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.
"A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
Ralph Waldo Emerson on Originality. Speak for yourself, Ralph: my rejected genius eludes me.
We are re-building some perennial and shrub beds this fall. No garden is ever finished; most are usually in transformation. Having lost a large old Sugar Maple a few years ago, a shade border has become a full-sun border.
That's an opportunity, but it takes a lot of wheelbarrow and shovel work to prepare the beds (adding manure, peat moss, etc) and to get it planted before a frost - and I have a busy life. Designing a border is the fun part, and Mrs. BD has kindly told me that "It's your turn" to do it. Right now is the time to get the perennials in the ground, and shrubs and perennials planted or transplanted. Real gardeners try to plant in the fall, not in the Spring.
Most perennials can be bought online now for immediate delivery, while the local garden shop may have nothing but mums, asters, and pumpkins.
Part of the fun of design is ensuring early Spring through fall blooms, contrasting textures and heights, harmonious colors in the various bloom seasons, some degree of repetition, some plants which provide structure to the plan, something for winter interest, etc. It's a challenge, even if you are aiming for an informal "cottage garden." It's like painting.
Perhaps later I will list the plants I am putting in, but today just one of them: the late summer and fall-blooming Anemones (my pic from a NYBG border last week).
I had to look up "paraprosdokian". Here is the definition: "Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." "Where there's a will, I want to be in it," is a type of paraprosdokian.
1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience. 2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list. 3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. 4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong. 5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public. 6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left. 7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. 8. Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't. 9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research. 10. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station. 11. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks. 12. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says, 'In case of emergency, notify:' I put 'DOCTOR.' 13. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you. 14. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy. 15. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman. 16. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory. 17. I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn't work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness. 18. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice. 19. Money can't buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with. 20. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away. 21. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure. 22. You're never too old to learn something stupid. 23. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target. 24. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. 25. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. 26. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. 27. A diplomat is someone who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip. 28. Hospitality is making your guests feel at home even when you wish they were. 29. I always take life with a grain of salt. Plus a slice of lime, and a shot of tequila.
Readers know that I have long rejected the notion of a college-level Liberal Arts-focused education as an economic investment. However, I have praised it as a potentially life-enhancing guided exploration more deeply into our culture and into current knowledge than secondary school can do (although good private schools can do it). "Cultivation of the mind" and all that.
In other words, do I do not think of it as utilitarian. (Colleges were designed for scholars and clery - for the cognitive and/ or financially elite.) I learned much in high school and in college which have never provided me with a penny of profit but which I believe have enhanced my life in countless ways: Geology, Statistics, Intro Music History, Ancient Greek History, Russian Lit, etc.
However, when I went to college the ways of learning these things outside college were not as accessible as they are today. The self-informed scholars of the past had to spend hours in libraries, after work, just to try to figure out where to start. Today, you can get the best Music History course in the world from the Teaching Company for $200. and enjoy it at leisure - with no exams.
So we return to my recurrent question: Is Liberal Arts college about job-preparation, for networking, is it a meaningless credential, is it a way to delay adulthood, or is it a guided exploration into our culture and knowledge for the deeply curious and scholarly with high IQ?
In Obama's economy, the reality hits. Plumbers making $70-150/hr make much more money than most recent college grads and lead more independent and entrepreneurial careers. In fact, more than many recently-graduated professionals.
The great Renaissance theologian, zealot, and political reformer, was tortured, hanged, and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence in 1498. The spot where that happened is well-marked in the Piazza.
Botticelli was just one of his famous followers, and supposedly burned some of his own paintings in the Bonfires of the Vanities.
Romney needs to learn that, when confronted by a media horde, you don’t have to answer any of their questions. You say what you want to communicate; the media serves your purpose just by showing up. Believe me, should the press corps start to sense that Romney might win this thing, the tone of their questions is going to change in a hurry, as the courtiers begin jockeying for position and currying favor with a new administration. Running from them, in other words, will not cut it — turning and facing them will.
I remember having had this waiting feeling during the Dole and the McCain campaigns. This game requires cojones.
We commonly read or hear reports to the effect that “If trend X continues, the result will be disaster.” The subject can be almost anything, but the pattern of these stories is identical. These reports take a current trend and extrapolate it into the future as the basis for their gloomy prognostications. The conclusion is, to quote a character from a famous British sitcom, “We’re doomed, I tell you. We’re doomed!” Unless, that is, we mend our ways according to the author’s prescription. This almost invariably involves restrictions on personal liberty...
Is this all simply about fear of Muslims, or do they really believe what they're saying? Regardless, their speech is offensive and should be banned. So should offensive Jihadist speech and the speech of all crazed Left-wing moonbats.
Those are old twin stables, the Scott's and the Beinecke's, in the East Village. Hard to imagine how many stables there were in NYC in 1870. Many converted to modern purposes. The paired red buildings.
I've been inside functioning NYC stables. Usually 3 stories: 1st floor for office, carriages and saddles, horse ramp to second floor with stalls, 3rd floor as a hayloft. Hole in floor of second storey to dumpster below. Perfect firetraps.
Caught a grim play about the Armenian genocide at the Atlantic Theater Co, then grabbed a very early supper at Gemma (335 Bowery St) - acceptable Italian food, great atmosphere, busy bar scene, full of happy, attractive young folks.
