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.
Renovating the entire Maggie's HQ tech system. Takes time and money, but should be good. Thorough IT update. The expert is a wizard but even wizards have limits.
We should be back to speed tomorrow, God willing and with the tech god's expertise.
...and are seeking academic success or just mental challenges, there are many resources available for kids who want to advance at their own levels. Kids in "bad schools" can learn all they want, thanks to the internet.
Online classrooms have not proven to be very useful. Probably better than nothing, but barely, but Khan has it figured out for motivated kids.
Many people love the freedom of gig jobs. Not just Uber drivers working when they have free time, but also writers, catering staff, bartenders, dog-walkers, retired people wanting to be useful, and a hundred other things.
Government doesn't get it. Lots of people, maybe not most, prefer to work on their own, on their own time. Less security, more freedom. That's an American tradition.
NYC has used tests, some at 5 years old, to determine who is admitted to the city's public accelerated schools. 5 years old seems a bit young to me for that, but the general idea was the same that drove the creation of the SAT: to prevent discrimination other than about intellectual potential.
I was a bright kid without any particular talents, no genius and not entirely dedicated to school. I grew up in an entirely non-diverse neighborhood and town. Lily-white. Every boy wanted to be an Eagle Scout.
The notion of racial disparity did not exist, but there were clear distinctions between the smart kids and the slow kids, the athletically talented kids and the not, etc. I doubt I would have been admitted to a public NYC accelerated school, but I was forced to learn discipline when I went to a private high school with high demands and expectations.
I think what is going on in NY is about skin tone and ethnicity.
Photo via our internet friend Muffy. I sort-of wish I had a New England home like that, but I am a happy American nevertheless, with our lilacs in sweet bloom.
The bird he refers to is the Catbird. Yesterday morning before church I heard a Rose-Breasted Grosbeak calling, and looked around, Nope. It was a Catbird. Mimic thrush. Fooled me.
Said Joshua Slocum about the Spray. Spray was an abandoned and partly rotten Chesapeake oysterman, abandoned on the beach in Fairhaven, MA.
Apparently she was an unusually well-balanced boat. You could lash her tiller and she would stay on course all night. He rarely needed to man the helm, which made solo sailing possible. Autopilot.
It is theorized that she (and he) were sunk by a collision with a steamer.
If perfect safety were somebody's goal, they should never ride in a car. Everything in life, including "quarantining," is a risk.
If this exacerbation of preexisting vaccine hesitancy persists, the costs will be irreversible. Contracting Covid-19 poses a much greater risk of death than the J&J vaccine. Moreover, people who don’t receive the J&J vaccine face a far greater risk of all blood clots, including CVST, by contracting Covid-19 than they do from taking the J&J vaccine. Since early in the pandemic, we’ve known that people with Covid-19, especially those who are severely ill, have an increased risk of blood clots, leading clinicians to administer prophylactic anticoagulation. University of Oxford researchers found that the likelihood of CVST in the two weeks after being diagnosed with Covid-19 was 100 times the risk in the general population without the disease and about eight times the incidence following the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, which, like the J&J vaccine, employs an adenovirus platform. There was also an increased incidence of other potentially fatal blood clots in the abdomen after Covid-19 diagnosis...
15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.
15:10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.
15:11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.
15:14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15:15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
15:16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.
15:17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
On our two trips to Sicily we saw very little pasta, except al vongole. Which was delicious, of course. We never hung around Palermo but only because of our scheduling. We missed the cathedral bcause it was closed to visitors on Sundays.
Are Sicilian women beautiful? Like the food, a mix of Arab, Spanish, French, and Greek. Some Italian too.
Brits love Sicily.
Last time, we landed in Palermo and drove around the entire coast, and up into the mountains too. Ended leaving from our lemon farm B&B to the airport in Catania at 3 AM, arrived with the sun rising over Etna. Just an amazing place.
Recently, the term "Man of Kent" was mentioned to me. I supposed I could have responded with a limerick about his nose being terribly bent, and the fact nobody knows where he went. Of course, the limerick was about a young woman from Kent, and the term did specify Man of Kent. This term may not seem much to us here in the U.S. On the other hand, there can be an interesting delineation of culture if, in fact, you are from Kent.
