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.
ObamaCare’s Chickens Come Home to Roost - Democrats, anticipating rage over huge premium increases scheduled for 2017, are already trying to blame Republicans
It was a convention of Moorish design to decorate the heck out of walls, with maybe 5-6' of colorful geometric ceramic tiles from the floor, then rising to the ceiling with intricate carved-looking walls which often have some Koranic verses in them.
This from the Alcazar in Seville:
I learned three things about Moorish upper-wall treatment:
- This is not stone. It is marble plaster. - This is not carved. It is made with molds while the plaster was soft. - These walls, now white, were generally painted originally so it must have been jewel-like. It reminds me that Greek statues and columns, and even the statues of saints etc. on the outside of Gothic cathedrals, were also painted.
This is my pic of a plaster wall in the palace in the Alhambra.
Like many young people, I was charmed by Buber's book as a late teen. As I mature, I learned that relationships are far from binary and that all exist on some spectrum of intimacy, from zero to the excessive. Really, how many people does anybody want to be emotionally intimate with?
David Brooks somehow tries to connect the Buber view with the politics of today and produces pure silliness. "Thous at every level"? Please, enough with the sanctimony. This is politics, which is war at every level.
Much of higher ed consists of trade schools of sorts - as in business or accounting majors, computer science majors, nursing, performing arts, engineering, etc. Another big part of higher ed is civilizational transfer with little practical work application.
I like trade schools and I like apprenticeships. Many entry level jobs are in fact apprenticeships even if not labeled as such.
There was no official recognition that the calls to have us fired could be seen as illiberal or censorious. By affirming only the narrow right to air my views, rather than helping the community to grapple with its intense response, an unfortunate message was made plain: Certain ideas are too dangerous to be heard at Yale.
The Hillary/Bill fortune — generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary’s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies — hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money. The Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer.
We ate a lot of tapas in Spain, partly because dinnertime there (9 pm) is a bit late for us. Also, we kept trying to find some really good ones. I concluded that none of them are all that tasty except with wine or beer, and we were not drinking booze. It's bar food. An exception was the tapas at the Madrid Ritz, but those were about 20 euros each instead of the normal 3 euros each.
I think we only did 2 real dinners, on the fancy side. At one, I had bacalao and at the other, suckling pig. Both excellent.
We broke the rule of Foods to Avoid in Spain, partly just because we wanted to see how they did it. We tried paella twice, once as a media ration with tapas and one shared for lunch. The latter was ok with squid, octopus, mussels, etc, but I just don't get the big deal about paella.
I also had to try a gazpacho, as in my pic along with some tapas. This one was creamy and delicious. We did try Salmorejo in Cordoba. Disgusting stuff, we agreed.
Anyway, the fun part of tapas is deciding which ones to try. That plate in the middle was fried eggplant. Not delicious at all - but it should be. Pic is the outdoor cafe at the Parador de Grenada.
I have not met Gerard but I feel like I sort-of know him. Naturally, I do not like him because he is more clever than I am, and a gifted writer. Reading that confession reminded me that this was perhaps just the first time he was saved from imminent death. The second time was when his heart (again) gave out on a sidewalk where he was rescued by passers by.
"I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself – that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can’t make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of."
We took the high-speed AVE train from Madrid to Seville. 310 k/hr, smooth as silk, utterly quiet, large comfy seats, and with stewardesses serving drinks and snacks. Just one stop, in Cordoba. Reservations are required because these trains are always sold out.
Later, we took the same train north to Cordoba.
Madrid train station. It even has a turtle pond.
Andalusian countryside from the train. It is dry, and 90% olive orchards.
... going to your school’s Halloween party wearing pants embroidered with sailboats, carrying a gin-and-tonic, and wearing a name tag that says “Chip” or “Muffy” while spouting off-color jokes about Catholics, Jews, Negroes, Homosexuals and Communists trivializes the 400 years of toil it took our ancestors to build a life for us in suburban Connecticut.
A big thank you to Roger and Bruce for keeping the daily linkies flowing here at Maggie's. Y'all deserve some Reeses's cups tonight. Steal them from the brats when they fall asleep.
Sad about Norcia, one of our favorite villages in Italy. We got an email last night from our friends, the monks of Norcia (Benedictines), that they are all ok and have moved into their mountain quarters.
The meteor that just slammed into the Clinton campaign thanks to the FBI
is one of those events that is both wildly entertaining, but also a bit
baffling.
I told my father-in-law tonight (a darn good sport to take care of our pup for 12 days) that the high point of our trip was the High Mass Sunday morning a week ago at the Seville Cathedral, the largest cathedral in the world. Second was probably seeing the gigantic Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado. I did not realize that this altarpiece is about 12' wide and 6' high.
Delightful surprises were encountering two dear old couple friends by complete serendipity. First was a couple we have known from church and many other things. Mrs. BD said, as we were having cafe con leche in the garden cafe of the Parador de Granada (which is inside the walls of the Alhambra) "You won't believe this, but I think the ___s are sitting over there." They were two tables away. Good fun. Plus their room at the Parador was next to ours. The other one was Friday when we were having high tea in the garden at the Madrid Ritz. One of my closest pals and long-time confidantes ambled over past the fountain and said how fitting it is to run into the Bird Dogs having tea at the Ritz. I love things like that.
Anyway, we managed to catch two flamenco shows at tiny little venues in Seville. This was one (approximately) of the performances we saw at the Flamenco Museum. Good luck finding that amongst the crazy maze of medieval alleys where the phone GPS won't work. The dancing is mostly improv. The clapping styles are remarkable. Very strange, emotional stuff. Ole.
He was a prolific and graceful author too. A quote from the article:
Olmsted was thirty-six when his plan for Central Park was accepted, and he had no formal training in landscape architecture. Nor had anyone else, for at that time, parks were laid out by architects, gardeners, or surveyors. Up to that point, he had led a highly erratic life, filled with false starts and brave experiments that make for fascinating biography. Fortunately, there are two very good ones, one by Laura Wood Roper (1973) and another by Witold Rybczynski (1999), and they demonstrate that one cannot make sense of the second half of Olmsted’s life without understanding the first.
19:1 He entered Jericho and was passing through it.
19:2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.
19:3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.
19:4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.
19:5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today."
19:6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
19:7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."
19:8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much."
19:9 Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.
19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."
Why Do Millennials Hate Groceries? Because they prefer chips from CVS and going out to restaurants. 
Male birth control study 
