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.
People who move to the NYC area for good work love it, not just because of the vitality, or sight-seeing, or theater, or jazz clubs, or museums, or parks, or great food and pubs, or the smart ambitious people, but mainly because there are always very cool and unique things to do.
Going on campus to harass Charles Murray is not changing minds and it is not intended to change minds. It’s just something to do in order to show off to friends. Its bored children coloring on the walls, even though they know mom with be pissed. Since mom is not going to give them up for adoption over it, the act is just pointless, risk-free theater.
Every citizen should do what I do: write quarterly payment checks for Social Security, Federal and state taxes, Medicare tax, etc.
It makes it real. People who get regular paychecks never get all of their earned wages. That is not right. Does the government not trust citizens to pay their taxes themselves?
It's the recovery from the controlled damage and stress which produces the improvement.
All forms of personal growth require high stress to produce improvement, whether physical, mental, or emotional.
The purpose of intense physical exertion itself is to break you down, to damage muscles, to stress tendons, ligaments, bones, and neuromuscular connections to the point that they are forced to adapt. That is why only very difficult and unpleasant physical demands get results.
Building strength and power is meant to wreck your body and to blow your mind, but in a careful, controlled way.
We have all had the experience of feeling like a deadlift barbell is glued to the floor. Then somebody else, or your own head, says "You can do this, just get it off the floor" and suddenly "giving it your all" shifts and the meaning of "your all" expands into new territory.
With exercise, we should gain muscle weight. Unless we're fat, we should put on solid weight.
After an hour or so of power lifting, we recommend 48 hrs. with just an hour of Active Recovery before another day's power lifting. Passive Recovery is just decent sleep and adequate protein intake (over 80 gms/day). Active Recovery gets the blood moving, includes activities which require minimal recovery time, like calisthenics, cardio intervals, speed walking, etc. - just no heavy weights.
It all works together that way, at least for the middle-aged, in 5 or so hours of structured exercise - which is less time than most people waste watching TV and movies:
Preaching (ie Teaching) seems over-emphasized. I think people go to be part of a community which is body of Christ. Jesus clubs. When teaching becomes performance, I turn off.
Vernal Pools are (usually temporary except in high-rain years) marshes. "Wetlands," aka swampy areas. They are a cool and productive part of an ecosystem because they contain no fish or turtles to eat all of the baby amphibians.
Generally the spring pools are fed by snow melt, early Spring rain, or slow seeps from springs which do not produce enough water to keep the area wet in high summer. Springs are interesting things.
Critters that breed in vernal pools clearly need to lay eggs which produce rapidly-maturing young who can leave the pools before they dry up. For example, Bullfrog tadpoles take a long time, up to a year, to grow and mature via that crazy amphibian metamorphosis so large frogs require permanent bodies of water.
Around here, typical Vernal Pool breeders are Spring Peepers, Common Toad, Wood Frog, Cricket Frog, various salamanders. Spring Peeper eggs - tadpoles - tiny frogs are ready to leave the water in 8 weeks. Toads can do it in 12 weeks.
Early Spring is here and, anyway, I am at the end of my bird seed.
Seen today at the HQ: An Easter Bunny laying colorful eggs, Mourning Dove, Cardinal, Common Grackle, Red Bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Common Flicker, Tufted Titmouse, Chickadee, House Finch, Song Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, WT Sparrow, a few remaining SC Juncos, Blue Jay, Goldfinch, RW Blackbird and overhead a RT Hawk.
Weakness relates us profoundly with other people. It allows us to feel with them the human condition, the human struggle and darkness and anguish which call out for salvation. For to be a human being is to take a certain amount of suffering into life. It is hard to get at this consideration, since so much in Western civilization attempts to disguise it or affects to despise it. One of the most debilitating aspects of American society is that we do not authentically admit the cost in a struggle and almost never allow real fear to surface. Yet most of us must struggle to make a living, must wonder about our future and about our sense of personal value in a market economy, must deal with the half-articulated and half-understood problems of our children, must fear what our death will be like—what it will mean to die; we must deal with the temptation to believe that life is without meaning, that actions are inconsequential and selfish, and that other people are to be used...
Now the nature of man Is to beg and to steal I'd do it myself It's not so unreal The call of the wild is Forever at my door Want me to fly like an eagle while Being chained to the floor, but
You changed my life Came along in a time of strife In hunger and need You made my heart bleed You changed my life
"People stay up at nights thinking of what next to put on the racist list. Next it will be mayonnaise for glorying whiteness…"
There is so little racism in this great country -that "they" have to hijack the English language and invent new definitions for "racism" -in order to have something to point at and say "see?".
