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.
Charles Krauthammer, MD, gets it. He always did. Our money- and power-greedy government has always drooled over the idea of control of medical care because so much emotion and money is involved. Votes, power, control.
Believe me, personal care does not lie in the future. At that point, I will give up. I will give up charity care too, if there is any of it left. I did not enter Medicine to be an employee or a peon. If that is what the people want, they can have it.
For me, it's a calling but I will not do it as a government peon.
As we head into Spring with snow still on the ground and snow predicted for tomorrow, here's what I'm seeing here in Yankeeland:
Carolina Wren Cardinal Tufted Titmouse Chicadees Mourning Dove Red Wing Blackbird Cowbirds Purple Grackle Song Sparrow Downy Woodpecker White Throated Sparrow still some Juncos Robins in flocks, mostly males lots of Golden Crowned Kinglets Blue Jay Sharp Shinned Hawks Mockingbird House Finches Goldfinch White-Breasted Nuthatch Canada Geese on the move, overhead
As my brother and I were beginning to clean out the parents' garage, at my Dad's request, yesterday, we found 8 wren and Bluebird houses. I'll put a few up here at the HQ, and the rest at the farm on my next trip up. We have a large Bluebird contingent up there but they have to compete with the Tree Swallows for the nest boxes. Birds compete for housing, just like people.
Accelerated Learning Would Add Trillions of Dollars in Wealth - If students could complete their
education a year faster, the many benefits would include increased
personal wealth, decreased government spending, and more sustainable
entitlement programs.
When Bill O’Reilly and John Stossel discussed affirmative action for
conservative professors, as they did this past December, did they
believe that it would inspire more 22-year-olds on the right to apply
for graduate study in Princeton’s English department, which tells
prospective students that “we offer a wide range of theoretical
specializations in fields such as feminist theory, gender studies,
psychoanalysis, Marxism, New Historicism, environmental studies,
political and social theory, and cultural studies”?
If psychotherapists "screw up" their children any more than anybody else, I haven't seen the data. (My own kids, BTW, are perfect.) Biggest issue with parenting these days? Trying to be friends with the young. They can be pals when they grow up and achieve independence but, until then, make your own friends.
It's a perennial topic, however. If therapist-types do, I think it comes from being over-attentive, over-protective, overly-empathic, and not respecting kids' resilience and adaptability. How Therapists Screw Up their Children.
It's important for therapist-types to put their work hat on before work, and to take it off after work.
Trust me, you folks around the world who want to sneak into the USA. We are an evil, Capitalist, heartless, war-mongering, carbon-spewing, gun-shooting, drug-abusing, poverty-ridden, sex-obsessed, Big Gulp-drinking, obese, poorly-educated, sexist, racist and zenophobic country that nobody would want to be a part of. There are no jobs here, and the place is crawling with Jesus Freaks, drunk cowboys with guns, communists, weird transgender people and weird mass-murderers armed with AK-47s and bombs. Don't believe the marketing hype about freedom and opportunity, because they are disappearing fast.
Just ask any American college professor how bad we are, and how unfair and harsh life is here. They will tell you the truth. Most Americans, I am sure, would leave if they could only find a way to get away to a better, kinder, and more peace-loving country. You would hate it here. Try China or India instead, or Mexico, Scotland, Russia, Iceland, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Italy, or maybe Australia.
I’m a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone; I’m a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own; I’m a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly sheep; I love to sit and bay the moon, to keep fat souls from sleep.
I’ll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet, A sleek dog, a meek dog, cringing for my meat, Not for me the fireside, the well-filled plate, But shut door, and sharp stone, and cuff and kick, and hate.
Not for me the other dogs, running by my side, Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide. O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best, Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!
Made another Ribollita for Dad tonight (photo). Will deliver tomorrow - these things are always much tastier a day later. My ol' Yankee Dad loves Italian peasant comfort food.
I used a different recipe this time for the Ribollita. These greens are half Kale and half chopped cabbage, plus the whites of two leeks. I pureed about 1/3 of the Canellini beans, and had to use plenty of chicken stock to keep it from being too thick. Water would be purist but I like flavor, and I throw all chicken bones in the freezer for whenever I need to make chicken stock. Or I make it and freeze it.