In fact, the East Village, the Lower East Side and Alphabet City have undergone an astonishing change in the past 10 years. It's been gentrified by throngs of youth, and they all look good. No dirty hippies or addicts there anymore, or, it seems, many people over 40.
Killing some time before preparing my last meal........that is, the last meal before fasting for Yom Kippur until tomorrow night, I looked for videos about fasting at Youtube. I came across this parody video about the semi-fast imposed on our school children by Michelle Obama. Her "brainchild" is the national school lunch policy, limiting calories and pushing foods that children often don't care for.
Children protest that they are being starved. OK, a bit of exaggeration from the younguns, but not too far off the mark for growing kids and teens' needs. Here's their video:
The creation of a massive diversity bureaucracy to police the faculty for bias against women and URMs can be justified only if there is evidence that the faculty need such policing. No one has yet presented a single example of UC San Diego’s faculty discriminating against a highly ranked female or URM candidate because of skin color or gender. The opposite is of course the case: female and URM Ph.D.s enjoy enormous advantages in the hiring market at UCSD and everywhere else. A professor in the Geosciences Research Division of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose wife is a UCSD “faculty equity advisor,” sent me a self-righteous rebuke for my initial criticism of the new VC for EDI. I asked him if he knew of any instance where a UCSD hiring committee had merely overlooked a top-notch female or URM candidate because the department was not trying hard enough to “diversify.” He responded that the supply of qualified “diversity” candidates was “so low that the policing of faculty . . . is virtually irrelevant.”
Hall Monitors, at $250,000/yr. It reminds me of how every Russian vessel used to have a Political Officer on board.
When I was in high school, there were no choices. Lunch was lunch, but all you could eat. When you're growing and playing sports, you need lots of food and it does not need to be gourmet. They never had desserts at lunch. They had a giant fruit basket if you wanted to take an apple, banana or an orange.
It is no surprise that investigations into voting fraud yield no meaningful results. Why should they? Whoever is looking into it is ignoring the fraud their own party perpetrates, while seeking only the least likely forms employed by their opponent. The idea is to give the perception of doing 'something' about a problem so you look responsive. The hint of a problem is all you need to focus voter attention.
Eric Holder (of all people) once said "You constantly hear about voter fraud...but you don't see huge amounts of voter fraud out there." Maybe. It's unusual a comment of this sort would emanate from Holder. After all, Democrats often claim the Republicans are seeking to disenfranchise voters, and that's just fraud in another format.
Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor. ~C.S. Forester
Maybe politicians are just looking in the wrong place? Fraud is best performed out in the open, where it won't be questioned. Like a magic show. Misdirection and illusion. Paying people to vote, providing transportation to the polls in exchange for votes, blocking access, even having the dead vote are all versions of fraud which are time-honored.
It seems unlikely fraud is happening on a wide scale. But at a local level it could happen fairly frequently, and in ways which are pretty visible. We tend not to question what we see everyday, or that with which we've become comfortable.
With deer fence. Nice garden. Mine is a complete mess right now, needs to be rebuilt. Dad has rows of raised beds, around 10 of them, inside the split-rail fence. One bed is asparagus, one is for my Mom's cut flowers. Peonies, Dahlias, Zinnias, etc.
As the trees have grown and begun to shade, the old folks want me to to come up with my chain saw and do some work. Dad's too old to be safe with a chainsaw, to put it mildly (Korean War vet, Second Lieut., US Army). Well, that's one more source of free firewood, but he needs some too. They have a wood stove in the kitchen. Yankees are cheap and proudly so, but we like to keep things looking orderly and respectable. Never know when the Pastor will stop by.
Maybe I will enlist my men's Bible study group for the job. Maybe my brother and my lad too. We like to do that sort of work, and all of them are young, strong, and enjoy chainsaws and wood-splitting. And we all enjoy doing hard work as a team. Lots of laughs, with beer. "Praise the Lord - the tree didn't fall on the truck." Wait until the ground freezes and I can get a truck back there.
That is happy Autumn Clematis growing on their garden gate.
Late September and early October is the time to re-seed and fertilize your lawns in the temperate zone. At this point, we have weeds, crab grass, holes from skunks and possums digging for grubs, chipmunk holes, wild strawberry infestations, and all sorts of other lawn miseries. (I do not have lawn irrigation - too much lawn to cover.)
Even though, in theory, we encourage minimizing lawn space (except for a good square for Croquet) and pleasant grass walking paths between gardens and borders, we do believe in pleasing, healthy lawn grass as a part of garden design.
Readers know that I have long rejected the notion of a college-level Liberal Arts-focused education as an economic investment. However, I have praised it as a potentially life-enhancing guided exploration more deeply into our culture and into current knowledge than secondary school can do (although good private schools can do it). "Cultivation of the mind" and all that.
The great Renaissance theologian, zealot, and political reformer, was tortured, hanged, and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence in 1498. The spot where that happened is well-marked in the Piazza.
Please, No More Apologies For Free Speech
Late September and early October is the time to re-seed and fertilize your lawns in the temperate zone. At this point, we have weeds, crab grass, holes from skunks and possums digging for grubs, chipmunk holes, wild strawberry infestations, and all sorts of other lawn miseries. (I do not have lawn irrigation - too much lawn to cover.)