Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, after his own little diatribe about the food chain, figures he really ought to pass along to you (if you haven’t read it already) this wonderful Llama tidbit.

It reminds me of something the Big Hominid wrote. But to be honest, your Maximum Leader cannot recall if the Big Ho’s peice was in his book or on his blog.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reads that Zhao Ziyang is dead. Aged 85 years. He had lived under house arrest since he was ousted from power after his siding with pro-democracy students demonstrating in Tiananmen Square.

Your Maximum Leader remembers that at the time of the Tiananmen demonstrations, he had hoped that Zhao would leverage his position at Deng’s right-hand man to move China towards real political reforms (which would match the economic reforms already underway). But Deng was more reactionary when it came to political reforms, and the People’s Liberation Army wasn’t interested in political change.

Your Maximum Leader will not engage in a game of “What If?” here. That type of game is an intellectual exercise in self-indulgence anyway. But perhaps when China does move towards real political reform Zhao will be positively remembered… Of course, he might just be another Alexander Kerensky figure. Someone who had a chance to make a change - and blew it.

Carry on.

Even if Bill wants to mathematically minimize metaphysical munificence, there is still the feeling of divinely-inspired joy that one can feel swelling one’s chest on days such as I had yesterday.

It was Saturday - so I slept in until seven o’clock.

Snuggled with the wife and dogs under the covers for a bit.

Rassled with rat terrier Kermit.

Fed the calves. Two or three are taming down enough to ask for chin scratches.

Gave Bar-vac 7 vaccinations. Most farmers have to use cattle chutes and assistants to vaccinate their cattle. I just walked the boys into the corner, calmed them, and stuck ‘em.

Watched the sheep scamper on the hillside.

Scratched the goat. Told him he is a nuisance and likely to end up in the stew pot.

Noticed that Bonnie’s pregnancy is starting to show. She is also starting to display a little udder development. Gave her a good scratching behind the ears. Told her that she is a “bonnie lass” of a cow in my groundskeeper Willy voice.

Gathered two still-warm chicken eggs that had been laid in the previous fifteen minutes.

My dear wife cooked the fresh eggs the way I like ‘em - over easy - and used them to top pancakes. Ate breakfast at the bar on the high stools with my daughter next to me gleefully scarfing down blueberry pancakes.

Wrote a silly Nakedvillainy post to tweak a blogosphere pal.

Had no grading - I finished the marking period on Friday. Sat in a comfy chair and read the last couple of chapter of the “Moral Animal” by Neodarwinian Robert Wright. I thought his moral philosophy was unsatisfying, but really enjoyed learning about kin selection and the genetic basis for our internal thought processes. The book, besides being a combination of science, philosophy, and social commentary, illustrates its themes by using a Darwinian analysis of Charles Darwin’s life. I have read a couple of biographies of old Chuck, but examining the grand old man’s life choices in terms of genetic fitness was an interesting twist.

Built block towers with my daughter. Sang some silly songs. Enjoyed the fact that she is creating on her own now - she has made up her own little song about her family. It’s really just a sing-song repetition of the names of grandparents, uncles and aunts, parents and brother, but it is something she made up all by herself. Gave out several high fives for peeing in the potty.

Held and tickled Jack. He’s starting to smile and giggle when you play with him.

Returned some kid toys to the family down the street. Talked with Paul about cutting firewood with a chainsaw. Har! We be men! Scratch, scratch, spit.

Played pretty-princess dress-up with Emilie. (Not a word, Mike, not a word!)

Chatted with the Foreign Minister on the phone.

For dinner, ate a pizza “made” by a two-year old.

Put the kids to bed. Read a few “Apple Tree Farm” stories. Sang more silly songs.

Watched a mindless comedy with my wife.

Bega the Byzantine conquest of the world in “Medieval Total War.” Justinian was a potzer.