There's over 1/2 cup of olive oil in there, and pretty much all the rest of the (frozen) Thyme I could find in the icy garden. Plenty of garlic, onion, celery, carrot, of course. Large can of crushed tomatoes - maybe a little too much.
Cheap and delicious, and fun to make. It is difficult to over-use thyme in soups and stews. That's where the "savoury" comes from.
Serve on top of small 1"-cube chunks of preferably-stale Italian or French bread in a soup bowl. A glass of Chianti Classico Riserva. Then take a nap.
Over the transom, with info from the Mayo Clinic cardiologists -
How many folks do you know who say they don't want to drink anything before going to bed because they'll have to get up during the night!!
Heart Attack and Water
Something else I didn't know ... I asked my Doctor why do people need to urinate so much at night time. Answer from my Cardiac Doctor - Gravity holds water in the lower part of your body when you are upright (legs swell). When you lie down and the lower body (legs and etc) seeks level with the kidneys, it is then that the kidneys remove the water because it is easier. This then ties in with the last statement!
I knew you need your minimum water to help flush the toxins out of your body, but this was news to me. Correct time to drink water... Very Important. From A Cardiac Specialist!
Drinking water at a certain time maximizes its effectiveness on the body: 2 glasses of water after waking up - helps activate internal organs.
1 glass of water 30 minutes before a meal - helps digestion 1 glass of water before taking a bath - helps lower blood pressure 1 glass of water before going to bed - avoids stroke or heart attack
I can also add to this... My Physician told me that water at bed time will also help prevent night time leg cramps. Your leg muscles are seeking hydration when they cramp and wake you up with a Charlie Horse.
Subject: Mayo clinic aspirin
Dr. Virend Somers, is a Cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic, who is lead author of the report in the July 29, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Most heart attacks occur in the day, generally between 6 A.M. and noon. Having one during the night, when the heart should be most at rest, means that something unusual happened. Somers and his colleagues have been working for a decade to show that sleep apnea is to blame .
1. If you take an aspirin or a baby aspirin once a day, take it at night. The reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour "half-life"; therefore, if most heart attacks happen in the wee hours of the morning, the Aspirin would be strongest in your system.
2. FYI, Aspirin lasts a really long time in your medicine chest for years, (when it gets old, it smells like vinegar).
Something that we can do to help ourselves - nice to know. Bayer is making crystal aspirin to dissolve instantly on the tongue. They work much faster than the tablets.
Why keep Aspirin by your bedside? It's about Heart Attacks -
There are other symptoms of a heart attack, besides the pain on the left arm. One must also be aware of an intense pain on the chin, as well as nausea and lots of sweating; however, these symptoms may also occur less frequently.
Note: There may be NO pain in the chest during a heart attack.
The majority of people (about 60%) who had a heart attack during their sleep did not wake up. However, if it occurs, the chest pain may wake you up from your deep sleep.
If that happens, immediately dissolve two aspirins in your mouth and swallow them with a bit of water.
Afterwards: - Call 911. - Phone a neighbor or a family member who lives very close by. - Say "heart attack!" - Say that you have taken 2 Aspirins. - Take a seat on a chair or sofa near the front door, and wait for their arrival and ...DO NOT LIE DOWN!
I have no idea. I prefer Bach to Beyonce. In fact, never listened to the latter despite being a hip youngish New Yorker. Here's the argument: Can Republicans Close the Pop Culture Gap?
Just curious, but how does Obama have so much time to watch TV and to listen to tunes? I find no time for TV. Not that that bothers me very much but I spose it would matter if I were running for office.
Tried it a few times with my Mom as a lad. Scary and exhilarating. We had a local hunt club. We had a member die on a hunt (overhead branch). Broken bones galore, of course.It sucks to fall off a galloping horse.
Think Ethanol is Environmentally Friendly? Think Again.
When I hear free-spending national leaders call for more infrastructure investment, I think of Detroit’s absurd People Mover monorail gliding above empty streets. That’s unfair, I know. Yet the city’s epic tragedy, which entered a new stage last week when Mayor Dave Bing lost financial control, provides broader perspective on the potential consequences of mixing economic distress with bad policy making.
