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.
20:19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
20:20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
20:21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
20:22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
20:23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
20:24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.
20:25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."
20:26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."
20:27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe."
20:28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"
20:29 Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
20:30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.
20:31 But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
The Sheffield, MA Congregational Church, built 1760, getting a new paint job. Photo taken Friday. I suspect, but do not know for sure, that the front piece was added later. That was not unusual with the churches of this era - sometimes they added columns in front and called it a "porch." I am not sure whether the steeple was 1760 - doubt it but need to check. It looks like the front projection and the steeple were added on at the same time. The Congregationalists were (are) not into fancy. For example, find me a Congo Church with A/C, and I will go there. Just kidding - will go anyway. Especially if they have quit the UCC.
However, steeples were considered too fancy, too Anglican, too Catholic, for the early church architects. They built "meeting houses," not "churches." Boxes with windows. The bell steeples which were added later on often became structural nightmares, as in my home church. They begin to tip, over time. Frivolous, in my opinion, but now considered "traditional." Funny how what is traditional changes over time - I do not need to be pointed to where God is, and he ain't up in the sky. But steeples are fine, dramatic things, all the same. Sky is a good metaphor.
Fun scene from Dylan's film Masked and Anonymous. I love the way Goodman refers to the "famous acts" at the end of this bit - and the sly comment to Gandhi.
Does Dylan remind of Charlie Chaplin? Goodman would make a good Falstaff.
I have this bird at my feeder in Southern New England. Why they are called "red-bellied" is beyond me because it sure is not a distinctive feature. They are fairly common up here. Wacka-wacka-wacka.
A common woodpecker over much of the South, the Red-bellied is scarcer farther north but has expanded its breeding range northward in recent decades. Like most woodpeckers, it is beneficial, consuming large numbers of wood-boring beetles as well as grasshoppers, ants, and other insect pests. It also feeds on acorns, beechnuts, and wild fruits. It is one of the woodpeckers that habitually stores food.
Breeds from South Dakota, Great Lakes, and southern New England south to the Gulf coast and Florida. Northernmost birds sometimes migrate south for winter. Inhabits open and swampy woodlands; comes into parks during migration and to feeders in winter.
The Red-bellied Woodpecker competes vigorously for nest holes with other woodpeckers, in one case even dragging a Red-cockaded Woodpecker from a nest cavity and killing it. But it is often evicted from nest holes by the European Starling. In some areas, half of all Red-bellied Woodpecker nesting cavities are taken over by starlings.
They do acknowledge the rather obvious fact that bears have legs and go to where the food is. They can swim for miles, too, and seem to like to do that.
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this one just a dozen to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas, then only ten more left like rows of beans. How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan and insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines, one for every station of the cross. But hang on here while we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
Still no links found. No links found for diet and heart disease, either.
Nutrition remains folklore, magic, superstition, and there is essentially no science in it except to avoid scurvy and Beriberi. Of course, being overweight predisposes to almost all medical ailments except starvation. If you do not want to be fat, quit those tasty carbs and try to satisfy yourself with something else like reading blogs, or sex, or doing unto others. If you want to be strong, exercise hard or do physical labor. Otherwise, quit with the magical thinking and accept that death will arrive (unbidden usually) no matter what you do.
People hate to accept that reality because it feels powerless. Well, people don't dine on sacred offerings to gods anymore, and food is no longer magic medicine.
Vegetables and fruit? I do not particularly enjoy them so I am always pleased that they supposedly don't matter. For me, vegetables are just an excuse to eat the olive oil or butter. About fruit, when I get the impulse, I will occasionally eat a whole lemon or a whole lime, skin and all. Oranges are too sweet for me. Otherwise, fruit is good only for cheese. Pears, especially.
Somebody recently told me that they refused to donate to the American Heart Assoc. because she preferred to go by heart attack rather than by cancer. Well, those are the two main choices on life's menu these days, with the eradication of many infectious diseases. Carpe diem, and pursue what your soul needs before it's too late.
I am grateful that my needs are simple other than Jimmy Choos, that my life is rich and complete, and that food is not very important to me other than Shad Roe and caviar.
Interview with the smart columnist David Harsanyi, a good American rebel.
He's entirely right: the US is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. He's is also right that democracy needs to be close to home or it loses its valence.
*Music
at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert* - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/04/music-at-midnight-the-life-and-poetry-of-george-herbert.html#sthash.jpFJhS6D.dpuf
Sippican gets sentimental: It's Cold Again, And That's That. The video is...what? What word for that? Males hate to show sentimentality and tears, so we tend to mask it in irony or with whatever is at hand, but that video is moving as heck.
Sipp's post reminded me of Bob's amazing tune about his life:
Souvlaki, the way the Greeks make it. Greeks eat a lot of this stuff - it's the Greek hot dog or hamburger, like Gyros.
Marinate your pork cubes or slices, preferably overnight. You can add some bell pepper chunks for the skewers. Cook on charcoal grill with salt and pepper. (Sometimes people use lamb, chicken, or swordfish instead of pork.)
