We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
A "person of some authority" mentioned last week that he was not bothered by the insincerity of the central claims for the ACA being revealed as we went forward. "Everyone knew that. But they had to say those things to get it passed. It's one of the finest pieces of legislation in our lifetime. Not for what it is, but because of what it will lead to." Someone worried that it wouldn't work, and much of the system collapse. "So much the better," he said. "It will get us there quicker." He looked positively giddy saying this.
The government thinks they know how to practice medicine better than we docs in the trenches do. They have no clue.
I'll admit that some of what doctors do, many expensive things, are purely defensive medicine. Lawsuits are inconvenient and no fun, but we all get sued. Most of the time, we either win or our insurers pay them to go away, but it's a major interference with our work and our mental bandwidth.
Each and every medical decision can be questioned, because it's all an individualized art requiring individualized judgements.
Physicians take a solemn oath to do what they believe is best for their patient. It's always a complex dance, of course, with the doctor recommending and the patient thinking about what they want.
We accommodate patients' desires all the time, even when we believe that they are wrong. It's a free country, is it not? We work for, and with, the patient. Nobody else.
Also, a recession. I tend to agree, but I don't think we ever really got out of the last recession. The Fed put a band-aid on it to cover up the bleeding and infection.
Christmas Eve supper is traditionally fish. We tend to make poached salmon with yoghurt-dill sauce. Usually asparagus and some potato on the side. It's ready when we all get home from Christmas Eve church.
Christmas Day dinner is the major feast. We often join relatives for this, but sometimes we host. Our relatives tend to make filet, which is always good. Our greatest success, I think, was Stuffed Crown Roast of Pork. If you don't stuff it with apple/cornbread stuffing, you can serve that on the side, with applesauce, mashed taters, and some root vegetables.
Regular Roast Beef is great, of course, but a Beef Wellington is even better if you don't have too many guests. It's easy:
Remember when liberals, including David Brooks, advocated for a weaker Chief Executive while Bush was in office (and will surely do the same if a conservative wins in 2016)?
He actually said this: "We don’t need bigger government. We need more unified authority."
Maybe you need unified authority, David, but I do not. In fact, I find that to be a profoundly weak and pathetic thought, unsuitable and inappropriate for a hearty American citizen. That's not how Americans roll. We distrust authority, instinctively. It's an American gene, and a healthy one.
The American spirit is that government and politicians are our employees, not our "authorities." We, and God, are our authorities.
Whence this desire to submit to authority? It feels sort of perverted to me. We have no "moral and intellectual superiors." In fact, our "leaders" tend to be our inferiors. Why else would they do those jobs instead of doing something useful and productive?
When I take those online ADD screening tests, I come out as "ADD Likely." I have always been impatient, physically restless, and had trouble concentrating on dense material even though I got a B+ in Physical Chemistry (the best, toughest course I took at U Mass). I don't think I'm on the thin end of the Bell Curve.
This article in the NYT makes no distinction between ADD and ADHD, but it seems to me that there is a big difference: The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder -The Number of Diagnoses Soared Amid a 20-Year Drug Marketing Campaign.
Anyway, all of us at MF have untreated ADD. Are amphetamines performance-enhancers? Of course.
1:39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country,
1:40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
1:41 When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit
1:42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
1:43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?
1:44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.
1:45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."
1:46 And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord,
1:47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
1:48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
1:49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
1:50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
1:51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
1:52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
1:53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
1:54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
1:55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."
Image: Fra Angelico's The Visitation, 1432 (tempera on panel). For those unfamiliar with these terms, "the visitation" refers to Mary's visiting her cousin Elizabeth following the annunciation (see section from Luke Ch 1, on continuation page below). Only Luke presents the speculation, or myth, of Christ's cousin relationship to John the Baptist.
...how heartening, as one watches the viral video of Obama droning on while a mere foot and a half away Mr. Jantjie rubs his belly and tickles his ear, to think that the White House’s usual money-no-object security operation went to the trouble of flying in Air Force One, plus the “decoy” Air Force One, plus support aircraft, plus the 120-vehicle motorcade or whatever it’s up to by now, plus a bazillion Secret Service agents with reflector shades and telephone wire dangling from their ears, to shepherd POTUS into the secured venue and then stand him onstage next to an $85-a-day violent schizophrenic.
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied Specks to range on window-sills at home, On shelves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst into nimble- Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain. Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
That's Yankeeland this week. I am learning to remember to ask camera and lens, as if I really knew what people are talking about. (This nighttime pic with this Leica.)
