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.
There is a thing called "complicated grief," but I feel all grief is complicated. I do not believe that grief ever heals.
I think griefs scab over, but it doesn't often take much to knock off the scab. A long-term incapacitating depression after a loss is another matter, but I do not even think that a lengthy mourning is pathological. There is a lot of pain in life. It's part of the deal.
While attempting to return my refreshed work space to some simulacrum of order (with books back on shelves, minus 1000 of them) and somewhat different pictures on the walls to lighten things up, I came across a book I read about ten years ago and want to re-read. I read lots of books, but never remember enough of what I read. Not demented yet, but it reminds me of the joke about Alzheimer's patients being able to hide their own Easter eggs.
Right now, I am going through the Patrick O'Brian naval series. Delicious reading and you learn a bit about running a serious sailing warship.
Guys never listen to anybody, but we have some amateur decorators around here who have all sorts of ideas about how to make my work space and living space brighter, less cluttered, and lighter. I am going along with it, because I know nothing. My current plan for the entire HQ in general is to get rid of stuff and lighten everything.
One of my daughters is ordering a Task Rabbit for me. They are known to be miraculous helpers for moving stuff around and throwing stuff out. One just has to be brave and get rid of stuff, however sentimental. And we have had dumpsters here since July. Dumpsters' gaping maws beg to be filled with stuff.
42:2 "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
42:3 'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
42:4 'Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.'
42:5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;
42:6 therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
42:10 And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.
42:11 Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring.
42:12 The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys.
42:13 He also had seven sons and three daughters.
42:14 He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch.
42:15 In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers.
42:16 After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations.
Bowl of lentils. Bread and circuses. Lots of people want freebies and "services" more than freedom. I will admit that freedom is scary, not for the faint of heart. I still think of freedom from government as an American virtue. Old-fashioned, maybe. Do people now expect government to make reality right? That will never happen, because the structure of reality is extremely difficult. Reality seems to expect us to adapt to it, rather than the other way around.
The bumper sticker on many Ford 150s: "Reality Sucks."
I spent the summer of 1982 with a group of 7 other people, one who was my brother, the rest were his high school and college friends. We had a 36 year get together not too long ago, and 2 of them had become lawyers. As the weekend wound down, we were entertained as the two of them talked 'shop' and one asked the other a question - "Does your firm have a diversity officer?" The reply, not surprisingly, was "Yes." Thereupon they launched into a Q & A regarding "What exactly does a diversity officer do?" The answer from both was "I don't really know."
I work at a major corporation and we have a diversity officer. I'm not sure what that position does, besides pay well and provide a public face at industry events which address diversity. The reality is the position isn't much more than virtue signaling.
I happen to support diversity as a concept, but not as a goal. For one reason. It can't be a goal because it can never be 'finished'. My favorite moment at any HR event was many years ago when my firm was giving everyone an update on diversity and pointed out that our employee base mimicked the make-up of the US in terms of percentages for gender and race. That, in itself, was considered an accomplishment. But more needed to be done, of course.
My boss, a female, raised her hand and asked a simple question. "When are we finished?" HR was floored. What did she mean? My boss said, when you have a goal to achieve something, you are finished at some point. She was curious what the goal of diversity was and when it would be met.
I've mentioned this story before. It's important to revisit. What's really at stake when corporations invoke 'diversity' isn't anything truly tangible. I know there are almost no firms that value older employees. They are expensive and their experience is no longer valued the way it once was, so the 'diversity' they offer isn't a valued diversity. Older employees are often viewed to be technologically impaired, owning mindsets which are not as 'out of the box' or forward-thinking (I take issue with both these points). Diversity for most firms isn't really diversity at all. It's just virtue signaling to the public. True diversity is recognizing that different personalities and viewpoints have value and welcoming them as part of the mix so the overall organization benefits. It's not a goal, just something which should be done naturally. Do you need an officer to tell you how that's done?
Not really a new story, there have been plenty like this in the past, but it is possible to build a home that can withstand a hurricane.
It's still more expensive than a standard home, by about 20%. Those costs are coming down, though.
Surviving a massive hurricane is a mixed blessing. If everyone else has lost their home, you've lost your neighborhood, and a good portion of your value.
However, as the costs for building this sort of home continue to fall, more homes are likely to survive, and overall values along the shoreline will be maintained more effectively.
Can you lose weight by hiking? Not walking - hiking.
Sure can, and I am proof. 10 days of hiking - urban and rural, mostly hills and many of them steep because it was Tuscany - for 6 hours/day left me with a 7 lb. weight loss. That's with my usual modest but tasty meals in Italy, never hungry at all. Some daily beers or wine: good food requires it. This loss was entirely unintentional. I was shocked when I got on my scale at home (cuz my pants were falling down). Not good or healthy, really.
Also perturbed because that too-fast (1 lb/wk is normal for weight-losers, and I do not want that) loss clearly reduced my deadlifting power this morning.
