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 friend reports that it is essentially a brawl. Craziest sport I've ever seen. 500 year tradition. Apparently popes used to participate in 1600s. Ended with riot police taking the field and suspending the game after ejected players refused to leave. The crowd was just as tattooed and menacing as the players.
While it is still Spring, try stepping outside at 4:30 in the morning with a coffee and a cigar, and listen for 30 minutes. In a couple of weeks, most of that morning chorus will end as breeding season comes to a close.
You will hear the territorial calls of most of the birds in your neighborhood. These will mostly quiet down as the sun comes up and the birds get busy finding breakfast for themselves and/or their chicks.
If you are like me, you will not be able to identify all of those calls. As time goes on, I have become more determined to ID birds by song. It's tough for me because I have a tin ear. I still confuse the Oriole with the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak.
For beginners. Best to start with the easy ones. It is handy to tell a Wood Thrush from a Hermit Thrush. Also handy to know the "broken typewriter" Marsh Wren because, like thrushes (except Robins and Bluebirds) you hardly ever see them.
A cool trick I recently learned is to put a Screech Owl recording on your phone. If you play that a bit in a brushy area or in a place where you can't quite get your binoculars on a bird, it's likely that some birds will approach the sound of the little owl and you can get a closer look.
... this city has never reconciled itself to Trump's victory, and the president daily rubs their noses in their defeat with his tweets.
Seeking a rationale for its rejection, this city has seized upon that old standby. We didn't lose! The election was stolen in a vast conspiracy, an "act of war" against America, an assault upon "our democracy," criminal collusion between the Kremlin and the Trumpites.
Hence, Trump is an illegitimate president, and it is the duty of brave citizens of both parties to work to remove the usurper.
I think they just want to cripple him, same as with Bush-Hitler
Baptisia is an excellent 3+-ft. high border perennial. It's a late-spring/early-summer bloomer, likes full sun to half-day sun but can get leggy without enough sun.
It's a tough and vigorous perennial - once it is established. It grows deep roots, so it can unfortunately take a couple of years to reach its full effect.
The three new ones I planted in the fall are pathetic now, but next Spring they should be ready to show some vigor and bloom.
Many good things need patience. For instant color, go with annuals.
These activities are cheap basics for avoiding a completely sedentary life. A sedentary life is roughly defined as over 4 hrs/day sitting with under 5 hours/week of some form of measurable exertion (consistently elevated heart rate above the walking level. Not Yoga, and weights and most sports don't really count as cardio time.). Getting out of the "sedentary" category to the "Lowest-level Active" is a very low bar for healthy people.
"Cardio" is obviously mainly about general vigor - heart conditioning plus muscle maintenance (rather than muscle-strengthening) and general endurance. Ordinary walking, as opposed to Strolling, hardly meets the minimal standard for "exercise" because it is non-exertional except for the elderly or the overweight. (Housework, strolling, gardening are too low-intensity to call exercise at all.) For most people, "walking" means a speed under 3.4 mph. "Brisk walking" or "Fast Walking" is any speed between around 3.5 mph and the point at which you have to break into a jog or a run (somewhere over 4 mph for most people).
1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
1:2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
1:3 Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
1:4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
1:5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
1:6 And God said, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."
1:7 So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.
1:8 God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
1:9 And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so.
1:10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
1:11 Then God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it." And it was so.
1:12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.
1:13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
1:14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,
1:15 and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth." And it was so.
1:16 God made the two great lights--the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night--and the stars.
1:17 God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth,
1:18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.
1:19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
1:20 And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky."
1:21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
1:22 God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."
1:23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
1:24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind." And it was so.
1:25 God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
1:26 Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."
1:27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
1:28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."
1:29 God said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.
1:31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude.
2:2 And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.
2:3 So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
2:4a These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
It’s a swamp of innuendo based on anonymous sources, investigations fed by illegal eavesdropping, scandals in which the outrage comes before the evidence whose purpose is to overturn an election. These aren’t investigations. They’re a coup by the losing side that refuses to admit it lost a presidential election. The coup isn’t just aimed at President Trump or any single member of his administration.
It’s aimed at America, at democracy and at any policy to the right of free entitlements and no freedoms.
Impeachment is merely a tactic aimed at one man. The broader strategic aim is to stymie and sabotage THE AGENDA. PDT will not be impeached, but if he can be smeared as illegitimate, then everything he wants to do will be made out to be against the will of the people because he "stole" the presidency.
And since the GOP-e is in league with the Dems and the Deep State bureaucracy, this is why everything is being slow-walked and stonewalled.
No one thought he would win. Now that he has, they are scrambling like mad to make every excuse imaginable why the Repeal can't go forward, or Tax Reform or The Wall or you-name-it. The Dems claim fraud/collusion, the GOP-e claims process/rules bullshit, the Deep State Leviathan leaks and sabotages. And the press reports PDT as an insane failure.
"Voluntary" death, and the grey zone around it, have always gone on. Generally, it has been between doctor, patient, and family. "Time to let him/her go."
The idea of dying "when God wills it" is mostly obsolete, because the patient often would already have died on God's time. The reason such topics have become an issue is because of the power of medicine to sustain life, however terminal, painful, humiliating, or degrading. Fortunately, today we have things like DNR and hospice, but the old-fashioned way of "Let's make him comfortable" with extra morphine might have been (or still is) more humane.
