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.
It's very easy to look ahead and expect the worst. We could enter 2016 with low expectations. There are plenty of negative trends going on in the world. When aren't there negative trends? I can't remember a single year where life was rosy, bright and promising without a hint of clouds. Some of the less encouraging new years I remember were 2000 (that nasty Y2K bug which did so much damage), 1980 (Iranian hostages and an election...the Winter Olympic Miracle on Ice was still to come), 1988 (after the market crash, people were very uptight) and 2009 (again a market crash, the mortgage meltdown and the election of a president bent on dividing the nation as he claimed to unify it). Even in these years, there were many positives which were overlooked. Needless to say, we passed through all those years without seeing everything fall to pieces.
Which isn't to say some things haven't gotten worse. If all we do is focus on what's worse, though, it is hard to see how life gotten better. Yet it has. Hans Rosling spends much time discussing this (and his videos are always worth posting again):
2016 won't be sweetness and light, the news lately has had plenty of negativity. ISIS and the growth of fascism driven by Islamic radicals, Bernie Sanders and socialist wonderland driven by his belief in mythological theories which have been discredited time and again, an overbought stock market fueled by easy money, a dollar that is the prettiest horse in the glue factory, a Fed which is raising rates because it has no choice after keeping them low too long. There's plenty of bad out there to worry about.
2016 could still be pretty good. We may worry the so-called recovery is likely to end badly, though I hesitate to say it will be in 2016. It could've, and should've, ended many times in the past 6 years. But since it isn't a real recovery, more of a muddling along, maybe there hasn't been anything to 'end'. Even though it's been a pale 'recovery', plenty of good events have occurred.
I know many native New Yorkers who talk like Trump. Not the WASPy East Siders with houses in Litchfield, but the real ones without pedigrees. Charismatic, entertaining, witty, fast-talking, pumped, brash, clever, commerce-oriented, not overly intellectual. I do not mean to say that he is a type, but people who know him find him warm, caring, highly-moral and of course, engaging and provocative.
If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral.
But if I curtail or lose my freedom, in order to lessen the shame of such inequality, and do not thereby materially increase the individual liberty of others, an absolute loss of liberty occurs. This may be compensated for by a gain in justice or in happiness or peace, but the loss remains, and it is a confusion of values to say that although my ‘liberal’ individual freedom may go by the board, some other kind of freedom—social or economic—is increased.
Beware the intellectual who seeks power over our decisions and over the persuasion to which we can respond, especially when he seeks this power to prevent us from doing what he thinks we should not desire to do.
“Fuck social mobility… Fuck money. Fuck rising above your class… Fuck marriage, mortgage, monogamy, and every other small, ugly ambition.” These, she says, are things “we should have abandoned.”
Miss
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Not all of us are disappointed, at least not in our own kids. I have my complaints about how they handle their day-to-day lives, and how they often refuse advice or choose to learn the hard way. Standard parenting stuff. Those are the same complaints my mother had. When it comes to the younger generation, if I voice a concern which I'm well aware my mom or dad could make, I recognize and account for it. Rap & Hip-Hop music, after all, can't compete with Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, or Dylan.
On the other hand, there is a reason to be disappointed when the issue revolves around responsibility and entitlement. Some claim this is a standard complaint from generation to generation. Perhaps it is, though I don't remember my parents consistently commenting about the work ethic or willingness of any of my friends to think and act responsibly. There were moments when singular behaviors led to stern conversations about smoking, or drinking and how 'kids aren't like they were'. Of course, I'd later hear my parents tell humorous stories of their own proclivities as adolescents and young adults. Some behaviors and complaints do travel across eras.
My parents taught me to work. They instilled an understanding that I'm responsible for myself, and my family, and I need to earn the income to fulfill that responsibility in a dutiful fashion. I began seeing a therapist recently to work through some job-related concerns I have. She keeps using the terms "thoughtful" and "caring" about stories I recount. I always make a face and say "it's an obligation." Maybe some of the things I do are thoughtful and caring. I prefer to think I'm living up to my obligations. Others can think what they want about my motivations. I don't consider an obligation a negative. Like all things in life, there is a price. Obligations are prices with positive feedback loops. Live up to them, and you're trustworthy and should earn a level of respect.
This is my final photo travelogue post from our sailing trip in November.
We rented a car at the port of San Sebastian on La Gomera and headed up into the mountains. Mrs. BD wanted to hike in the Garajonay National Park which we did for a while, but most of the trails would have taken more hours than we wanted. Lots of backpackers there with tents and sleeping gear.
About twenty years ago I was in the company of right-thinking people (that is to say, people who thought differently from me), among whom was an eminent human rights lawyer of impeccably internationalist outlook. She was speaking with characteristic self-righteousness about a case in which someone’s newly discovered human rights had been infringed. It was shortly after the Rwandan genocide had taken place and, fed up by her moral complacency, I accused her of racism. How could she concern herself with this case, I demanded to know, when half a million people or more had just been slaughtered and the perpetrators were unpunished (as at that time they still were)? Was it because she was racist and did not consider that all those lost lives were important because they were black?