Went to bed with Tim McGraw lyrics in my head:

I’m gonna live where the green grass grows
Watch my corn pop up in rows
Every night be tucked in close to you
Raise our kids where the good lord’s blessed
Point our rockin’ chairs towards the west
And plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows
Where the green grass grows

How was your day?

Alas and alack!

The splendiferous Sadie has taken a blog sabbatical. When I was able to blink back the tears, I saw the cryptic last sentence of that post. It implied that the sabbatical had been discussed with the Maximum Leader and that he had encouraged this course of action - a course of action that denies the entire blogosphere of Sadie’s sensationally spirited and saucy, sometimes salacious commentary.

Why, it makes a man want to hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.

Well, fellow Sadiephiles, your humble Smallholder has done a little digging. Whilst the Maximum Leader was in Rome dictating dogma to the palsied man with the big hat, I broke into the Villainschloss and uncovered this damning chat session transcript on the Villainous ubercomputer:

Sadie: Oh, Maximum Leader, I don’t know how I can go on! Ever since I
spent those days hiding in the Smallholder’s barn, life hasn’t seemed worth
living.

Maximum Leader: Oh dear Sadie! Don’t succumb to despair. Homelessness
can happen to the best people. You have moved on! The new
fistfulofnights blog is a wonderful new place to hang your hat. Just
forget about the whole episode and get on with your life.

Sadie: Oh, Maximum Leader, you poor naif. It wasn’t the homelessness
or the sleeping amongst hay bales that has ruined me. It was
Smallholder.

Maximum Leader: Smallholder? I don’t understand.

Sadie: Of course you don’t. As a putatively heterosexual male, you
probably don’t sense the overpowering virility of a servant of the soil.
Having met the Minister of Agriculture, I realize that I can never be
happy. Smallholder is so devoted to his wife and kids that not even Jaime
Pressly could induce him to stray. And, having seen Smallholder, the
thought of not having him for my very own drains all color out of life like a
bizarro-world Ted Turner.

Maximum Leader: What about the Irish guy?

Sadie: Oh him. Well, he’s nice and all, but can he shovel manure like
Smallholder? Can Irish guy calm a frightened calf? Smallholder is so
dreamy when he is adding hay to the chickens’ egg boxes. Oh, the
unbelievable virility of a 240 pound man who wears a John Deere cap while
banding cattle! My knees tremble thinking about it. He’s so dreamy.
If only I hadn’t been spying on him from the hayloft, I might yet love the Irish
Lad. But Smallholder has ruined me for other men. And I can’t have
him. (Sobbing uncontrollably)

Maximum Leader: Damn you Smallholder! You heartbreaking agrarian
Adonis! Why must you be so darned attractive? Why must you spurn the
world’s attractive women so they will never look at other men?

(There was a break in the chat here. I suspect Sadie was weeping
woefully and the Maximum Leader was ruefully reflecting on all the women in
college who used him to get close to Smallholder)

Maximum Leade: Well, Sadie, I wish I could help. About the only
thing I can recommend is to go on a serious drinking jag. Serious alcohol
poisoning might just damage your memory enough to help you forget the force of
nature that is Smallholder. So get drunk and stay drunk until you can find
a way to live without him. Just try not to go all Ben
Sanderson on us.

We had an honest-to-goodness gully-washer last night. Driving, pounding, unremitting rain.

While hard rain always concerns the hillside farmer, I did enjoy listening to the wall of sound produced by our tin roof. Not many tin roofs these days. Ours is a hundred years old, and I’ve had to patch it in a couple of places. I’ll have to paint the roof this summer, a task for which the acrophobic are constitutionally ill-suited (I’ve jumped out of helicopters, but by God I hate being on a ladder ten feet in the air). Despite the trouble, rainy nights make the tin roof worthwhile.

I had left a wheelbarrow leaning against the barn. The goat, pain in my spanked tuckas that he is, had shouldered it down and it landed right side up. There was three inches of water in the barrow (attention Analphilsopher: ought it to be “was three inches” or “were three inches?” Lord, how my borderline literacy must drive the sentence diagrammers mad). Three inches is a great deal of rain to have overnight.

