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.
Well, maybe not so much sojourn as it was 'passing through', but we did spend some time in both. I wish I could say we took in the sights, did a trail hike, maybe a Pink Jeep tour, stood in a vortex, watched the crazy BMX bikers on those thin Sedona trails, and ate at fine dining establishments. When you travel with seven people in rented van and you've got a schedule to stick to, you have to forego some of the finer things.
My goal was to get a feel for the Grand Canyon and Sedona for a longer trip in the future, while being able to see some of the impressive natural (and man-made) wonders that abound.
Sedona was stunning. Visually moving. It is not nearly as awe-inspiring as the Grand Canyon, it's just very pretty. The trip up 89A through smaller canyons, up switchbacks, along Oak Creek (which was full of swimmers and sunbathers) on our way to Williams, was full of even more nature's grandeur.
One of the grave errors of the modern mind – an error found in America in the presumptions, assertions, and actions of “Progressives” from Woodrow Wilson through Barack Obama – is the belief that society must, or should, be engineered. This principal belief naturally entails the subsidiary beliefs that the engineering must be done by the state, and that in doing its engineering the state must ignore, or even destroy, any forces of social organization that hamper state-officials’ social-engineering efforts.
A great deal of legislation and, especially, law in a free society is inevitably inconsistent with the blueprints of social engineers. And so, in their unreflective and unscientific presumption that society has no self-organizing forces, the social engineers are blind to the logic of the law and to the importance of legal processes. The social engineers therefore do not see – because their blindness prevents them from seeing – the benefits that emerge over time through the operations of decentralized, spontaneous-ordering forces. The social engineers’ designs and intrusions destroy, or at least severely weaken, these forces. But being blind to these forces, the social engineers are blind to what they destroy.
Our niece recently had a child, and my in-laws decided it was time to go meet their great-grandchild. It became a family event, as 5 of us flew from various locations to our niece's home in Arizona. We rented a van and took the 8 week old on her first grand family adventure, spending a weekend traveling through Sedona, up to Williams, and taking the Grand Canyon Railroad up to see the big dig.
A friend of mine recently posted a picture on Facebook of an old church in Europe, commenting "I wish we had old things like this here in the U.S." My tongue-in-cheek reply was "We do! The Grand Canyon is much, much older." It's also much more beautiful, in my opinion.
This was my first trip to the Grand Canyon, and I enjoyed it immensely. There isn't much to say that hasn't already been said. I'll toss in a few pictures of Sedona and the Grand Canyon, but pictures simply can't capture the grandeur.
The bigger, wealthier, more powerful and more intrusive government becomes, the more citizens tend to feel like little people, rolled over by a distant, indifferent steam roller. Proud, patriotic, tax-paying citizens of a free republic do not like to feel that way. Beneficiaries of the machine don't care.
My trainer is moving me into a new phase, a new program today. Says it's almost Spring, so it's time to build a Beach Body so the gals will notice me again (being facetious, of course). Plus I have been at this now for 10 months, 5-6 days/week, so my muscles are as awake as they will ever be.
He plans each work-out in advance. He is programmatic, systematic.
Today was a 3-min elliptical warm-up, then
- 3 sets leg press, medium-rep - 3 sets weighted squats, low rep - 3 sets of approx 100 singles jump rope - 3 sets skull-crushers, hi-rep - 3 sets military press, medium rep - 2 sets standing curls, one hi rep and one low rep - 2 sets each of leg extension, leg curl, leg adduction, leg abduction - all high-rep to burn
No pain, no gain. (reps refers to weight and intensity - high rep means you can pull out 12-15 max, low rep means you can pull out 2-8. If you can do more than 15, need to increase the resistance)
All of that leg stuff should have been condensed into 20 mins of dead lifts, but I need a bit more leg work to advance my deads. Not stable enough at higher weights due to skinny legs and skinny white ass. Deads on Friday morning I think. The goal remains to reach just a handful of heavy strength-building exercises 2 days/wk (half of them each time so each muscle group is pushed to the max weekly), plus heavy calisthenic days or cardio days between for general fitness.
