinance, on the other hand, you have young people getting totally bombed-on a regular basis. Where is the polite middle ground?
gr - February 16, 2007 9:28 AM
Like I say, stay away from gordo--no hugs or kisses today, mister!
Gordo - February 16, 2007 9:41 AM
Hey! cough, cough, hack ....
Alan - February 16, 2007 9:49 AM
Don't forget - early football leads to the burning barrels.
Brian Cormier - February 16, 2007 9:50 AM
Hi Al... Thanks for linking to one of my posts about the PEI ferries. The other post is the actual column I wrote. Here's the link: http://briancormier.blogspot.com/2007/02/whatever-became-of-those-ferries-anyway_08.html Enjoy! :)
gorthos - February 16, 2007 11:09 AM
As much as I wish to imp your post and pretend I thought you were asking as to the fate of PEI Fairies, I will refrain.
Seeds: I am stratifying some pagoda tree seeds Alan. If you wish a few smalle sapling-ettes for your property in about September let me know. My last years tree growing resulted in three excellent SweetGum trees that I am nursing in my home till spring that are about 12 inches high, leafy and hardy. I have yet to buy seeds for the new gardens however I have four catalogues screaming at me. This year my pumpkin will be over 300lbs.. guaranteed or my name isn't (DELETED)
cm - February 16, 2007 12:58 PM
Will you be entering it in the Royal? If so, perhaps Flea and I will be there to cheer it on.
Alan - February 16, 2007 1:25 PM
Maybe, instead of the glee club, we will have a virtual community garden over the summer.
gr - February 16, 2007 1:39 PM
Last year the slugs greatly enjoyed my tomato plants out in the garden. This year I shall grow only those tough little tomato plants called 'patio tomatos' which are thick little plants that live in a large pot on the porch. I shall be better able to supervise the moisture, and the slugs. My greatest wish for next year, however, is to try lavendar again for the first time in several years. What a grand little flower, purple and fragrant, and dries so nicely too.
gorthos - February 16, 2007 1:49 PM
I had 7 tomato plants this year (plus assorted un-wanted cherry tomato plants that came back from previous year in the middle of my yellow zucchini patch). I had some of the tomato worms (cycropia moths ?) but picked them off manually and fed them to crows to spite them. I think this year we will bite the bullet and grow some weird heritage tomats.
Royal? No, too far to travel with a 300 lb pumpykin in a toyota echo hatchback.
cm - February 16, 2007 3:26 PM
My lavender was doing quite nicely until it got poisoned by my crazy upstairs neighbour.
Then perhaps Flea and I will do a road trip to your local fall fair.
gorthos - February 16, 2007 3:40 PM
I grew lavender for the second year running this past. I mixed French and English Lavender in a well mulched bed between cedar globes. It spread quite nicely. On a hot summer night the front porch smelled like Paris. Well, the cleaner parts of Paris (nyuck nyuck nyuck).. i think I will do eth same this year on a larger scale with some thin tall fragrant purple flocks intersperced.
gorthos - February 16, 2007 3:41 PM
phlox
cm - February 17, 2007 9:55 AM
A phlox on all your houses!
gorthos - February 17, 2007 10:34 AM
A punny woman you