All the animals were cozy in the barn, but as I walked out to check on them this morning, I notices toads leaping about underfoot. The gully washer must have driven them out of their rapidly filling hidey hibernation hole homes. This has been a very mild January, but I think active amphibians is really going a bit to far.

When I went inside the barn, some of the toads must have followed the light beam - toads like to cluster around lights because the lights attractyummy insects.

Why are you looking at me like that? I just happen to know a bit about toads.

Shut up! I’m not a geek!

Toads in the barn alarmed me. I am afraid that your average toad will not fare too well when stepped on by a two hundred pound calf. So, softy that I am, I ended up on my knees, hand-catching the little guys (and gals - I checked!). I carried them out of the pasture and let them go near the house.

My Samaritanism (is that a word?) is probably futile. The temperature will drop to 20 degrees tonight, so I suspect most of the toads will freeze to death unless they have found new spots to hunker down.

Well, it mattered to those toads for today.

UPDATE: The paper said we had 3.1 inches of rain overnight. I didn’t do too badly with my wheelbarrow estimate.

‘Tis I, the “Sucky Smallholder.”

I was afeared that posting any thoughts about ommunity college would result in a firing squad.

I didn’t post it for a bit, considering the risk of offending people in the blog community who I respect and even (from the appropriate non-stalking electronic remove) care about.

I asked the Maximum Leader to look the draft post over and see if he thought it unsuitable for publication. I figured he’d look at it, we’d chat, and make a decision. But I perhaps didn’t make the tenative nature of the review very clear to my esteemed generalissamo. Quick like a bunny, like Hooker bringing Wallace’s outline of natural selection (as, of course, an “able correspondent” who supports the real work of his friend Chuck, whose unfinished work wasn’t really scooped) before scientific society. Ah well, me thoughts are me thoughts, and I might as well be damned for a goat.

That said, I have to say, if one is going to be flamed, one couldn’t ask for better flammings than those offered by Ally or Powerfmn (although I’m afraid to ask what the “fmn” stands for). Both folks are models of civil discourse. We haven’t seen any namecalling and both support their stances with solid evidence. Both have experiences that have opened my eyes to the larger community college phenomenon.

I would quibble with one of Powefmn’s statements. I too took a class at a Northern Virginia Community College. I remember, as a high school student, being appalled at the slack-jawed inattention of the other people in the classroom. There was no student involvement in the learning experience at all. I remember wondering why most of those people were there. Weren’t they paying to be there? Why would you pay to be somewhere you find to be absolutely booooorrrrriiiiiinnnngggg? How the heck do you learn a language if you never speak in class? Perhaps that one class was atypical and Powerfmn and Ally’s experience with community college classes are more representative of the whole.

One thing I do know is that I wish Ally and Powerfmn had been at Longwood with Mike and I. Discussions would have been much more fun if they had been multipolar. And I would have had my erroneous presuppositions challenged (and changed) with polite ferocity.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader loves it when minion-folk decide to write a whole post for him. As has loyal reader/minion “Powermfn.” Powermfn is a longtime reader of this humble weblog (if your Maximum Leader may quote the Crack Young Staff). Well, Powermfn has a bone to pick with the good Smallholder concerning his recent Community College post. Let’s see what Powermfn’s message says…

I reckon it all depends on the community college itself and where it is located. It has been my experience that those CC’s located in and around places like D.C. or, for that matter, wherever there is a military installation such as the naval installation at Norfolk, you are likely to find the following:

1. A preference by the government to send their officers to the local CC’s to get their tickets punched.

2. An absolutely amazed group of officers already with with undergraduate and graduate degrees in hand who discover that the math classes being taught today at the CC level are so tough that it is like “trying to nail Jello to the wall”. (A quote from a naval commander)

Further,

1. Some of the private and even some of the public high schools in the northern Virginia area especially choose to send their AP and IHP students to the local CC’s for certain courses such as calculus, etc.