The Decline of Marriage and the Rise of Unwed Mothers: An Economic Mystery. The real question here isn't "Why so many babies?" It's "Why so few marriages?" And we have an answer.
As we say here, building a complex life with social pleasures, financial stability, family structure with continuity, traditions, and reliability, and the general comforts of life, is difficult without marriage and family.
To understand the now-antique Liberal/Progressive mind set in America, we must go back at least to the turn of the last century. Around 1910, Walter Weyl was all the rage - the new, new Coke.
At the time, the Western world was excited by utopian ideas about everything being run by brilliant, virtuous, and omniscient overseers who aspired to unburden us common folk of freedom, risk, and excessive responsibilities.
“We are beginning to see that we can moralize, we can socialize the trusts, and can build more widely upon the economic tendencies of the age…the end of it all must be production on the largest scale compatible with efficiency, but a production so regulated as to ownership, stock issues, dividends, prices, wages, and profits as to safeguard the whole community. Unless we are to take the saltum mortale [dangerous undertaking] of a complete and immediate governmental ownership and operation of all large industries, we must work out a more perfect system of corporation control in the interest of society.”
As most Maggie's readers know, individual freedom is not about "the greater good," nor is it about the State. It's about individual sovereignty.
The lady advice columnist suggests she might need therapy for wanting to wait for sex a few weeks with a new date. I'm sure the fellows would heartily agree...
It's the time of year for trip planning. A bit early to think about fall hunting, but spring and summer plans are on the menu.
For no reason that I can comprehend, Mrs. BD likes to go places with just me. I enjoy including the kids and giving them special life treats as did my parents for me, and their companionship and getting to know them better as they unfold is a joy.
She has gotten a little carried away, and now has things in the pipeline for 2014 too, God willing.
She has scheduled Little St. Simon's Island in April to catch migration season (to please me), a kid's graduation mini-trip, and the annual family reunion week in Wellfleet in August (for the first time, sadly without Mom but, I hope, with all of the immediate and extended family).
For fall, I dunno.
Before I get old, my short-term (3-yr) bucket list includes:
- a good-sized villa (5-8 bedrooms) in Tuscany for 2 weeks with enough room for the entire family and dearest friends, with a cook and housekeeper (they all come with that anyway) and rental cars for all. I am saving up for that, but it's not really too expensive. As much as I love Umbria and enjoy Sicily, the family all deserve more time in Tuscany. Well, my kids are lucky. They've been everywhere.
- More Sicily. Rent a sports car, drink a little Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Rosso, then drive all over with my cowboy hat and a history text and ignore the speed laws like everybody else. Try to frighten the Mrs. with speed, but that is difficult to do. She likes speed too.
- a barge trip through southern France with the inlaws and family. Dad's a bit too feeble for this now, but he already took plenty of these with my Mom.
- I need to get back to Pine Butte in Montana soon, maybe next Spring for wildflower bloom and Grizzly Bears,
- and to Big Sky in the winter before my joints begin to creak. I need new skis.
- Bermuda again, for a romantic 5 days (we like Cambridge Beaches - they call it luxurious but it is only luxurious by British standards)
- Another Holland-America Line cross-Atlantic trip, as we used to do when I was young. I love the North Atlantic stormy days on a ship.
- Another Holland-America Line history cruise
What's on the top of Mrs. BD's bucket list? A week down the coast of Turkey on a gulet. I would love to get back to Turkey again.
Carpe diem, friends, because memories are all we have of lasting value, and memories rarely include our daily routines and chores. Even if they should, so much of it just blends together.
Carolina Wren
Made another Ribollita for Dad tonight (photo). Will deliver tomorrow - these things are always much tastier a day later. My ol' Yankee Dad loves Italian peasant comfort food.
How they disarmed our British cousins.
To understand the now-antique Liberal/Progressive mind set in America, we must go back at least to the turn of the last century. Around 1910, Walter Weyl was all the rage - the new, new Coke.
Sorry, greenies. 
It's the time of year for trip planning. A bit early to think about fall hunting, but spring and summer plans are on the menu.