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.
My Christmas feast crown roast of pork. Apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, taters, turnips) and mashed rutabaga and applesauce on the side. And gravy.
When you wrap the thing in bacon, and stuff the center well, the thick chops come out very juicy and succulent. Good stuff.
We had a Papillon visiting over the weekend. This breed might be in the lap dog, ankle-biter category, but this one was a delight: well-related, highly-communicative with human-like noises, feisty, high energy, highly-alert, and eager to please. They need plenty of time to run around off leash, and they seem to need plenty of time napping on somebody's lap.
A cool dog. The breed is known to be easily trained, and our visitor obeyed numerous voice commands.
This breed can have erect ears (mostly in the US) and floppy spaniel ears (mostly in Europe). These were popular in the courts of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Madame de Pompadour with her Papillon, by Boucher. Ms. Pompadour was cute, charmant, and smart too. Well-educated, she could sing, play musical instruments, recite plays and poetry, and she understood statecraft. A self-made lady who retained her usefulness to Louis XV well-past her sexual prime until her death of TB at 42.
The Farmer's Walk is a toughening exercise, not so much a strength-building exercise. It is only a true strength-building exercise for your grip - ie your forearms. However, done correctly with chest out, head up, for as long as you can, it challenges your entire body from calves to neck.
Three sets of Farmer's Walks to near-failure weekly, as part of your calisthenics program, will improve your posture and overall toughness.
Do me a favor: Do not resolve to get fit after the new year. If serious, you will work on it today. The problem with fitness is that it takes effort so there is always a good excuse for postponing.
In the 2016 election, American society had a little foretaste of what political life can look like when the virtues of humility, forbearance, honesty and tolerance begin to fade from our common life. Virtue is the secret lubricant that makes all our institutions work smoothly—and it is the secret glue that holds the social structures on which we all rely in place. The farther America moves from its rich heritage of faith, the less well America will work. This isn’t a partisan point. Christianity is the living force behind American liberal ideology as well as behind American conservatism. The values of honesty and tolerance in our national political life are ultimately grounded in the Christian faith that has formed the American conscience for hundreds of years. If we as a people walk away from that faith, the many blessings that it brought us will dry up and blow away.
Don't imagine that the world divides naturally into those who can understand what Jesus is saying and those who can't. By ourselves, none of us can. Jesus was born into a world where everyone was deaf and blind to him. But some, in fear and trembling, have allowed his words to challenge, rescue, heal and transform them. That is what's offered at Christmas, not a better-focused religion for those who already like that sort of thing, but a Word which is incomprehensible in our language but which, when we learn to hear, understand and believe it, will transform our whole selves with its judgment and mercy.
Although almost all use quotations from the Bible to buttress modern day arguments, relatively few have ever read it. Actually, I should say any of them. For there's the Jewish Bible, the Catholic Bible, and various Protestant Bibles, and among these are various translations, inclusions and exclusions.
One of the narratives, that of the Maccabees, is not included in the Jewish Bible. There's several reasons offered: The two Books of Maccabees are in the Alexandrian Greek version, and only those Books in the original Hebrew are included. (Other Books of similar non-Hebrew language or not accepted as divine scripture, like Judith, are as well in the Apocrypha, some in some denominations' Bibles.) The reign of the Maccabees' heirs were not of the sacred line of David and, therefore, unworthy to be treated as kings. Their rule was tarnished by corrupt practices, and contributed toward the internal divisiveness and, then, destruction by the Romans of the Jewish homeland, the wholesale massacres of Jews there and diaspora to alien lands for the remainder. Then, there's the rationale that for a people in exile, subject to survival under and adaptations to inhospitable or suspicious foreign ways, it was not good politics to exalt recent Jews as warriors in the codification of the Jewish Bible.
Today, with the increased ability of Jews to practice openly and participate constructively in Western societies, and with pride in having a homeland to secure safety for all Jews who would return there, the relatively minor holiday of Chanukah is celebrated widely. Providing a celebration for Jewish children at the time of year that others celebrate Christmas has made of Chanukah a major holiday. lt also fits with the recovery of a homeland of refuge in Israel, and is a celebration in which many Christians can choose to share. (Senator Hatch wrote this song for Chanukah, for example. I met him in 1996, and he does always wear a Star of David or a small Mezzuzah around his neck.)