It is always a fun topic. I view myself as middlebrow in taste and capacity for appreciation but with aspirations to fuller and deeper appreciation of the finer things.
There are 1000 things I'd rather do than to go to a NASCAR event. Call me a snob, but it is of no interest to me although I love to drive fast and have a string of tickets and an auto insurance bill to prove it. Bread and circuses for the people? Well, I want everybody to have whatever sort of fun they choose.
The death of High Culture has been announced forever, but I don't even know what it is. Is Picasso high culture? Is Puccini high culture? (Definitely not - too much fun). Is Bob Dylan lowbrow folk-rock? Is The Messiah pop schlock? (Many feel it is, but I love it). Joseph Epstein: Whatever Happened to High Culture? An inquest
In the end, I think that such distinctions are about how generally accessible creative endeavors are, and how much instruction and thought might be useful to engage with them. Reverence towards such things is silly though, I feel. The Mona Lisa? Give me a break but OK, he was an all-round genius and genius is rare and wonderful.
Refined tastes? I can get on board with that, to a degree. There are many things in mass culture and pop culture that offend my delicate sensibilities and which seem vulgar to me, but I let it go. To each, his own. Live and let live.
For my doctors, lawyers, colleagues, and other remote pals: Holiday Cheesecakes. Would send one to our Webmeister but do not have his new address. It's old-fashioned, but who does not love getting festive food treats in the mail?
For garbage guy, $50. For mailman, $50. Gotta thank those guys personally for their work. Sure, they get paid, but I mean personally.
Then comes my list of charities which I will not list other than a plug for Salvation Army. This year, I am giving to FIRE instead of to my schools. Much better educational use of my hard-earned dollars now and in the future. All of my alma maters have gone to the dark side, and they do not need my money anyway. They have billions in the bank.
Christmas is about many things, but a big part of it is indulging yourself. I’m all for that. Be crass. Be an ugly American. Laugh with your mouth full. The men who built this country didn’t do it so we could feel bad about ourselves. They did it so we could all prosper. I’m done feeling bad about being the best. We rule, literally. You’re welcome.
It is easy for us Yankees to forget that New York was already a substantial, rowdy town when those Pilgrims accidentally landed in cold, damp, and God-forsaken Cape Cod in November. Of course, the Catholic Spanish were in America first. The Brits chased out the Spanish and the Dutch, and then we Brits chased out the French, and then Britain itself for foolish reasons, but it worked out pretty well anyway despite our having, over time, created a far more oppressive and burdensome State than Britain could have dreamed of. A commercial powerhouse, however.
Christmas is a traditional feast day (but it was not for true puritan folk like Dutch Reform or Congregationalists, who did not historically care for Christmas), so you are expected to cook something tasty. We have done all of the things: turkey (again), goose, roast beef, crown roast of pork with apple stuffing (real good).
On the other hand, the southern Italians do a cool thing - they do the Christmas Eve fish dinner - because it is a vigilia di magro (fasting, Italian-style).That is darn good. Fried baccala, fried calamari, scungilli, clams, mussels, maybe lobster etc etc. I love the baccala, and those little fried minnows bagiggi - smelt - with lemon that you eat whole like french fries, and clams (if they aren't cooked), but hate those cold seafood salads - dolphin food. In Sicily, the tradition is seven fishes. Serious abstinence: cook a leg of lamb, and you burn in hell for eternity.
But back to Yankee Christmas dinner, and goose.
As regular readers know, we cook our Canada geese with the breast only, marinated and sauteed rare. We confit the legs and thighs.
Store-bought goose tends much smaller (maybe in Dickens' time they had bigger farm geese - if you can find a giant Christmas goose as big as Tiny Tim, great), and has lots more fat on it. In fact, it seems about 50% fat, which oozes out during cooking and fills the pan below. If you want to cook that traditional English bird, you need a few of them. I would say, one per 3-4 people, minimum, if you are using the supermarket birds. (Some might disagree with this.) One bird will not do it, as a turkey does, because once the fat melts off, there isn't much left except bones. The plus side of all of the fat is that they are self-basting.
This is a good approach. Overcooking a goose, at low heat, is not a bad idea. For a roast goose, you may really want the meat falling off the bone, unlike a nice rare breast of wild goose. Goose is, of course, a dark meat like duck (but more coarse in flavor, I think).
Make a tasty sauce out of the drippings, once you have removed the fat. Add a little red wine, maybe a handful of huckleberries or dried cranberries and a bit of sugar, and reduce/thicken.
What to serve with goose? Mainly braised and sauteed roots. Parsnip, carrot, potato, turnip. And how about a rutabaga puree? Or a celeriac (celery root) puree? Maybe a pile of braised, sauteed baby squash, too. Cranberry sauce? You bet.
Sippican: 
When Americans Are Inactive, 
There will only be 13 or 14 of us this year, so it's easy.
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Confessions
Christmas is a traditional feast day (but it was not for true puritan folk like Dutch Reform or Congregationalists, who did not historically care for Christmas), so you are expected to cook something tasty. We have done all of the things: turkey (again), goose, roast beef, crown roast of pork with apple stuffing (real good).