Serve on Pita roll or in a pita pocket with a little chopped lettuce, chopped tomato, chopped raw red onion if you want and even pickled hot peppers, and all topped with generous globs of Tzatziki Sauce.
(While on the topic of Tzatziki, I should mention that I believe it to be the best sauce that exists for poached fish, especially poached salmon. Baked salmon, too.)
Taco, gyro, burger, pizza, falafel, sushi, noodle soup, pho, bigalla, poutine, jerk chicken, covrigi, satay - all fast food and street food is good stuff around the world. Cheap and delicious.
It's Spring up here, so I'm gonna get me one, in black. Be the first guy on your block to have one. Those Brooks Brother's dead sheep logos are so dorky, and the Ralph Lauren polo player is just plain gay, and nobody wants to be gay unless they are. A seahorse is cool, like Neptune.
Apparently, the Chinese people who travel to Malaysia are doing so in reduced numbers due to the loss of Malaysian Air Flight 370. When I heard this I thought, "Well, nobody said people are rational."
My initial thinking was that air flight is still safe, so if the issue is safety, that's odd. My wife replied, "It's perfectly rational. They think the Malaysian government has mishandled this and they're punishing the government by not traveling."
At first, I thought this was a good reply, but then I thought again. It's still irrational. For two reasons.
The first is a soft reason. 'Punishing' a government is something we all need to do. Governments very rarely do anything right or useful. One could argue the corruption and mismanagement in China is so pervasive, it would do the Chinese tourists well to fix their own government first. I don't know what they are doing, but given the state of affairs there, one could reasonably argue 'not much'. The same is true here, in the U.S., for us. It's a reasonable point, but it doesn't fully make a strong case for how irrational the Malaysian tourism behavior is.
The second reason is that the tourism isn't really hurting the government. Boycotts real people and businesses and rarely send a message to governments. People and businesses who had nothing to do with the missing plane or the mismanagement of the search are impacted. These people rely on tourists, particularly wealthy Chinese, to maintain themselves and their businesses. While it's true this impacts the Malaysian government in terms of taxes, and it could lead to a reversal for the ruling party in the next election. This may impact the current politicians, but is unlikely to yield any meaningful reform. Most importantly, along these lines, it's not expected to be long-lasting. For any meaningful impact, behavior like this would have to be consistent over time.
In the past, I've been guilty of thinking along similar lines when a foreign government didn't do something I thought was right. Over time, I've learned, assuming the government is the people is the wrong attitude. The two are frequently very different things. Chinese tourists may feel better about themselves by not traveling to Malaysia, but it's odd to think they are having any kind of impact, except on the business owners who rely on the stream of visitors they usually get.
I submit that many Americans — regardless of race — are increasingly exhausted by what Chief Justice Roberts declared in 2006 was this “sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
Yikes! A friend of mine forwarded me this video. Not sure if it was a competition, but it seems to be given the spectators and the stunts. This not the kind of mountain biking I do, but I am impressed at the skill and guts. Can you smell the fear? Oh, that's me...
My friend Debbie Cabaniss et al got around to writing this book before I got around to it: Psychodynamic Formulation.
I have written about Psychiatric diagnosis often here, and I re-post my pieces each year. It is a complicated topic, because Psychiatric complaints originate from all sorts of sources and usually multiple sources, and an exhaustive psychodynamic formulation is not always relevant to minor life problems.
When it is relevant, a serious formulation is a difficult thing to do unless one just casually links history to current complaints. That's not a real formulation.
The current fad in Psychiatry is the DSM, which a robot could do. In many situations a DSM "diagnosis" is nothing more than a list of complaints useful only for an insurance claim and has nothing to do with understanding an individual person.
We probably all remember Obama's "You didn't build that" speech. Which, of course, was really lifted from Elizabeth Warren's "You didn't build that" speech, itself lifted from yet someone else whose views helped frame the Occupy Movement.
Dr. Bliss queried about challenging and difficult things which can be intrinsically rewarding despite their effort, complexity, difficulty.
Making music has to be the highest of all hobbies, and understanding music perhaps comes second, but fly-fishing is one of the more humble but still somewhat complex things as are most absorbing hobbies, like woodworking to photography to baseball. Anybody is blessed to have one or two hobbies.
In the US, it's not the 0.01% of movie stars, rock stars, sports stars, hedgie stars, and NYC heiresses. It's the other end - single parents. Anyway, Piketty is Frenchand thus not worth thinking about.
...common to all these cases is the notion of a technocracy of better-educated elites who know what is best for their social inferiors. They just know that gas-burning yokels have to be taught to forgo natural gas. For the right people to be in places to affirm affirmative action, then hoi polloi must accept that affirmative-action allowances be made to give them power. They know that tea-party zealots have to be taught that their politics are bad for America’s trajectory and that tax laws must make accommodations for that fact. Women must somehow be persuaded that liberal abortion laws are good for both them and the collective.
Once we go down that road of assumed noble ends justifying questionable means, then anything becomes not just possible but assured.
Still 
Souvlaki, the way the Greeks make it. Greeks eat a lot of this stuff - it's the Greek hot dog or hamburger, like Gyros.
The US geography 