2. The influx of immigrant students (mostly those from Asia) has made for some of the most incredible academic competition, again in any class with anything to do with math.

3. Big state universities like Tech are actually recommending that at the very least those students on the waiting list enroll at the local CC and take the state required courses which would leave them free to really immerse themselves in their chosen major once they ever do get off the waiting list and onto a big state u. campus.

4. VCU actually recommends to their student body that if they can swing it at all financially to take summer courses at the local CC for credit transferable back to the big alma mater.

5. For a fact, I have seen with my own eyes that the campus of the community college in Lansing, Michigan, right next to Michigan State University is a far more modern and attractive place than many of the sites on the big u. campus and certainly far more modern and attractive than the state capitol building. Worse yet, there was such an atmosphere of total seriousness from the CC student body as they sweated through computer science, etc. courses that the whole effect was rather off-putting. This was college! Where was the good old rah-rah stuff in the halls and on the green?

6. Check out in different states where those states insist that one go to obtain Board certification and licensing in such areas as optician. Yup. The CC.

There you have it. Thanks to Powermfn for the thoughtful comments. It seems as though Ally isn’t the only one who likes a little “spanky-spanky” of the Smallholder’s (aka Mocha’s) tuckas.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wanted to take a moment to do a little link-dump of come recent Smallholder related posts on other blogs.

First up, star geometry proof student, Bill, figures out some probablilities for the Smallholder.

Next up, Kathy, who dwells among the Cate Eaters, writes a thoughtful post concerning community colleges.

Lastly, it seems that the Smallholder is no longer on the outside looking in… See Skippy’s site… Read last sidebar comment.

Carry on.

UPDATE: Loyal Minion Sadie wrote your Maximum Leader to request that he appnd this message. Her amendment to this message: “Smallholder sucks.” Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure to which recent Smallholder post this refers; but he’s willing to go out on a limb and say it is the Community College post.

“Angst-ridden”? Smallholder doesn’t know me that well, does he?

There’s a huge difference between blowing off steam and… well, Woody Allen.

_

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was making himself a hamburger for lunch today. (Made he should add from the delicious beef he purchased from the Smallholder…) While he was frying up that delicious patty of ground cow these thoughts entered his mind:

1) Vegetarians suffer from the “Three C’s.” Concern - about what they are eating. They can’t just go anywhere and eat. They have to think of places. Meal prep isn’t really meal prep so much as meal planning. What will you eat? When? Does this bean have enough protein for me? Can I make an alfredo sauce using vegetable margarine, soy milk, and fake parmesan cheese? (NB: You can - but you wouldn’t want to eat it.) Crankiness - because the vegetarian always has to think about what they are eating they aren’t ever really happy with what their choices are. Condescension - “You’re eating THAT? Eeewww. (Under breath) Killer!”

2) The Arctic Tundra Senario. What if you are stuck on the Arctic tundra of Siberia or waaaay northern Canada? Are you really gonna try and thaw out the perma-frost and grow some beans? Your Maximum Leader votes for killing some of those absolutely deeeeelicious Polar Bears and chowing down. (Note: Polar Bear skins make for warm clothing in a pinch. And being trapped in the Arctic counts as a pinch. As well as appropriate places for male/female “conjugation” if placed in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter night.)

UPDATE: Brian reminds your Maximum Leader that going after Polar Bears without the appropriate gear can be a fatal undertaking. Yes. Yes. Your Maximum Leader knew that. Your Maximum Leader assumes that it goes without saying that one wouldn’t trek near the Arctic without appropriate gear. Like a fine large calibre hunting rifle. Something that chambers a huge Weatherby round.

3) The Antartica Senario. What if you were going to trudge to the South Pole? Would you really want to carry all those beans and pasta? Hows about just killing a few penguins? Sure they are mostly blubber, but you can kill more than a few. But blubber can be burned for heat. (It does smoke and give off a foul odour. But it beats freezing to death.)