Still, if Chanukah is degraded to just blue-and-white lights in place of red-and-yellow, or icicles, Chanukah is made meaningless.
One must remember there are two Books of Maccabee. The first Book deals with the profanation and oppression in which many Jews went along to survive -- leading to the brave fight by a few for religious freedom that overwhelmed seemingly undefeatable might.
(There's also the side-story of Hannah and her seven sons, who endured the most severe tortures practiced in those times, the descriptions of which would even sicken a surrealist, rather than renounce their faith.)
The second Book deals with the resanctification of the Holy Temple. The custom of the eight day miracle of lights grew from this resanctification, even though there's weak evidence to substantiate it happening that way.
I'll leave the canonical and scholarly debates here for others, in order to draw a lesson. Chanukah and the Maccabees fits within the Jewish Bible's narrative, whether formally or by custom. And, more attention deserves to be given the first Book, to understand the second. Fight, or surrender to comforts and fears and, thus, perish.
The Jewish Bible is a series of opportunities for living the guidance provided by G-d through experience and direction, often failing to do so in successive generations and paying terrible prices to relearn and return to basic truths. In this sense, Jews are fated to be a small self-selecting people, those who adhere to these basic truths, while by basic frail human nature others fall and fail by the wayside, merging into ostensibly safer masses.
The modern state of Israel struggles with these choices, and so far has risen beyond any expectations -- by rejecting the sophistry of self-serving internal weaklings, defectors, and collaborators paid off by Israel's enemies, and by evading false friends in high-places within other governments, who all recommend paths that are well-known to lead to defeatism and doom.
So, depending on the transliteration, to all a Happy Chanukah, or Hannukah. These young people in a flash mob on Ben Yehuda Street are the spirit that bring pride to fighting to endure in basic truth, for the benefit of all. There are onlookers and there are participants. Without modern Maccabees, participants in fighting for life, all would be enslaved.
“[Because of an imminent ICE AGE] .. even more dramatic results are possible, however; for instance, a sudden outward slumping in the Antarctic ice cap, induced by added weight, could generate a tidal wave of proportions unprecedented in recorded history.” -John Holdren, 1971
Read through all of the news accounts and commentary about the Berlin attack and no where do you see any questions about whether it was wise to import a million barbarians...The Pax Americana allowed the West to remain in a state of perpetual adolescence.
Tree went up last weekend. That was our first family Christmas because a daughter will be vacationing in Asia during real Christmas. Our daughters love traveling in Asia.
Still, we have the in-laws for Christmas Eve fish supper and candlelight church, and all the other kids for Christmas Day dinner. I think Christmas Day afternoon will be a good day for a chilly long hike with the puppy if the old guy feels up to it...meaning The Dog - not me.
Christmas Day is not for presents at our house. We specialize in food, drinks, and games. After some beverages, we also like dice games. Also, arguments.
Image via Never Yet Melted. Grammatically correct, but the message is wrong. Good grammar does not compensate for an erroneous message. (Fact check: Spanish actually has a future subjunctive, but not English. Go figger.)
The reason (I surmise) that so many people claim to be spiritual rather than religious is that being spiritual imposes no discipline upon them, at least none that they do not choose themselves. Being religious, on the other hand, implies an obligation to observe rules and rituals that may interfere awkwardly with daily life. Being spiritual-but-not-religious gives you that warm, inner feeling, a bit like whiskey on a cold day, and reassures you that there is more to life—or, at least, to your life—than meets the eye, without actually having to interrupt the flux of everyday existence. It is the gratification of religion without the inconvenience of religion. Unfortunately, like many highly diluted solutions, it has no taste.
Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio quantified just how much private sector experience Trump's picks have: a cumulative 83 years in the private sector vs. 55 years in either government or military (mostly military). By contrast, Obama's first Cabinet had achieved a cumulative of five years in the private sector vs. 122 years in the government or military (mostly government) before joining his incoming administration. Trump's Cabinet is tilted more toward the private sector than any administration in history, and Dalio predicts this may inject into the economy the "animal spirits" that spurred so much growth in the 1980s.
News outlets such as the New York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the National Enquirer. Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional journalism as we once knew it?