He gave me a new cardio program too, for my off days. Will describe that in another post.
I keep thinking that, if I were a furniture mover, I'd get paid for this toil.
Do people outside the US pursue this sort of thing?
Instead of beginning at South Ferry, we're thinking about beginning somewhere in the Lower East Side, heading north thru Murray Hilll, cutting across to Central Park South and doing a hike through the entire length of Central Park to Harlem, and after that we're not sure. Might be fun to continue up Broadway, lunch in some Dominican joint in Washington Heights, all the way to the Cloisters, but that all might take too long.
These are fun outings. We had a nice turn out last time - filled 3 tables in Little Italy for lunch.
Need good shoes. We'll post details as soon as we settle them, and invite all interested hikers.
Brown Turkey used to be the toughest, but even it sometimes died here with a bad winter. With the Chicago Hardy, worst case is it dies to the ground but recovers rapidly from the roots and produces that summer. Hardy to Zone 5
Up north, figs tend to grow as shrubs rather than trees, reason being winter die-back. It doesn't matter. They produce a lot of fruit all summer given good loam, a little fertilizer, and plenty of sun. Mulch and water, especially the first year.
When ripe, pick 'em and eat them when hot from the sun.
Though I intend to vote for the GOP nominee, each new round of appalling idiocy by that vulgar human troll doll tests my resolve. But as much as we wish to focus on the flawed messenger, the problem is that we have refused to heed the message he has adopted (and which I have little doubt he will abandon if elected). It’s not the illegals who are living in the shadows; it’s our own base, the guys and gals who got the short end of the globalization stick. The vast majority of Trump’s supporters are good people who we have let down, and as free agents in the political free market they have found someone who saw a need and is filling it.
They aren’t going away; we need to reintegrate them.
All sorts of people like Donald besides the victims of globalization
You can't really obtain a sturdy, zero-maintenance dwelling or storage building cheaper than a Quonset Hut. Indestructible steel prefab housing, around $35,000. You put it on a slab.
And if you hate plumbing as much as Sippican does, just build an outhouse out back, near the lilacs.
After WW2, military surplus Quonsets were commonly seen. A family down the road from the farm raised their family in one, but it's been removed for many years. It had a wood stove. After the war, they were widely used as temporary housing for vets. They are easily insulated.
They lack charm other than the rural ugly charm. Sometimes you can see ancient ones on rickety farms in New England used as spare mini-barns or garages.
The US military first had them mass produced on Quonset Point, R.I. Hundreds of thousands of them were built.
Public and private universities in the United States are regulated to the nth degree.
Federal, state, and local higher education laws seem to multiply by the hour. Bureaucrats now dictate campus policies regarding academics, sexual assault, athletics, dining, technology, employment, campus construction, and student health, among other areas. Meanwhile, schools devote millions of dollars and valuable resources to comply with those rules—many of which confuse and do little to improve student outcomes.
A leap of faith. Few if any of these cute fuzzballs will survive to adulthood. Turtles, snakes, hawks. Also, the parents put themselves at high risk to care for them.
No surprise there. When government pays for something, there are usually political angles to it. The only consolation is that nobody but a nitwit would follow government guidelines for anything more than income tax forms. If you can understand them.
As the last snows mostly melt, the soil defrosts a bit, and the blackbirds return, it's time to fertilize flowering shrubs and trees and perennial beds in Yankeeland. Any further snows will be short-lived.
Remember that roots of grasses, perennials, shrubs, and trees begin growing long before green shoots appear. By the time growth appears, it's sort-of too late for plants' spring feeding - especially woody plants. It takes a while for the food to get into the soil, and even longer to get down to the roots and then up into the plant.
Rain is required. I cheat and put Preen on the perennial beds. It's not perfect, but it helps. For shrubs and roses, I use a stick to poke a 6-10" hole near the drip line, and pour some all-purpose fertilizer in there. Just like Jesus' fig tree parable.