With actual threats from their Committee of Public Safety. Somebody needs to remind them that this is America, the land of the free and home of the brave, and not North Korea.
My hate and hate speech is directed to those totalitarian idiots at Wellesley and everywhere else they work their malevolent schemes. At an earlier point, my reactions were of amusement but at this point my hate for this sort of crap is fierce, ruthless, and righteous.
There is another circle of hell for the spineless administrators who aid and abet this sort of nonsense by not standing up to the crybullies. They should know better. On the other hand they might be quietly on those kids' side (See Tenured Radicals).
We recently heard a performance of Bach's St. John Passion, with the same small-size choir that Bach had (but with far better voices now, for sure), and with the original instruments. Bach pretty much always bitched about the lousy choirs he had to work with. Bitched about the musicians too.
Loveliest live music I have heard in a while and, even though you know the story by heart, and when Pilate asks Jesus Was ist Wahrheit? you get a chill. Pilate was a good guy, really.
Bach wrote St. John Passion in 1774 to be performed on Good Friday. The experts say it is as close as Bach got to operatic music. It was designed as an entire Lutheran church service, with a break between Part 1 and Part 2 for a homily. Some of the choruses were familiar German hymns. It's a shame to perform it outside a church.
As with all ambitious and complex music like this, it takes me more than 3 hearings to begin to get it.
A question to which I cannot find an answer is whether Bach wrote the notes for the recitative sections, especially by Evangelist, or whether they are singer's choice. Can a reader find out?
Below, St. John Passion with a larger choir and orchestra than Bach had. Why did Gardiner use an organ instead of a harpsichord in this performance?
One by one, getting them done for better or worse. Business guys just try to get through their checklists as fast as they can regardless of nuances and sensitivities. Promised he would blow the shit out of ISIS.Had this chance to do it without civilian damage, and he just did it. That's a bigtime traditional NYC F- you from a rough New Yorker from Queens. Manhattanites can be refined and delicate sometimes, but people from the boroughs can be tough as nails. Just ask any WW2 vet if you can find one. I have.
I had thought we were done with Afghanistan. Must have missed something. Remind me where it is again. Z-man is right: it is today's Balkans. Nobody really cared about the Balkans then either, and nobody cares about the Middle East now. Or the Balkans.
However, it's a message to the world: Don't f- with Trump. With Trump, nothing is predictable so watch your back, as they say in NY. Anyway, this is the only language the Islamists understand clearly.
When you think about it, without 9-11 little or none of this Middle East involvement would have happened. So was 9-11 a success for them, or not? I want the USA out of there. And I want those baboons to leave me alone.
We are nearing the end of Lent, and I am reminded that I have reflected in the past about the idea that a function of life is to teach us enough humility to bring us to God - while our self-love fights to hold onto our precious fantasies of specialness, extraordinary integrity, appealingness, brilliance, and self-sufficiency despite the world's giving us abundant evidence to the contrary. Everybody's foot of pride comes down sometime, and often more than once. It can be brutal, but I guess we need it. Still, we must push forward as best we can and if we can do it with Christ as companion, so much the better.
This is a mystifying, rambling song which might sort-of be about a funeral, sins of pride and grandiosity, and man's Fall. Like a voice crying in the wilderness thing. Thus the contradictions of this half- crazy genius. It begins:
Like the lion tears the flesh off of a man So can a woman who passes herself off as a male They sang “Danny Boy” at his funeral and the Lord’s Prayer Preacher talking ’bout Christ betrayed It’s like the earth just opened and swallowed him up He reached too high, was thrown back to the ground You know what they say about bein’ nice to the right people on the way up Sooner or later you gonna meet them comin’ down...
He was never satisfied with any production of the song. That above with the lyrics which err: I believe it is "sordid" love affair with Errol Flynn, not "sword" , but who knows? Full lyrics here.The guy can pack more words into a line than anybody - or make fewer words fill a line completely.
For what it's worth, Lou Reed took a stab at the song:
I Learned The Hard Way 
It's the recovery from the controlled damage and stress which produces the improvement. 
Why do you attend church? 
Leg of
Third Wheel 
We recently heard a performance of Bach's St. John Passion, with the same small-size choir that Bach had (but with far better voices now, for sure), and with the original instruments. Bach pretty much always bitched about the lousy choirs he had to work with. Bitched about the musicians too.