The year is winding down and I'm still struggling with the same nonsense I've been dealing with in the office since last August. It is getting worse for a few reasons. But I'm not making a case for the year ending badly. Instead, I've got a different point of view because through these months I've kept a generally positive attitude. After all, there is plenty to be grateful for, and I am looking forward to 2017.
I'll start with politics. This isn't something I'm grateful for, but I'm grateful for learning new ways to deal with the nonsense it represents. In part, I mean the election, though that's minor. I was unmoved by the outcome, but this is NYC and many are still having fits. My new VP decided to start sending a daily email update in which she shares articles and commentary on industry events. Every day includes the latest anti-Trump article. I understand she supported Clinton (I didn't support either major candidate), but I don't care for her bias infecting the workspace. It's unhealthy. I know many people in the office who voted for Trump and don't share her point of view. Neither me or any of them are in a position to say something.
We minimize presents, maximize festivity and games, piano sing-alongs, and being together as a jolly family.
Christmas Eve is a fasting day (meaning, curiously, lots of delicious seafoods). Why God would want that is strange to me, but whatever. For Christmas, we're doing crown roast pork with apple stuffing, roasted root vegetables and Brussel Sprouts, and a Buche for dessert with hot chocolate drizzle.
Is your doctor a commodified technician, or is it a relationship? I was trained that the physician relationship was key to everything we do. Foundational. Oftentimes, when seeing endless streams of patients in charity clinics, we as young docs needed to be reminded about how important we were to them. We were reminded of our priestly role in peoples' lives, that they talked about us and thought about us far more than we did about them.
Today, many of our doctors are impersonal to us, or invisible. You have no relationship with the anesthesiologist (unless her or she lives next door), the pathologist, the Infectious Disease consultant, the radiologist, etc. However, we do have important relationships with our hands-on docs; our Gynecologists, Internists, Pediatricians, even your Orthopedic Surgeon. Certainly Psychiatrists, who are not literally hands-on but are certainly intimate relationships.
You can have it, but it will cost you. In my field of medicine, I am a hold-out against the commodification of medical care and treatment. For me, the relationship is the key, and, in the old priestly way, relationships with my patients also sustain me and educate me in my work. That is the non-monetary reward.
So to all of you patients out there, remember to thank your docs this year. A grateful holiday card is sufficient. A holiday Cheesecake is not necessary.
And Happy Holiday Season to all. This family is heading to the north woods for snow and cold fun for a while, and our holiday festivities. God bless you all.
It's the time of year to remember to say Thank You in a material way. When it's cash, I think $50 is a reasonable token of appreciation around here. Less might constitute an insult. Of course, that depends on where you live. Our general rule is cash for people who work for somebody else, and goodies for people we pay (except for house helpers).
Garbage man - $ Mailman - $ My 4:30 AM regular Dunkin Donuts Hindu immigrant guy - $20 Docs, lawyers, dentists, and accountant - Harry & David fruit Our trainer - special goodies that he likes Our house-cleaner - Mrs. BD let her go quite a while ago...we need a more professional, less intrusive one but it's so hard to find good help these days...
Hope I am not forgetting somebody else important. Am I? I'd give something to the UPS guy, but it's never the same person.
This election didn’t merely expose the failure of six months of campaigning by the Democratic Party. This election exposed the failure of SIX DECADES of leftist propaganda to have any cumulative effect at all.
... low levels of legal immigration are probably a good thing. The people willing to go through all the steps it takes to migrate legally are going to be people who scrupulously observe the law. They are not coming here just to screw it all up for everyone including themselves. Recent legal immigrants tend to be hyper-patriotic for that reason. They take nothing for granted because they had to earn their citizenship. Their presence is a healthy reminder that citizenship has value.
We had a
Tree went up last weekend. That was our first family Christmas because a daughter will be vacationing in Asia during real Christmas. Our daughters love traveling in Asia.
Image via 
Is your doctor a commodified technician, or is it a relationship? I was trained that the physician relationship was key to everything we do. Foundational. Oftentimes, when seeing endless streams of patients in charity clinics, we as young docs needed to be reminded about how important we were to them. We were reminded of our priestly role in peoples' lives, that they talked about us and thought about us far more than we did about them.
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