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.
Hermann Rorschach worked on an interesting experiment: provide people with an ambiguous stimulus (an image) and find out whether their take on it reveals anything useful about them.
Well, of course it does. In fact, everybody's take on everything and anything reveals things about who they are. All of life can be viewed as a projective experiment but Dr. Rorschach thought that perhaps a standardized ambiguous stimulus might be clinically useful.
I think his hypothesis was correct, but only in the right hands. The challenge is in the interpretation of the responses to projective tests.
Are projective "tests" useful? I think they can be interesting, but not necessary.
This is not the first time Berkeley administrators have lost control of the campus. The supposed irony that the home of the legendary 1960s Free Speech Movement has become inhospitable to the speech of anyone who departs from campus orthodoxy has become a commonplace observation in recent weeks. But this perception has the matter backwards. The seeds of today's stifling campus conformism trace back directly to that misunderstood episode. Far from being an example of true campus openness, the Free Speech Movement was a key inflection point on the way to the ruin of our universities. The one common denominator then and now is the ineptitude and pusillanimity of college administrators and the capitulation of faculties to the demands of radicalized students.
Dying towns are indeed due to labor needs and labor markets, but I do not see any positive role for government in that. Negative role? Certainly. It's easy to tax businesses away. Some towns have to shrink into villages and hamlets, while other places far away become boom towns. It was forever thus.
When a town loses its tax base, it is done as a place. Ghost town, EBT-land, tattooland, boarded-up-land, meth and heroin-land. It does come to that. I have seen those towns, and so has Charles Murray. Eventually, the only decent jobs are government jobs, and then they go away too. Feudalism was good for villages and the serfs always had work.
Major urban centers, worldwide, continue to be the places with economic opportunity and cultural vitality. Rural life isn't the romantic fantasy that some imagine, unless it's a rustic second home getaway.
How ya gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree?
Our Sportsmen’s club held our Take A Vet Fishing event Saturday. This marks our seventh year in a row of hosting the group. In spite of the threat of rain, around 45 vets showed up for a morning of fishing in our stocked pond (over 100 trout caught), as well as lunch.
Take A Vet fishing was formed about ten years ago as a program of a local Congregational Church. The first year we hosted these folks, we were afraid no one would show up – about 20 did. It’s grown since then and this year’s event attendance was held down only by the weather.
So here’s my plea, Mr. President: Make it easier for others to keep the faith. You’ll accomplish much more and many more Americans will be proud to stand with you.
Our leader Bulldog planned a West Side route this year, from the fountain at Lincoln Center (where they filmed some scenes in West Side Story when it was rubble) to the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire just east of Washington Square in Greenwich Village - with more interesting detours and zig-zags to sites than I can report or remember. He reported briefly here.
From Lincoln Center to transport home, I clocked 13.8 miles, with sore quads. My sis, who just had a hip replacement after a running accident, handled it all and is eager for the next hike. It's just far more interesting than her usual country hiking, with so much to look at and to talk about. Golly, as a country boy I do love this crazy city and any out-of-towners who hike with us come to feel the same way.
Before I post a few random street pics, two free ads: first, Artichoke Pizza. After going into Moore's ancient Chelsea church, we strolled through Chelsea Market (good fun, lots of food and stuff) and headed up a block to their location on 10th Ave. in Chelsea. Best New York pizza I have found - ever. Thin pizza, oily and slightly burnt the way I like it. Many cool beers on tap. Fast, rough NYC-style service: you had better know exactly what you want when you're up. Perfect for a cool drizzly day.
The cupcake ad is for Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker St. Perfect cupcakes. Stupid to resist cuz life is short and you do not get there every day.
Marianne would have liked this post. From Lincoln Center, we headed downtown on Broadway thru Columbus Circle, noting the huge new "pencil" high-rises going up on Central park South -
How often do you hear people say "I never lost 8 of the pounds I put on with my first kid" ? Clearly women do not need to be menopausal or post-menopausal to gain weight. Just look around at all the fat American women.
I think it matters in life to stay trim and strong, whether pre- or post-menopausal. You can be more athletic, agile, energetic, sexy, cheerful, and able to avoid many of the physical consequences of being overweight from plantar fasciitis and arthritis to breast cancer.
