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 is remarkable and noteworthy to me when anybody successfully opens an independent business in this country's anti-business climate, whether it's local plumbing, money management, or a clothing line.
It's good for people whenever somebody has the cojones to do such things. Many people get jobs from it. Why does government make it so hard to do?
One high-energy young gal we have been following is Nora Gardner, whose online shop for conservative upscale professional women's wear ("Day-to-Night" clothing, made of Italian wool right in New York City's garment district) has added a flagship shop on 58th between Madison and Park.
Mostly online, though.
Lots of people try being employees, and conclude that they ain't gonna work for Maggie's Farm no more. That's good, that's the American spirit. I tried to be an employee for a while. Hated it, never looked back despite the "security."
Problem is, it's a bitch to be your own boss, because boss is too hard on you. Gotta be tough, bold, and brave, and take a ton of self-criticism.
Much of the conventional wisdom surrounding the opioid crisis holds that virtually anyone is at risk for opioid abuse or addiction — say, the average dental patient who receives some Vicodin for a root canal. This is inaccurate, but unsurprising. Exaggerating risk is a common strategy in public-health messaging: The idea is to garner attention and funding by democratizing affliction and universalizing vulnerability. But this kind of glossing is misleading at best, counterproductive at worst. To prevent and ameliorate problems, we need to know who is truly at risk to target resources where they are most needed.
In truth, the vast majority of people prescribed medication for pain do not misuse it, even those given high doses.
I have spent many, many fruitless hours in my life trying hopelessly to convince highly talented female associates that they really wanted to come back from maternity leave to the 12 hour days and over-the-weekend injunction motions and four weeks on trial in Kansas and leave their little kids at home with a babysitter. It never worked once.
Catboats are popular in the greater Cape Cod area. I'm not sure about other areas.
Catboats of any size tend to be beamy, stable, and comfortable. With no jib, they can not point worth a darn. Not a bad idea to have a motor for when wanted. Picking a horsepower for a sailboat is a bit complicated.
Salt Water New England posted the pic below of a Marshall 22 quite close to the (not under power, I assume, or just holding in place) Queen Mary 2somewhere in New England. Marshalls come with a diesel engine.
If you ever have the chance to take a Cunard liner across the Atlantic, do it. She is a true ocean liner, not a cruise ship. Today, the Queen Mary is at dock in NYC, due to leave for Hamburg soon.
A sail on a catboat on a breezy day is is good too. Marshalls for sale here.
"I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game." Bear Bryant / Alabama
"It isn't necessary to see a good tackle, you can hear it!” - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame
"At Georgia Southern, we don't cheat. That costs money, and we don't have any." Erik Russell / Georgia Southern
"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it." - Lou Holtz / Arkansas - Notre Dame
"When you win, nothing hurts." - Joe Namath / Alabama
"A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall." - Frank Leahy / Notre Dame
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." - Woody Hayes / Ohio State
"I don't expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation. I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation." - Bob Devaney / Nebraska
"In Alabama , an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in Bear Bryant." - Wally Butts / Georgia
"I never graduated from Iowa. But I was only there for two terms - Truman's and Eisenhower's." Alex Karras / Iowa
"My advice to defensive players is to take the shortest route to the ball, and arrive in a bad humor. - Bowden Wyatt / Tennessee
"I could have been a Rhodes Scholar except for my grades." - Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State
"Always remember Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David." - Shug Jordan / Auburn
"I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn't recruit me ." He said,"Well, Walt, we took a look at you, and you weren't any good." - Walt Garrison / Oklahoma State
"Son, you've got a good engine, but your hands aren't on the steering wheel." - Bobby Bowden / Florida State
A few years ago I posted a photo of a garden shrub that I see occasionally thriving on the Outer Cape. Many of our readers concluded that it was Mexican Sage. It is not. I wasted some money buying a couple of Mexican Sages online, and they will not survive my winter.
I finally got to the bottom of it today. It is Vitex (aka Monk's Pepper, or Chaste Tree). The leaves look like marijuana leaves.
Vitex can grow into a small tree or, if pruned, can remain a small shrublike perennial. In northern climes, it tends to die back to the ground in cold winters (like buddleia) but comes right back up in spring.
I think most techies would agree that the biggest innovation in recent years has been the introduction of the solid state drive. Rather than a clunky spinning disc, it uses a microchip, so obviously it's going to be blazingly faster. And, simply because there are no moving parts, it's a lot less subject to failure.
Pic: Result from using incorrect wiring with the new fast hard drives.
