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 fine old New York carnivore's delight, on W. 36th St. since 1885. Actually, it was a club before that, back when Herald Square was NYC's theater district.
Keen's is famous for their mutton chops (photo). How do you like your mutton done? (don't say "Dressed as lamb").
I'm getting hungry. Need to get back there soon. Remember when manly pubs were termed "watering holes" and hearty meat-eaters were termed "trenchermen"? The good old days, before wimpy metrosexual scaredy-cat men, and before we had a President who eats arugula. (Confession: I like arugula, and dandelion greens too, but I could happily live the rest of my life without salad or vegetables.)
Everybody in the NY metropolitan area has his own favorite steakhouse, and NYC has tons of them. It's a guy thing. Wives prefer their favorite Italian or French bistros, and those are fine with me too.
Well, we all hate Chicago Transit Authority, don't we? When did it become OK for wedding bands to get real, live, rock band careers? Who signed off on that? I know I wasn't consulted. Maybe it's not Chicago's fault. Maybe they thought they were just going to play the Bernstein wedding at another Mediterranean-themed stripmall function room; four hours, twenty minute breaks each hour; chicken and shells for dinner. Perhaps their agent bollixed it up and sent them to a recording studio instead. Back before GPS, it could happen. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Besides, Blood Sweat and Tears was much, much worse, and sooner.
I sort this sort of thing out the old-fashioned way: If suspicious, I punch them, hard, on the nose without warning. If they cry, they're usually innocent.
He was handed the greatest cash cow in the history of the world and tried to ride it in the derby. Should go on the Rushmore of incompetence,
despite the money he's made.
it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street I used to get drunk and throw the radio through the window while it was playing, and, of course, it would break the glass in the window and the radio would sit there on the roof still playing and I'd tell my woman, "Ah, what a marvelous radio!" the next morning I'd take the window off the hinges and carry it down the street to the glass man who would put in another pane. I kept throwing that radio through the window each time I got drunk and it would sit there on the roof still playing- a magic radio a radio with guts, and each morning I'd take the window back to the glass man. I don't remember how it ended exactly though I do remember we finally moved out. there was a woman downstairs who worked in the garden in her bathing suit, she really dug with that trowel and she put her behind up in the air and I used to sit in the window and watch the sun shine all over that thing while the music played.
I have a buddy who will not eat roast chicken, or any poultry, without homemade Cranberry sauce on the side.
I understand that. I love roast chicken, but it needs some zip. Readers know that I freeze many bags of fresh cranberries in my freezer every fall.
My Dad, who loved to travel around Scandinavia, was a Lingonberry fan. When we cleaned out his house, we found his stash of around ten jars of Ikea Lingonberry preserves. They are as good as cranberry, tart and lively.
This seems to have been culturally normative, at least for their class, and accepted by all. Did they need moral leadership?
Every person has such impulses of course, but it has often seemed to me that the wealthy and powerful often come to believe that the rules apply to the little people. That is true in America today.
Mrs. BD says that, in the women's prayer and study groups she is involved with, her most useful inspirations lately come from C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce.
A number of the women in these groups are "searchers," "questioners," etc., and not committed or reborn Christians, but they are bright and curious. It's a good mix of people, it sounds like.
The book seems to focus on the emotional, intellectual, and psychological obstacles and resistances to faith, presented in allegorical form. It's the only CS Lewis that I have not read. It's said to be sort-of a pop version of The Divine Comedy.
What are the obstacles to accepting the offer of a life "in the Kingdom"? One view would be that it is addiction to self, or addiction to the material world, or similar attachments to intellectual vanity and other things - all supported by various rationalizations. The point, if I understand Mrs. BD's exposition, is that the offer of life in abundance in the Kingdom is now, but, just like afterlife (which I am dubious about), you have to leave some baggage behind to get there. It's a free choice to live in the darkness or in the light.
We're getting into wedding season. Wedding season brings up the topic of engagement rings, which brings up the topic of manipulated prices - stocks, gold, diamonds, oil, etc.
"Poor people get fat, and watch TV" because they are too passive: The Myth of Poverty:
When we think of true poverty, the famous picture of the migrant mother in the Dust Bowl comes to mind, but today’s poor look more like Honey Boo Boo’s mom. They live in big houses or subsidized apartments. They play video games. They watch TV on a massive screen and they stuff their faces.
What do these people do in exchange, to justify their existence and to pay back to a generous society which helps support them and, often, their kids? Or does the entitlement state erase a sense of obligation, duty, and gratitude to tribe, community, and nation?
The free-loaders are what bother me. I have known plenty of people who are poor by life-style choice, but they are not seeking freebies from their neighbors via government programs and they are neither fat nor lazy. You know some such people too, I'm sure. What do they do?