After all, the difference between a Kentish Man (or Maid) and a Man (or Maid) of Kent may (or may not) be significant. It all depends on how you look at it, and whether or not you care much about the term itself. I suppose it's not unlike people being from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. Both are from Pennsylvania, and if that's how you're looking at things, that's fine enough. On the other hand, don't think a denizen of Philly is going to relate easily to one from the Steel City. Even setting aside the rivalries in hockey and baseball (football not being played commonly enough between the cities to be of great importance), Philadelphia has a proud history. It is a birthplace of the Revolution, the Constitution, and was the nation's capital city for a brief period. This is countered by the economic power and free-spirited nature of western PA. After all, divisions from the Whiskey Rebellion still defines socio-political culture, and our transportation systems and urban landscape owe a great debt to the steel plants.
But this is about Kent, and the nature of what it means to be a Man (or Maid) of Kent.
Consider Bellevue, Washington, home to Cherry Crest Elementary School. The school website indicates that students “will have explicit conversations about race, equity, and access” and “will identify culture and begin to recognize and identify white culture through storytelling, sharing, and conversation.” The school promises to hold monthly assemblies that focus on culture, identity, and race, and has created a group called SOAR (Students Organized Against Racism) for fourth- and fifth-graders. These children, who range from ages nine to 11, are tasked with “implementing learning and stratimplementation of school-wide learning and strategies for being anti-racist.” Left unclear is whether these students have been made aware that modern antiracism requires discrimination on the basis of race.
Or take Lexington, Massachusetts, where, in October 2019, fourth-graders were taught to “articulate what gender identity is and why it’s important to use nonbinary language in describing people we don’t know yet.” According to photos shared on Twitter by the district’s Director of Equity and Student Supports, students learned about “gender identity,” “gender expression,” “sexual orientation,” and “sex assigned at birth” by examining sticky notes on a “Gender Snowperson” who was drawn in magic marker on a large sheet of paper. The students were also taught that their pronouns had been “assigned at birth.”
Near the top of Loveland. The ridge is the Continental Divide, some 12,000 feet. There are 2 ways to get from the east side to the west side: Route 6, Loveland Pass, a steep and winding road that truckers must use if hauling hazardous stuff, or the Eisenhower Tunnel, which goes through the mountain I am standing on.
Stay for lunch. It'd just be a bite, she said. Scraps, mainly. The manservant with the striped jacket came and went. He brought meaty moist proscuitto crudo slices and a dark rucchetta salad. Rich Venetian oxtail stew with slices of fried polenta. I like it best like that, said Marta Marzotto, heaping our plates. Slices off a huge pink Mortadella. You must have some of this, said Marta. A present from Pavarotti. The mortadella looked not unlike its donor, minus beard and teeth. There was a subtle chicken and lemon casserole. The most beautiful gorgonzola I'd ever seen. Entire, hacked open and voluptuously spilling out its creamy blue guts. The countess offered wine from an unlabelled bottle. A fine fruity white wine that was drunk even less than the food was eaten. We ate with massive, weighty cutlery made for real hands, and drank from Marta's fantastical colored goblets of Murano glass. Then a gloriously substantial coffee semifreddo. Have some more, said the countess generously, shovelling semifreddo on to my plate. It's warming up.
That is an Italian luncheon. Until halfway through the book when I decided to google her, I had thought that Marta was fictional. Nope. She befriended the author. While married to Count Umberto Marzotto, she managed a long affair with Sicilian artist, movie-maker and famous Communist Renato Guttoso who figures prominently in the book. A close pal of Picasso. Colorful people, adding a lot of life to life. La dolce vita, so different from life in Yankeeland.
Jump rope is to cardio what deadlifts are to sturdiness. The coolest thing about jump rope are all of the variations you can learn. Never boring. It's not easy so it's a good physical challenge.
RX Smart Gear sent me this article about Jump Ropes - very informative. I put the article below the fold -
A psychologist says parents of ‘exceptionally resilient and successful’ kids 
Said 
Birthing Person's Day
Reintroduction ("forced introduction"?) 