I encountered something I had never seen before, at a Christmas party last Saturday night - a home pipe organ.
Our host's two-manual organ console was built into the wall of their roughly 24X24' foyer, with the array of pipes located under the curved staircase on the other side of the foyer. The organ had been installed when the gracious but unpretentious home was built, 1926.
I had not known that pipe organs had been a hot item for prosperous home entertainment. But if funeral parlors had them, why not? The organ in question had a player feature, and our host had boxes of player rolls for it.
Naturally, they had hired an organist to play Christmas carols with all joining in and filling the east and west hallways with merriment, projecting the words on the walls for those with dementia. This organ was manufactured by Skinner Organ Co., Boston.
This good fun prompted me to learn a little more about pipe organs. Until the invention of the telephone switchoard, the pipe organ was the most complex manufactured product. Here's a wiki history of the pipe organ. Like most things, it goes back to the Greeks, who cleverly aligned pipes with a hydraulic bellows.
Electricity made it possible to distance the pipes and their complex inner workings from the console, and to provide a steady supply of wind (fans) for the pipes without people pumping on the bellows in a closet
To my delight, I found a home pipe organ for sale on the internet. Even if I could afford it, I doubt I could afford to have it installed. Also, I can't play a keyboard worth a darn. It is called "lack of talent," and lacks of talents suck if I may say so. I know: I lack many of them
People joke about how bitchy and cranky, if not downright hostile, many women become around menopause. Bitchy, cranky, and raging may drive family members and friends away, but are not depression in themselves. On the plus side, sometimes, women become much more horny as their estrogen lowers in proportion to their testosterone (yes, women's bodies do produce some of that).
Turns out that an A is the most common grade given at Harvard College. Clearly, then, only an A+ would signal somewhat exceptional achievement. The elite schools are all "A" schools now except in math and the hard sciences. After all, you pay lots of money for these distinctions.
However, I do understand the challenge of grading six or seven very smart, avid kids in a Chaucer seminar, each one of whom contributes interestingly and each one of whom memorizes verses in Old English and writes a fine, inventive, well-structured, and perfectly-grammatical essay on some aspect of the Canterbury Tales or The House of Fame.
Of course, any demanding prep school would expect the same.
All of us involved in agriculture will soon have to decide whether we want to occupy the nostalgic niche providing artisanal beets and heritage pork to Cowen’s 10 percent, or whether we’ll roll the dice on surviving the transition to a data-driven agriculture. Farming will be more efficient, more environmentally responsible, and easier to regulate and measure. But it won’t be the same.
Why the circular firing squad from conservatives, and why now?
Cumulatively, recent developments surrounding the rollout of Obamacare strengthen the most damaging conservative portrayals of liberalism and of big government – that on one hand government is too much a part of our lives, too invasive, too big, too scary, too regulatory, too in your face, and on the other hand it is incompetent, bureaucratic and expropriatory.
Bostonians still tell the story of the respectable society matron who was crossing the Common one day and ran into an old college chum she hadn’t seen for years. The matron was dismayed to see that her friend was obviously engaged in the world’s oldest profession. “My dear,” she said, “whatever has happened to you?” “Well,” said her friend, “it was either this or dip into capital.”
You can use any sort of fresh mushroom you want, but use shallots, not onions. This recipe is about right but it can take 1/2 hr on the stovetop to get the water out of the mushrooms, and to get the reduced flavor back into them. Constant stirring.
What are they good for?
- Stuff a boned quail from D'Artagnan with it, then the quail jus or gibier on top. - Put in a puff pastry for a treat. - Add some grated gorgonzola and stick them in wontons for a very fine ravioli. Cream sauce on top. Would work as darn good potstickers too. - Put in little tarts - use for crostini - and it's the stuff in Beef Wellington
Perhaps nowhere is that degradation of the general education curriculum more evident than at the flagship public university in North Carolina – the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill – where students can cherry pick their general education classes from a list of 4,700 courses that run the gamut from “Love, Sex and Marriage in the Soviet Culture” to “The Gardens, Shrines and Temples of Japan.”
It’s a university at which the course “World Society: Sports and Competition” fulfills the same general education requirement as the class called “Comparative Economic Systems.”
The
The government thinks they know how to practice medicine better than we docs in the trenches do. They have no clue.
Keith Richards describes 
Even by North Korean standards, this 
You can use any sort of fresh mushroom you want, but use shallots, not onions. This