4) The Trappedin the Andes After Your Plane Crashes Senario. So, your DC-10 flys into the side of a mountain in the Andes and you’re trapped. You can 1) move down below the frost line and clear a patch of land and try to grow some crops from what you are able to scavenge or 2) eat your fellow passengers in a brave effort to stay alive until someone comes to rescue you. (NB re:the cooking of people: now old people and vegetarians will be sort of lean and sinewy. So they will require slow cooking with liquids to be more than a piece of shoe leather to chew on. Babies are cute and cuddly, but they are also tender and well marbled with layers of fat. Be sure to reduce your cook time and check frequently to make sure you don’t over-do them. It is more humane to go after the old and vegetarians first - as they would be the first to perish from exposure. After they are gone… Try the morbidly obsese and work your way down to plain ole people.)

5) The “Pick-up and Fly Anywhere” Senario. Unless you are going to a developed nation or a predominantly Hindu nation, you need to eat meat. On Safari in Kenya your craving for a tofu-burger with organic lettuce on a toasted whole wheat bun isn’t going to get you far. You’d be better off with a tasty medium-rare water buffalo steak with a side of gazelle tartare. If you are lucky, you might convince a Masai tribesman to give you some flatbread to put your buffalo steak on. When on your fact-finding mission to Iraq, you might be offered some roasted lamb or goat by your friendly Kurdish guide. Don’t tell him you’d prefer a nice salad of romain lettuce and colourful veggies instead. What he doesn’t have a salad? Well then you’ll just stick to the hummus… Trust your Maximum Leader on this one… Take. The. Lamb. You’ll be better off.

6) “The Children! Think of the Children!” Senario. Think of them. The children of the great Texas cattlemen. The children of the few remaining cowboys. The children of the slaughterhouse workers. The children of the meat department manager at your local grocery store… Think of all the children. Looking at you Mr/Ms Vegetarian. With those weepy brown eyes. Their quivering lips. The tear-streaked faces. What do they say to you… “Meat is tasty. You’re an omnivore, why will you not fulfill your place atop the food chain? If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?”

And those, dear minions, are just a few reasons not to be a vegetarian.

Carry on.

Three of my favorite bloggers have been quite prolific as of late.

Skippy is back from his blog hiatus. Oh how we missed him. I would introduce this paragraph with an ad hominem attack, but we have already established that poor Smallholder, like Moses, will be forever looking at the promised land of the “What People Are Saying bout Skippy” sidebar from the outside, barred from entrance into the promise land of my dreams. Anyhoo, Skippy left his loyal readers hanging for some time but is now back with a vengeance. I would link to specific articles, but heck, they are all good (except where he takes that stupid “what are you worth quiz”). Go check mi’boy Skipper out.

Kilgore is also flaming back into the frequent posting (but seems to have lost steam lately). I particularly liked the mayonnaise saga. Kilgore also offers more evidence supporting my contention that the Star Wars movies collectively blow.

Kilgore’s story of losing his camera and having it returned is bizarre enough to make anyone but the Analphilosopher believe in the existence of a benevolent God. Many years ago, the Maximum Leader and his Minister of Agriculture took a whitewater rafting trip. Somewhere along the rapids, my watch slipped off my wrist. Since it was an engagement present from Mrs. Smallholder, I was rather distraught. Our guide commiserated with me, but I could tell that the attractive young lady was having the same thought that was running through my mind: “Smallholder, you are an idiot. Who wears a treasured possession while whitewater rafting?” Much later, I got a call from the young woman. She was leading another party and one of the rafts capsized. When one of the people stood up, they stepped on my watch, which had been submersed all that time. The inscription just said “To Mark from Sally - heart, mind, soul.” No last name. So the guide pockets the watch, goes back to the center, and pages back through customer records until she finds my last name, looks up my phone number, and tells me she found it.

