Category Archives: Commentary

Knee High (?)

7/5/2012 – 3:41 pm

“Corn should be knee-high by the Fourth of July,” is an agricultural adage applied to various states, but in the northern US where I’ve spent most of my life, it’s generally been a true and good metric for the kind of a summer we’re having in any given year. Cornfields are never far away in […]

By floegel | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Syrup on Jambalaya

6/28/2012 – 2:36 pm

Strange as it seems, Vermont has much in common with Louisiana.  Both states have a relatively large city (Burlington/New Orleans) which in many ways dominates the state’s profile, but folks who live outside that city take pains to disassociate themselves from it.  (“Burlington is close to Vermont,” is the refrain here.) Each state has a […]

By floegel | Also posted in Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Decent Family Men

6/21/2012 – 6:59 pm

Forty-four years ago this spring, my mother loosed a weekly stream of invective against Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY).  A conservative Irish Catholic who had voted for JFK, she thought Bobby had betrayed his earlier, hard-line anti-Communist stance, then carpet-bagged his way in to the Senate.  Now she saw his presidential campaign as more political […]

By floegel | Also posted in Civil Liberty, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Politics By Other Means

6/14/2012 – 1:51 pm

Germany, with two wins and no losses, is looking like the team to beat in the Euro 2012 socc… er, football tournament now underway in host nations Poland and Ukraine.  The Dutch team, with no wins, has been the surprising disappointment – so far.  This ain’t over yet. I admit I’m not a big fan […]

By floegel | Also posted in Civil Liberty | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Bustin’ Out All Over

6/7/2012 – 12:25 pm

Three weeks ago, I picked up two nucleus colonies of Vermont-bred bees up near the Canadian border and installed them in my back yard.  It feels good to be an actual, rather than theoretical, beekeeper again.  They say every beekeeper will make every mistake possible and in that regard, I imagine I’m a prodigy, after […]

By floegel | Also posted in Global Warming | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Persistence of Magic

5/31/2012 – 10:36 am

In the midst of George Orwell’s essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” he makes a reference to sympathetic magic: “Nationalist thought often gives the impression of being tinged by belief in sympathetic magic – a belief which probably comes out in the widespread custom of burning political enemies in effigy, or using pictures of them as targets […]

By floegel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Just Saying

5/24/2012 – 9:39 pm

I have a book I never finish reading.  (It’s not Finnegan’s Wake; I haven’t even started that one.)  It’s George Orwell’s Essays and as it lands with the thud of 1,363 pages of political, cultural and literary criticism, I feel entitled to a bit of leeway.  I don’t try to plow straight through, but keep […]

By floegel | Also posted in Civil Liberty | Tagged | Comments (0)