I'll start with a few people I have known in that latter category: Maine Guides, ski instructors, organic farmers with small plots, tennis bums, aspiring artists, actors, writers, and dancers, pastors with tiny congregations, grad students, Catholic priests, nuns and monks, older people with minimal savings who would rather try to live on Social Security than to keep working at something - and I could go on. Many do not choose to make accumulating money their life priority although few people would refuse a windfall.
Your examples of such people are welcome in the comments.
“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
Wiki says that Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu. I happen to be one of those who does not like The Prophet very much.
When Bird Dog told me he needed a rest, and was heading out to "take the waters," I pictured him going to one of those fancy hotels with lots of ceramic tile on the walls, within sight of the Danube, where all the women speak with a heavy Bavarian accent and they smear you with the local mud. Silly me. Let's get these links out of the way so I can go post Bird Dog's bail. Apparently, to him, "taking the waters" means shoplifting a couple of bottles of Poland Spring and some beef jerky in a convenience store on Staten Island.
Every friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro,1 you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under Mordor with a screwdriver."
They have a point. Mordor sucks, and it's certainly more physically taxing to dig a tunnel than poke at a keyboard unless you're an ant. But, for the sake of the argument, can we agree that stress and insanity are bad things? Awesome. Welcome to programming.
It's an enormous misappropriation of the word to call software designers "engineers." You're stressed because your stuff doesn't work, you're incompetent, and people notice it from time to time.
There you go. Read all that stuff. It won't make you any dumber, I promise. After I bail out Bird Dog, I'm going to ask him to chain me to an oar on the other side of Maggie's Farm's Trireme. My left bicep needs work.
Well, as Mrs. BD pointed out, it can be expensive to get that old-timey vigorous WASPy in-the-woods time these days in remote places. A condo on a beach with WiFi and TV, hotel menus, and Pina Coladas and lounge chairs around the pool would be less than half the price tag, but boring as heck. She believes that my Yankee-types, as a matter of taste, like either grand luxe or rustic roughing-it, and nothing in-between. Probably right. In addition, we do not like to sit on vacations. Go Go Hi Ho.
As she also pointed out, the price at Little Saint Simons is all-inclusive - all meals (no menu choices, of course - family-style), all of the naturalist adventures, all the boats and kayaks and bikes, all the booze and cocktail hours and oyster roasts and shrimp boils at the beach. And the entirely private 7-mile island, just for you. Chef is a grad of the CIA (Culinary Institute of America for those of you in Yorba Linda) but he does home cookin like his grandma.
So who was there (all with spouses)? A self-selecting elite bunch of folks. A recently-retired career Army Ranger from Colorado who discovered an interest in natural history. A retired Memphis cotton broker. A NYC doctor. A high school teacher couple from Salt Lake City. An 8th-grade Science teacher from Michigan. A famous nature artist from Massachusetts. An Ornithology prof from Georgia Southern (not a railroad - a university). A professor of something from Boston. A fund manager from Chicago. A jolly, congenial, and intelligent crew, and a tattoo-free zone for sure. Lots of laughs at mealtimes.
Despite the skeeters, they have a high repeat rate. I would recommend March-April-May or October for a place like this. Too hot and too many bugs in the summertime - for me, anyway.
Our temps last week were daytime highs around 76 and nights high 50s-low 60s. Constant sea breeze. Perfect.
I remarked to Mrs. BD that it must be a rare "resort" vacation spot indeed where, when one of the resident naturalists asks for a show of hands for the next morning's 7 AM birding in the marsh, almost everybody present raises their hands.
"Meet at the trucks at 7 on the dot."
More boring travelogue pics and nature details below the fold -
Music. I like to immerse in it, as fully as my feeble senses are able. I want to appreciate the author's efforts, intents, and talent, and to be enlivened by it.
With serious, ambitious music (as opposed to catchy pop music like Verdi opera, and ZZ Top), I am best with no distractions, lying down with eyes closed. My lack of a musical brain and of musical talent has been a lifelong disappointment to me.
My music education (to become a more discerning and considerate listener) was limited to my Dad, to a college music history and appreciation course, lots of listening, info via Mrs. BD who had the benefit of a wonderful music education - and to the music courses from The Teaching Co, now Great Courses.
Isn't it the same way with everything? Art, music, littacher, woodworking, auto mechanics, tree-felling, masonry, gardening, shooting, and race-car driving? It's all called "eddication," but the best of it is not formal. We pursue it because it adds to being alive, "enriches" life as they say.
When I was growing up, Dad liked to take us all to the opera. The preparation for it included reading the story and the history and context of the opera, listening to it through at least a time or two, and going over the libretto. German, Italian, French - we'd muddle through it with the original and the translations, and after a while we'd sort of get the gist of these languages - the rhythms of them, the sounds, the flow, some of the grammar and lots of the vocab. (With his five kids, he approached opera, Shakespeare and Sophocles the same way. He did not want us to miss out on the glories. Thanks, Dad and Mom, for the cultural heritage and for opening so many doors. You could call it Home Schooling.)
