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 good talk, and a good Q&A, to listen to while straightening out your home in prep for holiday festivities. No, he does not embarass any lefties. He is never harsh, just factual.
We had a sub for my Friday morning 60-minute calis/physical conditioning class this morning. The sub was a beautiful blonde Amazon with a martinet's style, an ex-Crossfitter whose classes I had flunked a year or two ago after several tries. I noticed that about a third of the Friday morning regulars were absent. I think they noticed online that this particular gal was subbing, and declined because intimidated. I was tempted to wimp out but I hate to act like a wimp.
When I wimp out on things, act lazy, or make excuses for myself, I despise myself. Self-hatred sucks, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. Never entirely. As my sis always says about most things in life, ignore your feelings, "Girl Up" (or Man Up as the case may be) and "Do it." She is in the mental health field, so she knows that a lazy or fearful life is no life at all. Most of all, she has contempt for excuses so she is a good role model. She has given me shit many times. Almost drowned in a mile lake swim race on Cape Cod that she bullied me into. Sheesh. I had not swum a mile race in 30 years, maybe. A mile in a pool, sure, but not a mile race with waves. Yankee gals expect a lot of the men in their lives because they demand so much from themselves.
Squats, lunges, mountain-climbers, crunches, dumbell deads, jumping jacks, dumbell snatches, supermans, curtsy lunges - all of those sorts of things. I survived. It was a cool class with an interesting structure: two exercises with 25-50 reps each, then 10 pushups, then on to a different two exercises, then ten pushups, etc. Fast-paced and varied. No rest time. Fun, if you like to move. I doubt that I completed all 1000, but I did my best within the time allowed. Yes, I am no longer age 30 either.
As I have said before, one or two conditioning classes/wk have a place in a 6 or 7 day/wk fitness program. After an hour of rest and coffee, you feel amazingly well mentally and physically even if you began just after crawling out of bed with a foggy head at 5:00 am.
"Go-Go-Hi-Ho" was the life motto of an elderly hunting pal of mine. Taught me that life can be rich, adventurous, and exciting at 80. Appreciated Viagra when it came out as he confided to me on a Maine hunting trip. Determined to leave no meat left on the barbecued rib of life. I will want to be like him. He was still working, too, and fully-engaged with his church, his clubs, and his charities.
In the fitness post yesterday, we mentioned getting up from a chair. Indeed, for a variety of reasons (arthritis, poor posture, overweight, lack of strength or mobility) this can become difficult for some.
Another common, basic maneuver which can become difficult without fitness is getting up from the floor without assistance. If you need to sit on the floor to do a task, or to read a book to a grandkid, you do not want to get up like a cripple.
The basic powerlifts are Deadlift, Overhead Press, Barbell Squat, Bench Press, Rows of all sorts - and maybe accessory things like curls and tricep push-downs. Maybe Pull-ups should be on the list but I consider pull-ups and push-ups to be technically calisthenics because they are body-weight.
Of course, your body weight is plenty of weight...
You rise from a chair maybe 100 times daily, but how often do you do it with 150 lbs on your back? Never. But if you do it with 100 lbs on your back now, odds are that getting out of a chair at age 85 won't be a chore. Powerlifting is not Body-Building.
There are plenty of heavy accessory lifts with which to fill an hour, but the powerlifts are the core for strength conditioning.
So the powerlifts are not functional so much in themselves as they are designed for total body power, and muscle and bone strength. Total body strength feeds indirectly into everything you do in life except, perhaps, endurance activities. Your fitness for mostly everything, energy level, general appearance, and posture. Men and women of all ages include powerlifts in their workout programs.
We had a major migrant wave last night. Most songbirds migrate at night. This morning, flocks of cheeping and chipping White Throated Sparrows and Juncos all over the HQ.
Today in a meeting, which for the sake of clarity is 50% male and 95% white in its make up, someone mentioned a trade article. The article stipulated that "watching XYZ practice occur among companies is like watching a middle-aged white man try to dance." Obviously, the idea is that middle-aged white men can't dance, it's awkward, and funny to see them try. These companies clearly are not doing something well, I get it. That's not an issue.
The issue became the humor of the statement, as our leader stood up and pretended to do a 'dad dance' and soon everyone (except me) was howling. The jokes about middle-aged white men dancing flew for about 2-3 minutes. I've got a sense of humor, so I wasn't offended, and I even think the joke was on the mark. But I started thinking what if the joke had been "like watching an obese woman climb the stairs"? Add in any racial qualifier just to salt it a bit. What might have happened? Would someone have been fired or, at the very least, brought into HR for a stern talking-to and some sensitivity training? Absolutely.
The other night, Hillary Clinton stated that Political Correctness is about "politeness". Boy, that's pretty telling. As far as I can tell, PC behavior is about not having a sense of humor about yourself and your background. It's about taking yourself too seriously. What was even more amazing, to me, was that she followed that up with a joke about Eric Holder and Cory Booker being black and "they all look the same." Well, she's a female, a Democrat, and wife of the first 'black' president (remember that gem?). So she gets a pass. She's fundamentally diverse and I, as a middle-aged white male, most certainly have no diversity in me.
Diversity is not a goal. Diversity is barely a thing. If it's something you want, great. Diversity is important. Maybe it isn't. That's up to you, it's up to the companies that want to pretend it's something more than virtue signaling. But if it is real, then the behavior I saw today has to stop. Nobody has a claim on the right to champion 'diversity' if they think this kind of thing is 'funny' but changing the gender or race makes it 'not funny'.
That's my Sugar Maple today, with dumpster and porta-potty. The dumpsters keep getting smaller, which is a good sign that we are getting to the end of fix-up.
It demonstrates just how racialized liberal thinking—liberal in the American sense, not in the classical, Adam Smith sense—has remained in America. Once you start down the road of equality of outcome as the measure of justice, rather than equality under the law, you inevitably start dividing humans into groups, and one of the most obvious ways to do so is race. So, having spent years denying that there is any objective reality to racial classifications, liberals start sifting people into racial categories with an obsessiveness that puts South African policemen under the old regime to shame. Race, among other classifications, becomes a lens through which the whole of social life is examined. In short, there is no racist as fanatical as an anti-racist.
"A TV interviewer recently asked Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, ‘What existed before the universe began?’ and was snubbed. ‘That’s a meaningless question.’ Oh no, it isn’t..."
' I’ll Never Be the Same’: 
Chocolate:
Many devils: 
The basic powerlifts are Deadlift, Overhead Press, Barbell Squat, Bench Press, Rows of all sorts - and maybe accessory things like curls and tricep push-downs. Maybe Pull-ups should be on the list but I consider pull-ups and push-ups to be technically calisthenics because they are body-weight.
We had a major migrant wave last night. Most songbirds migrate at night. This morning, flocks of cheeping and chipping White Throated Sparrows and Juncos all over the HQ.
That's my Sugar Maple today, with dumpster and porta-potty. The dumpsters keep getting smaller, which is a good sign that we are getting to the end of fix-up.