I found it interesting that almost half of patients who were prescribed physician-assisted death never used it. That means to me that many just want to have some control over their fate, over pain, etc. Makes good sense to me. Nobody wants a lengthy death consisting of weeks of gasping for air, writhing in pain, and pooping in bed.
This hyperindividualism of “teach the child, not the subject” came into American schooling only gradually in the early twentieth century, taking over completely only in the 1950s and ’60s. It was a fundamental shift. Current political correctness in education is an updated variation on the theme of individualism. The social version of “teach the child, not the subject” became “respect the home ethnicity of the child; don’t impose an Anglo culture that is alien to his or her background and personality.” And the psychological version of individualism became: “Adjust the subject matters to the child’s interests and abilities.” Both multiculturalism and multiple-intelligence theory caught on like wildfire in recent decades. More recently, one’s individuality has become conceived through “intersectionality.” A child is to be understood as an intersection of multiple essential groups and tribes—“Hispanic and gay,” for example—not as an “American,” which is assumed to be a nonessential trait...
Traditions, rituals and ceremonies take centuries to build, and can be lost in an instant. Be careful of your inheritance.
– Unknown
The nuclear family must be destroyed…whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process.
–Linda Gordon
Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.
– Sheila Cronin
“Tribe.” How can there be tribe without clans? How can there be clans without extended families? How can there be extended families without patriarchy? How can clans become tribes without a chief? Indeed, how can there be families at all with divorce, contraception and infanticide and a ‘working ‘mother’? And as far as community goes, can you think of a people less prone to coalesce into community than Americans?
It is an amazing state of affairs: A President of the United States who does not at all grasp the Office he occupies, and who thus entirely lacks the proper situation sense, or contextual knowledge, in which a President should exercise judgment or act. Let that sink in...
Insofar as that might be true, I think it is part of why he was elected.
Our commenters to our Hiking Footwear post were well-informed, experienced, and helpful. Appreciate all of those offerings. Lots of hikers, hunters, and some field geologists among our readers.
Two basics about boot sizing: Your dress shoe or sneaker size might be small for boots. Try the boot at the end of the day when your foot is most expanded. With the heaviest socks you might wear with them, but unlaced, check to make sure you can fit your index finger down the heel.
I can't say I agree with the conclusions drawn by this Harvard Business Review article. If office politics are only about influence, the premise is that being political is actually beneficial.
I see a significant difference between being social and being political.
"The truth is that just being a member of an organization is a political act. And in fact, we must influence people at work all the time. It’s how we get things done. And to influence, we must have power, the real currency in workplaces. "
Is that really true? Did I join a fraternity to be political and gain power and influence? Did my joining mean there were political implications? As a member of my church, is membership political? And to influence, must we have power? I have always been taught that influence is not power, but access to, and ability to, inform and shift power.
I can see how these memberships can morph into political alliances or positions, but they are not inherently political, we don't necessarily join social groups for political reasons (though I know plenty of people who joined country clubs for political reasons).
We have too many sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists over-analyzing behaviors and assigning them improper value. I completely understand the value and benefit of good work socialization. We need to maintain relationships and behaviors to not just garner influence, but to just to get jobs done effectively. But the maintenance isn't in itself political, most often (certainly in my case) it's genuine, sincere and geared toward generating productive and useful outcomes.
My perspective is that it becomes political when it is self-serving or guided by less than sincere or honest motives. When subterfuge, dissemination of false or bad information, and exclusion take place it becomes political. The author tries to differentiate these behaviors as Machiavellian, anathema to proper behavior in an office. Certainly they are - but they are far too common, particularly in large organizations, simply because people can get away with it. By lumping good social action in with political behavior, this author does employees a disservice.
Good morning, kids. Well, the big stories today will be James Comey's delivery of a double-talk nothing burger dressed up as the smoking gun to end all smoking guns that will lead to the impeachment of President Trump. That's the way it will be reported and played from now through November of '18 and '20. What will not be reported in the "news" is the President's historic slashing of regulations which, in spite of Democrat-Republican and Deep State sabotage is boosting the economic outlook and creating real jobs and growth. Hence, the never-ending "collusion" libel which is all the Democrats have. Big national elections in Britain. Perhaps the wave of love from the followers of Mohammed will be a wake up call to Brits to keep Jeremy Corbyn the hell out of 10 Downing Street. Other than that, watch a rabid racist BLM hack go on a rant at Tucker Carlson and for a palate cleanser, enjoy as Richard Burr explains to Kamala Harris to STFD and STFU, but in the nicest of parliamentary ways. .. Have a better one and remain blessed.
From Fort Foster Park on the Maine side. Those large box-like structures in the water are WW2 anti-sub net platforms. Portsmouth is a hopping little city, prosperous, very pleasant.
It's easy to see why this general area is popular with retirees.
A fine little fresh water marsh just a couple of hundred yards in from the sea in southern Maine. My birding list from the long weekend is below the fold -
Calcio Storico is 
California´s huge snowfall 
Baptisia i
Photo: finally got the pic of my friend's backyard Barred Owl 
Lines of code
Photo is the Meindl Burma 
Image via 