Actually, I should correct something I said up above. I said a digital drive is "blazingly" faster. I probably should have said screamingly faster. I mean, there's really no comparison, as you'll see in the figures below the fold.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging man How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head; Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood Shall calm her sores. And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
I had to explain the news to a young gal at work today. I told her that Charlottesville did not deserve any of her mental bandwidth. I explained that, if there had been no camera crews, there would have been nothing. I said that the would-be white supremacists were an insignificant handful of pathetic losers undeserving of any attention, and that the antifa were delusional loser nutjobs in the employ of Soros. I said the implicit deal between protesters and the media is that the media need drama and excitement to sell Subarus and furniture and Verizon accounts, with a side benefit of trying to make their political enemies look bad. But mostly just to sell shit that people don't really need.
Selling emotional "news" to get people talking is a desperately-competitive big business. It's not about keeping you "informed." She confessed that she had never thought about it that way, that the media makes the news so people will watch it instead of CSI re-runs. She is young and innocent, but capable of learning.
Media amplifies what it wants to, and mutes what it wants to. In some ways, though, we all fall for it. This post itself is evidence for that. Are you excited about statues and Nazis, etc? Switch to Verizon and buy a new car. Next week, the media will create a fresh excitement for us suckers. Enuf said.
When you are hiking and pond-hopping in the sandy back roads of the Cape Cod National Seashore and encounter signs like this, ignore them. Everybody does. Just go on through to a lovely isolated ocean beach. In the 1950s and 60s, it was a nude beach for the artists, writers, bohemian free-love intelligentsia from Boston and NYC, and the horny modernist architects from the US and Germany.
More random pics of the place we love below the fold -
In how many ways can we live, today, like kings of olden times? For one, we don't need a court orchestra to keep our ears stimulated, altho that would be pleasant for sure.
My house radio music has always been WQXR (live streamed or sometimes regular radio), but on the Cape I discovered Chatham's Cape Classical 107.5. They are at least as enjoyable as WQXR and they also live stream. OK, I do CDs also, but only radio introduces me to music I haven't heard before.
My perennial question to my readers is this: How do I get live-streamed music to go through my fancy speakers? Or is streamed music of such lousy quality that it doesn't matter?
What about a Bluetooth audio receiver? I don't know how those work.
Charlottesville is what happens when you normalize racism and street violence. Every normalization of extremism equally normalizes the extremism of the opposite side.
The movie "Jaws" ruined beach fun for millions of people. Like "Psycho" with showers and "Snakes on the Plane" with airplanes, the idea was to make money by creating disturbing mental images for people who live lives blessedly free of elemental terrors. Shark attacks on humans are extremely rare, and probably mostly accidental. Still, the thought of it is disturbing and resonates with our deepest "monster under the bed" terrors.
I never saw Jaws. Didn't want to. I do know the famous lines from it, though. Great Whites are cold-water eating machines. They congregate where the food is. They will live on fish, but seem to prefer delicious mammalian flesh so they go where they can find it.
Does the Bird Dog family swim with the seals? Yes, and the gals often with wet suits that make them look like cute seals. You can't have a life if fear dominates every aspect of it. I do not frequent golf courses in thunderstorms, but I do not frequent golf courses anyway.
The idea of retirement from work was a 20th Century invention, growing out of Bismarck's utopian vision of the welfare state. It may turn out to have been a short-lived social phenomenon as people live longer, in better health. It's to the point that many people spend more yours in retirement than they did in their productive years.
My observations are that people (mostly men) tend to feel useless if not emasculated by retirement, and end up finding new challenges. Forced retirement, due to health or being let go for whatever reason, is particularly crushing to the male self-image. A vacation is one thing, but a permanent vacation is not so special for most people. You can only play so much golf, and a wife usually does not want a guy hanging around a house all day.
What's your view? Is retirement a life goal or an ending of some sort? I clearly feel that it is a lousy life goal, because life is only today regardless of age.
It is remarkable and noteworthy to me when anybody successfully opens an independent business in this country's anti-business climate, whether it's local plumbing, money management, or a clothing line. 
Latest Victim Of Statue Hysteria:
Total eclipses aren't that rare
A few years ago I posted a photo of a garden shrub that I see occasionally thriving on the Outer Cape. Many of our readers concluded that it was Mexican Sage. It is not. I wasted some money buying a couple of Mexican Sages online, and they will not survive my winter.
I think most techies would agree that the biggest innovation in recent years has been the introduction of the solid state drive. Rather than a clunky spinning disc, it uses a microchip, so obviously it's going to be blazingly faster. And, simply because there are no moving parts, it's a lot less subject to failure.
Cereal Box 