We have asserted here that you can't lose weight with exercise alone, but that refers to, say, a reasonable and realistic one hour/day biking, swimming, lifting, walking, and the like.
I did a little lazy research. Jogging at 5 mph burns around 550 calories/hour, about the same as energetic hill hiking. Comfortable walking is around 250, speed walking around 300. That ain't enough burn to make measurable difference. One donut or bagel has 300 calories, a slice of pizza around 350-400. But if you multiply that hourly hill-hiking number by 6, you are getting to real daily numbers and getting into real fat-burning.
It's said that 6 hr/day hill-hikers on The Long Trail (Appalachian trail) need about 5000 calories/day to prevent weight loss over days or weeks of hiking.
It is true that all calories are not physiologically equal, but you can come up with rough numbers: the average sedentary adult female needs around 2500 calories daily, male 3000, to maintain weight. Those numbers are average and perhaps high for trim fit people.
(Sedentary - a modern sin - is often defined as daily exercise equal to or less than a 3 mile walk daily at a 3-4 mph pace. Just above that is "Lightly Active", etc. My one hour daily sched of weights, cardio, and calisthenics gets me just into the "Moderately Active" category by most measures because of the high levels of intensity with HIIT, calisthenics classes, and heavy weights. Intensity can try to compensate for duration. I'd put our hiking guide last year in the Hebrides in the "Highly-Active" category. Craig MacDonald was not only Highly-Active and highly-fit, but highly humorous and sarcastic in the Scots way. Always happy to tease you for a half hour if you bought him a dram or two ofHighland Parkat the end of the day. That is his beverage.)
Readers know that one of the rewards of my fairly-demanding work-out regimen is to be able to do things like hill-hike all day without fatigue, until I grow old. What's my point? I dunno. Maybe that fat loss is dietary, except when it isn't. Just facts to consider.
Tucked away in the giant barn at Mohonk. Not many readers who recall seeing these on the road. Even better is their large collection of horse-drawn buggies. So cool.
While making my rounds today, watched a master backhoe operator using that shovel as easily and delicately as his own hand. Just wonderful grace and expertise. Later, watched a squirrel burying a nut with his hands, digging and then replacing the soil and patting it down.
Non-breeding plumage can be confusing with birds, most especially with warblers. If you can ID fall and winter warblers, I'd term you an expert birder.
My favorite urban hiking shoes are these Merrills, their Boulder style. Not sure they make 'em anymore. I would not use them for bouldering but they might work for that. Good for clambering on ruins, cobblestones, dirt roads, and plain sidewalks. I like those Prana hiking pants too. Lightweight, lots of stretch, can put long underwear underneath if it's chilly, and truly water-resistant because I tested them.
This footwear selfie in Rome last week.
What do you like for long urban hiking with cobblestones, slippery places, dirt roads, etc?
Roy Rogers son continues performing with his dad's hit group of the 40's, Sons Of The Pioneers.
Watch it allthe way through, with a kiss and dance from Trigger, from 1944 film. (Yeah, Flatbush, my hood, is in there too!)
Aside from his 100 movies and long-running TV show, Roy Rogers led a top hit Country Western group, famous for classic songs like Cool Water, Don't Fence Me In, and Tumbling Tumbleweeds, still popular today..
One of the points Codevilla makes is that America is so diverse geographically, culturally, and attitudinally that one-size-fits-all constructed by the elites, the "anointed," in Washington will be certain to make many people feel ignored if not oppressed.
Consider sanctuary cities (and states). Some hundreds of cities in America have declared that they are taking no part in enforcing national immigration laws. The government of great big California has set up an executive office to figure out all the ways in which to evade or just to stiff anything it does not like coming from the Trump Administration. And why not? Practically speaking, the federal government doesn’t have the power to make local officials enforce its rules, or even court judgments, against significant popular opposition. Yes, nowadays every federal agency has its SWAT team. But state or city officials, backed by the voters, can nullify or simply ignore a federal law, regulation, or court order, because countering peaceful nullification is hard—and usually unwise, too. Sending paramilitaries to arrest elected officials or citizens who comply with local law or policy is a blind alley. Yes, President Eisenhower sent the 101st airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education. But that symbolic act (no resistance, no force, no arrests) succeeded because the government then enjoyed a moral authority that it has since squandered. Nothing like that will ever happen again.
The reality is that, today, the people of California and Massachusetts continue to diverge from those of Texas and the Dakotas in so many ways that applying the administrative state’s formulae to them requires ever more force. Substituting administrative force for waning consensus makes for less national unity, not more. Why not, then, deal with the problem by accepting reality?
I spent the summer of 1982 with a group of 7 other people, one who was my brother, the rest were his high school and college friends. We had a 36 year get together not too long ago, and 2 of them had become 
The truth b
Can you lose weight by hiking? Not walking - hiking.
Non-breeding plumage can be confusing with birds, most especially with warblers. If you can ID fall and winter warblers, I'd term you an expert birder. 
Is there a 