I am slowly getting to the point of this meandering post, which is about Dvorak's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96. aka "American Quartet." It's probably his most popular quartet piece, and it's a doozy. We heard it performed last month, and, despite my ADD, Restless Leg Syndrome, etc., I do my best to let myself sink into music as if into a pool of water. I did notice that the First Violin gal played the entire thing with her eyes closed, immersing herself physically and emotionally and letting the others follow her lead.
The Vivace is wonderful, but the whole thing is emotional.
My point is that I listened to it again on Youtube when I got home, and twice again in the early morning and a few more times since. Then I started to really get some idea and flow of the piece, and only now I am ready to hear it live again. I think I am now at the point where the serious listeners with good ears begin to hear this entertainment.
For people with shortcomings (now called " musical learning disabilities") like me, live concerts should just do one piece - three times. Then go out for supper. Give this three times if you are as musically-retarded as I am, and see what you think. It's a cool piece:
Bloom’s work is no mere exercise in horripilation. He provides a wonderful and hopeful corrective to the bottomless mendacity of the Left. Bloom explained that Marcuse was mistaken, dreadfully mistaken, because he had not understood another important German thinker, Max Weber. For Weber, like Nietzsche, had identified values to be key to any society. There must be a notion of right and wrong. Weber saw the rise of Capitalism, which filled Marx with such loathing, as the triumph of what he called the ‘protestant ethic.’ A particular group of Christians applying the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude (each of which has a significant emotional component) had changed the face of the earth. Marcuse simply thought Weber was condemning religion, in the same (wrong) way Marxists thought Nietzsche had. But Weber was making a very profound point. Weber was referring to the ascendancy of spirit over matter. Man creates his culture. In every important respect, men and women are free. This is nothing less than a huge, devastating rebuttal of Marxism. More complete than the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which we now see had been merely the fall of bricks and mortar.
Ethics are the key to the de-marxification and de-toxification of our society.
Between the Bundy mess, ACA, and a myriad of other issues currently presented to the American citizen, we may be faced with another situation of government overreach very soon.
Is it any surprise the idea emanates from a Democratic Party Think Tank? No, not really. Force and coercion are their stock in trade.
Compulsory voting is a very bad idea. While there is sometimes more than one choice on any ballot, I have definitely felt the need to abstain from voting simply because I didn't like the choices. Furthermore, not voting is a 'vote'. It is an expression of either complacency (I'll accept whatever everyone else wants) or disgust (I have no use for anyone on the ballot). When I abstain, it's always out of disgust.
The right to vote is akin to a right of free expression. In fact, it is free expression. Compulsory voting, as a result, is a violation of your right to free speech.
Chalk this up to the two parties (because while the Republicans would likely oppose it, if it passed they would support it just like they are beginning to give up on repealing the ACA) wanting to make false claims of 'popular support' where none exists, and further increase their choke hold on the voting public.
Bird Dog needs therapy, so you're stuck with me. I imagine he's
currently trying to convince some girl to rub him the wrong way in order
to relax his tense muscles. He should just read the papers. Everything
in there will rub you the wrong way.
As the
employees examined some of the equipment, the owner stood by and said
nothing. He was remembering how difficult it had once been to afford
those machines, even the basic ones. What the employees regarded as
standard, he saw as an achievement.
Lots of things shock the Times -- except shocking things, generally. CEOs get a piece of the action, and talking about it like it's wages is stupid. Me? I just like saying "Marissa Mayer's remuneration" over and over.
I posted on the important subject of the Chef's Knife a couple of months ago.
Pretty much all anybody really needs is a good paring knife, a good bread knife that won't mutilate bread, a Chef's Knife, and a meat carving knife.
It's time to post about meat-carving/slicing knives. We have a few of them around, old fancy bone-handled ones, newer supposedly-effective ones, etc., but I have never had a knife that could slice beef, steak, ham, turkey, or lamb as well as this one. It's like a butter knife through butter, as thin or thick as you want it to be.
The pros buy much more expensive ones, but this one is excellent. The 10" would have sufficed, but what the heck.
I understand now why chefs keep their knife collections in metal cases. They are fine tools.
A fine old New York carnivore's delight, on W. 36th St. since 1885. Actually, it was a club before that, back when Herald Square was NYC's theater district.
I have a buddy who will not eat roast chicken, or any poultry, without homemade Cranberry sauce on the side.
Mrs. BD says that, in the women's prayer and study groups she is involved with, her most useful inspirations lately come from C.S. Lewis' 
I posted on the important subject of the