At the risk of offending the star-student-of-geometry-class-proof precision of Bill’s Comments, I have to conclude: The odds of someone capsizing right where my watch was, being barefoot so they could feel that they had stepped on something, being part of a trip under the direction of the same guide, said guide remembering me out of thousands of customers, said guide further going to all the trouble to find me and return it? The Universe’s constants MUST be designed by a benevolent supreme being. Just call me Dr. Pangloss.

Finally, we have the inestimable Ally. Belying her own wisdom that happiness makes for poor blogging, Ally had given us several good posts in recent days. Alternatively, she may prove the rule so well illustrated by the perpetually and preternaturally angst ridden Big Hominid, Skippy, Kilgore and Celibate.

I often wonder whether my own optimism and joy makes me a poor blogger. Then I realize that couldn’t possibly be true. The runaway popularity of my “We need more farmers like…” posts is proof enough, no? When Smallholder is happy and links to cool farmers, everyone is happy. And if they’re not? Well, don’t think that the Maximum Leader is the only one who has a list of people who are “first against the wall.”

Ally’s posts like “The Problem With Unions” will keep her out of the firing line, even if she occasionally takes a paddle to yours truly. I’ll wait while you click through…

Quoth The Minister of Agriculture whilst rubbing his tuckus, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you, you sick little monkeys?” (And a little voice, burbling up from the misshapen, orange-tufted loon, downstage left, replies “Ohhhh, yesssss, me likey the Smallholder spanky spanky!”)

I would still maintain that our own egos often preclude us from objectively looking at the relative merits of various collegiate paths, but Ally has been down several paths and has a rational basis for comparison. She has gotten’ me to thinkin’ that my perception of the jump between levels (Longwood to William and Mary) t’ain’t neccessarilee tee-pical*. After all, I can’t fairly compare the two institutions because perhaps the excellent peers I had in the graduate program at William and Mary were not representative of the undergraduate student body. I don’t think Ally will sway me on this one, but I will have to ruminate on the fact that her experience is perhaps more telling than mine.

* Jess ‘cuz I haven dem fancy sheepskins don’t mean I t’ain’t still an inbred agrarian. Now get off me porch ‘for I rocksalt yer mangy hide.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader believes you ought to go over to Beautiful Atrocities to read Jeff’s profile of Masooda Jalal.

What a courageous woman with a vision for the future of her country!

This story, like so many others that various bloggers (like Jeff) and MSM outlets like the Wall Street Journal, is not often enough reported outside the limited realm of the blogosphere and certain other outlets. Just the other day, your Maximum Leader and the Smallholder were chatting on the phone and the subject of how bad Iraq is came up. Your Maximum Leader does not doubt for a moment that the situation in parts of Iraq is grave. But he doesn’t believe that what we hear about every day is the whole story of the whole nation. He once saw a map of Iraq showing where all the headline news stories came from. As most know, they come from the “Sunni Triangle.” That is still the problem. The south and north of Iraq are rebuilding and moving forward.

Does this mean that there is no problem? Of course not. But it does mean that we shouldn’t start to close our minds to the overall mission upon which we’ve embarked. We Americans are an impatient lot. We need to take heed of the positive changes we’ve affected so far, and continue to make the incremental changes that will have lasting impact on the region.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader asks you all, do ever feel sad when you learn that some popular figure you’ve really liked and admired in your youth has passed away? Even if you haven’t seen or heard of them much in many years?

That is how your Maximum Leader feels now that he has learned that WHFS (99.1 FM in Washington DC) has died and been reborn as “El Zol” (99.1 FM in Washington DC).

If you want to read the on-line “wake” held by the Washington Post, here it is.

Your Maximum Leader started to listen to ‘HFS in the late ’70’s early ’80s. He was introduced to it by the older brother of one of his good friends. He listened to it religiously for many many years. Until really he moved out of the area in the late 90’s. Then, when your Maximum Leader would visit DC; the radio always went to 99.1 to check out what was being played. Indeed, your Maximum Leader believes that (out of habit) 99.1 is still programmed into the Villainmobile’s radio dial. Even though your Maximum Leader hasn’t really been able to listen to more than 5-10 mins of music w/out becoming disgusted and changing the channel.

