Order restored

Written to Mozart: Ave Verum Corpus - Exsultate Jubilate - Coronation Mass by Camerata Academica Salzburg

Bill O'Reilly: Let me be very bold and fresh again, do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?

Sarah Palin: I believe that I am because I have common sense and I have I believe the values that I think are reflective of so many other American values, and I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the uhm, the ah, a kind of spineless, spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite, Ivy league education and, and a fat resume that is based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans are could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership, I'm not saying that that has to be me.

Enough said!

Fazenda Alfheim's testosterone war has ended (or at the very least been reduced to an uneasy cease fire), Esben has returned from a well-deserved four-day break in São Paulo and life at the fazenda is slowly rounding back to normal.

The Sorocaba/Monteiro boars and their many, many ladies have been moved to a new maximum security pen, albeit one with bountiful space and vegetation. A far cry from the Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Florence, Colorado. Who would have thought that so much chaos would ensue just from lowering the boar:sow ratio from approx. 1:15 to 1:10. Can't learn this stuff from books.

Farm Manager extraordinaire Esben is back, with a smile on his face and a bounce in his step.

Jamie arrived as planned, a little worse for wear, or rather she came down with a nasty flu-like illness upon arrival. Thankfully she seems better now and is back at work.

Jamie and Julie's (pictures forthcoming) arrival necessitated us moving all of the volunteers to the third house closest to the entrance to the fazenda. Good to finally put that wonderful house to proper use. And again thanks to Pierre and Sophie for furnishing our house with some of the surplus from their recent move to an apartment in Jardins.

And speaking of Sophie, our PhD-toting friend also turns out to possess a dominant sales gene. She quickly became the single largest distributor of Lone's raw, organic honey on the planet, moving several cases to the French community in São Paulo in a matter of days. We will be dropping off the last few jars of December's harvest to her this week. If any of you would like to purchase some of Lone's golden syrup, please shout oui now or forever hold your peace -at least until March, when we will harvest another 100-plus kg.

We have also started delivering samples of our inconceivably delicious free-range chickens to our São Paulo restaurant customers. These chickens have to be tasted to be believed, and even then it is hard to reconcile: tender, succulent and bursting with flavors our taste buds have not been programmed to associate with even the highest-quality store-bought chicken. Delightful, and a treat that we will happily share with any and all guests to the fazenda.

Finally, in a tragic reminder of the real, human cost of financial malfeasance and poor education (personal finance is the only subject we are not taught in school), the Wall Street Journal recently ran a data-filled article entitled Retiring Boomers Find 401(k) Plans Fall Short:

The difficulties have been worsened by the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Since the housing and financial markets began to collapse, about 39% of all Americans have been foreclosed upon, unemployed, underwater on a mortgage or behind more than two months on a mortgage, says Michael Hurd, director of the Rand Corporation's Center for the Study of Aging.