Plus it makes life more fun and you can wear better clothes. Except for those blessed with the right genes (physical and psychological), most people have to take deliberate responsibility for their level of fitness and, in the modern world of sedentary ease and carb abundance, it can be a challenge if you have an impulsive rather than obsessive-compulsive personality.
Is getting fat partly a socio-cultural phenomenon? Of course, but that's a more complicated subject than I wish to take on on Mother's Day. What about the middle-aged men making themselves pudgy? That's another sad topic too, but I believe that it is part of the duty of a wife to keep her man fit for life even if she "lets herself go". An obvious risk in that, though...
Post-menopausal women do have a greater chance of gaining weight even if they have been fit and shapely beforehand. It should not be used as an excuse, but the changes in sex hormones do alter fat storage and, seemingly, metabolic rate. Why nature designed it that way is a mystery, but nature has little need for post-menopausal females. Society needs them, but Mother Nature does not.
Generally speaking, post-menopausal women need far fewer carbs and less food in general than in youth almost entirely regardless of activity level. Another change is that the physical distribution of fat (from excess carb intake) changes in unhealthy and unattractive ways (unattractive in our culture, anyway).
As with lobsters, for conservation purposes it is better to eat the small ones and release the big ones. Laws are often irrational. Small sea critters have poor survival rates anyway, but the big breeders matter for the future.
Rational and effective conservation law would be to keep the small ones and throw back the big ones.
Let's just go along with the culture even if some of these days are commercial inventions to sell stuff. After all, moms do deserve special attention.
So thanks to my Mom (photo) for producing me, thanks to my mother-in-law for producing my wife, and thanks to my daughter-in-law for producing two rambunctious little baby boys.
14:1 "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
14:2 In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.
14:4 And you know the way to the place where I am going."
14:5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"
14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
14:7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
14:8 Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied."
14:9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
14:11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.
14:12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
14:13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
He bought the house at 94 MacDougal St in the West Village but celeb-sniffers got the best of him. He was young, didn't realize that he was as famous as he was, a "prophet for a generation." He loved NYC the most but fled to privacy in Malibu and promptly set about proving that he wasn't any prophet. Then his wife dumped him and he crashed.
We know he still skulks around the Village alone and anonymously in a hoodie, when he's on tour in the area. Few people recognize the strange old little guy ducking into music joints and pubs. I would.
Manhattan Contrarian informs me that the interior of Dylan's old block contains a large private garden. Must be nice in there.
The Sanderling is familiar to anybody who has been to a saltwater beach. Their range is worldwide, and about half of their population lives in the New World. Their migration routes are astonishing for such little guys.
You can identify them by their beach behavior as much as by their appearance because few flocking shorebirds follow the receding surf as quickly, like mechanical toys.
Birders learn to ID birds as much by behavior as by appearance.
Like Hallmark holidays, and Bar and Bat Mitvahs, people feel forced/obligated by convention to waste perfectly good and hard-earned money for a couple of hours, or too many hours, of forced merriment with overly-loud obnoxious music.
The party predators are out there, like sharks.
On the other hand, throwing a $60,000 wedding is one way to pay back, in one event, all of those past invitations from people which you have accumulated. So there's that. But would the kids just prefer the cash?
Around 25% of medicare and medicaid spending has to do with complications related to overweight-connected diabetes. That is huge but likely underestimates overweight costs because arthritis, breast cancer, heart disease, and many other problems are also related to or caused by being overweight. For that, and related interesting medical cost info, A Provocative Health Care Proposal
The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Sabotage! It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot.
The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed. The thing that impressed Winston in looking back was that the speaker had switched from one line to the other actually in midsentence, not only without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax.
Hermann Rorschach worked on an interesting experiment: provide people with an ambiguous stimulus (an image) and find out whether their take on it reveals anything useful about them.
A Millennial's 
How often do you hear people say "I never lost 8 of the pounds I put on with my first kid" ? Clearly women do not need to be menopausal or post-menopausal to gain weight. Just look around at all the fat American women.
Let's just go along with the culture even if some of these days are commercial inventions to sell stuff. After all, moms do deserve special attention.
The Sanderling is familiar to anybody who has been to a saltwater beach. Their range is worldwide, and about half of their population lives in the New World. Their migration routes are astonishing for such little guys.