If you got too busy to do it in the fall, now is the time. I did my shrubs, roses, gardens, boxwoods, and lawns yesterday, and used up an old bag of Hollytone and an old left-over bag of lawn dolomite (lime) too. I have hollies and hybrid Rhodies in sheltered spots and a few Azaleas too where they are well-protected from winter winds even though we are north of the hybrid Rhodie and Azalea happy zone. North of the Holly zone too, but I love my hollies and the birds do, too.
Heck, I can even get good hardy Crepe Myrtles to thrive here if they are well-sheltered and against the house. Green thumb, or dumb luck? They are well-sheltered, and close to walls and foundations. When they are in bloom up here in August, people wonder what the heck they are because they are a southern shrub/tree.
Need to remember to get my lawns plugged in early June, but I will probably forget to do it because it makes for a week of muddy dog paws on the beds and couches. A hard-packed lawn is an unhappy lawn, and our local tool-rental place rents lawn-pluggers. Fortunately, I decrease our lawn size every time we add a new garden. That's good - but weeding and mulching new gardens is bad. Too hard. In a while I will mulch the heck out of the gardens and let summer do what it will.
Unless they happen to be in the tourist trade or the mini-mart business, the Yankee native does not tend to welcome visitors to his corners of the woods. Maybe this applies to all of small-town USA.
You get the feeling that the old families don't welcome out-of-towners, much less furriners. And whenever they see a New York license plate in town, they worry and grumble. I'm sorry, but it's just the way the folks are: "Please respect our space and our ways and we will try to tolerate yours as long as you keep them somewhere else."
City people might term it parochial, but it's actually a strong sense of proprietorship and protectiveness towards something valuable - "Our town."
I guess we like things as they are, or, preferably, as they were. The old-timers still refer to my place as "Peck's farm," even though old Amos Peck, the fourth generation on that land and a member of a founding family of the town, ascended to his reward in 1932 and his kids sold the old chicken and dairy farm to a dairy farmer down the road who was looking to expand his herd. One wonders whether there is a covert message in it: "You don't really belong there - you are just a transient with a mortgage."
It takes two to three generations at minimum, I think, to get past being a newcomer. To be an old family, I'd guess five generations minimum. (That makes sense to me. It is an indication that your family might be committed to the town, and not just passing by the way people often do these days, viewing land as real estate rather than as a place to anchor for your future generations.)
Yes, it's about different views of land and of "place". Ideally, your ancestors would have helped build our simple 1742 Meeting House/Congregational Church, which remains the only place of worship for seven miles.
I have mentioned in the past that our modest place (which is one component of the abstraction which is Maggie's Farm) abuts the Farmington River in north-central CT, whose happy rippling and sighing I can hear from my pool and from my poolside hammock.
We have eagles, ospreys, Wood Duck, trout (mostly stocked but with some sea-run I think), herring, and maybe soon we will have a return of fishable numbers of migratory Atlantic Salmon, thanks to the fish people. We canoe the river all the time, counting the herons and the Kingfishers, and cleaning garbage from the banks when we find it.
But do not come here. We prefer it quiet and private.
Photo above: A classic Yankee front door-mat. It does NOT apply to Maggie's Farm: you are the visitors that we welcome.
Photo below: Fishing on the Farmington in early morning mist.
The answer that I keep gravitating to is that despite the 4.9 percent unemployment rate, the job market is still pretty weak, and probably malfunctioning in some way. This isn't the only possible answer...
Restoring 
Instead of beginning at South Ferry, we're thinking about beginning somewhere in the Lower East Side, heading north thru Murray Hilll, cutting across to Central Park South and doing a hike through the entire length of Central Park to Harlem, and after that we're not sure. Might be fun to continue up Broadway, lunch in some Dominican joint in Washington Heights, all the way to the Cloisters, but that all might take too long. 
There is a new hardy Fig available nowadays. 
You can't really obtain a sturdy, zero-maintenance dwelling or storage building cheaper than a 
As the last snows mostly melt, the soil defrosts a bit, and the blackbirds return, it's time to fertilize flowering shrubs and trees and perennial beds in Yankeeland. Any further snows will be short-lived.
City people might term it parochial, but it's actually a strong sense of proprietorship and protectiveness towards something valuable - "Our town."
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