Your Maximum Leader, while sad that HFS is no more, is glad he still has musical memories.

And he is still glad that he has WGMS and WETA. (Washington’s two classical stations.) At least until he outfits the Villainmobile with XM. Then he will not care.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader spends a few moments each day reading over “The Sun” of Great Britain. It is, by far, his favourite tabloid in the whole world.

Well, in case you didn’t know, there is a bit of a hubub going on concerning a costume Prince Harry wore to a party. Haven’t heard yet? Well, read this.

Let us say that Prince Harry attired himself in a fashion unbecoming of a member of Britain’s Royal Family. (Or he was letting us all in on the hidden fact that Sid Vicsious was right all along.)

Harry’s written apology doesn’t seem to be doing the trick. He probably ought to visit a concentration camp. Of course, he could also go to Israel and visit Yad Vashem and apologize there.

Or perhaps he could volunteer to fix up synagoagues vandalized by Muslims across Europe…

Carry on.
(more…)

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader certainly does enjoy two things. First, the chance to put an obsure Dan Ackroyd line from SNL into the title of a post. Second, others taking up the torch against the Smallholder. (So to speak.)

Your Maximum Leader first commends to you Ally’s post concerning Community Colleges.

Your Maximum Leader has some thoughts on this subject, but he will keep them to himself for a little while longer. He is enjoying the everything that is coming the Smallholder’s way.

Of course, if you have thoughts about the Smallholder’s Community College post you may e-mail them to your Maximum Leader (maxldr-blog -at- yahoo -dot-com) or the Smallholder himself at: smallholder - at- nakedvillainy -dot- com.

BTW, your Maximum Leader got a nice e-mail from the divine Minion Molly (or M - Squared as he will sometimes refer to her). M-Squared confesss that she went to a “junior college” to take an English class to get ahead. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure what happened to the noble institution that was the “junior college.” Most have transmogrified themselves into 4 year schools, or just disappeared. There probably is a post in that subject somewhere - but your Maximum Leader is unlikely to write it.

Minion Molly also is told by “people” that northern schools are more “elite” than schools in Texas. As one who has some experience in college admissions, your Maximum Leader wouldn’t go so far as to make a blanket statement like that one. There may well be more schools with the “reputation” for being “elite” in Northern states. But this is a factor of a few different historical trends. The easiest of which to identify is that the Northeastern states (and New England states specifically) have a longer history and tradition of higher education; due in part to the need to train clergymen. All in all there are just as many “non-elite” schools in the North as there are in the South. Indeed, there are more “non-elite” schools in the nation - by definition - than “elite” schools.

Your Maximum Leader should also note that Minion Molly would like to challenge our President (that is President George W. Bush) to a game of Jeopardy to test her University of Texas education against his “gentleman C’s” from Yale and Havard.

As entertaining as that would be, your Maximum Leader fears that President Bush will not be taking up any game-show challenges.

Excursus: President Bush: Fox or Hedgehog? Can you really make a determination? Hummm… President Clinton: same question. Answer for Clinton, definately Fox. And while your Maximum Leader is playing this little intellectual game with himself… George H.W. Bush: Fox; Ronald Reagan: Hedgehog; Jimmy Carter: Fox; Gerald Ford: n/a; Richard Nixon: Fox; Lyndon Johnson: Fox; John Kennedy: Fox; Dwight Eisenhower: Fox; Harry Truman: Hedgehog; FDR: Fox. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure about Eisenhower. Ike may be a Hedgehog. That is a toughie.

And in case anyone cares, in your Maximum Leader’s opinion the finest educational institution in the United States of America is…. (drumroll please)… Stanford University. Followed rather closely by the University of Chicago. Your Maximum Leader has not attended either of the schools (but would gladly do so if he had the inclination or talent); nor is he a paid spokesman for these institutions. And if he had to throw in one other college of which he thinks highly, it would be St. John’s College.

Carry on.