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.
Common Loon. After a day chasing grouse and woodcock, and after dinner, it's nice to step out of the cabin by the lake with the pup, a ceegar, and a glass of whiskey to listen to the Loons calling.
In winter, they migrate to salt water, and have their drab non-breeding plumage. Some of these pics show winter plumage.
Had occasion to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge yesterday. Seeing the progress of the new bridge, adjacent to the old, is a thrill. Once in a while a government does something worthy. My only regret is that the bridge does not have rail. It should. I think there is not a single rail bridge over the southern Hudson River, which is odd and unfortunate.
Marc Jacobs is accused of 'cultural appropriation' after sending white models including Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid down the catwalk with fake dreadlocks
Our now-retired pastor was always attentive to angels in our midst. Angels, with the meaning of messengers with holy messages. You can also always wonder about Christ in the Stranger’s Guise.
If we had been civilized, then 9/11 would have been a temporary tragedy. But we had lost the ability to distinguish between ourselves and the barbarians. Out of this loss of confidence, we set out on a missionary expedition to save them by converting them to our faith in democracy. When that failed, we encouraged them to come and convert us to their faith in our inferiority and their superiority.
It has become increasingly clear as the imperatives of political correctness make ever greater inroads against free speech and the perquisites of dispassionate inquiry that the battle against this provinciality of time is one of the central cultural tasks of our age. It is a battle from which the traditional trustees of civilization—schools and colleges, museums, many churches—have fled. Increasingly, it has seemed to us, the responsibility for defending those “intellectual and spiritual foundations of Western civilization” of which George Nash spoke has fallen to individuals and institutions that are largely distant from, when they are not indeed explicitly disenfranchised from, the dominant cultural establishment. Leading universities today command tax-exempt endowments in the tens of billions of dollars. But it is by no means clear, notwithstanding the prestige they confer upon their graduates, whether they do anything to challenge the temporal provinciality of their charges. No, let us emend that: it is blindingly clear that they do everything in their considerable power to reinforce that provinciality, not least by their slavish capitulation to the dictates of the enslaving presentism of political correctness.
Guy Asking Question of Chelsea Clinton (Who Really Ought to Be
Helping Her Deathly Ill Mother Through Her Period of Crisis) but First
Apologizes for Being a Man
"If you find anything in this letter suggestive of unreasoned thinking or judgment, and if it offends or otherwise upsets you, you can report the author to the Bias Response authorities at the University of Vermont."
Pic is my medicine ball on our driveway on Cape Cod
When we leave town, we remain very "active" people, as they say of the middle-aged who are not flabby couch potatoes. We swim, kayak, hike, climb hills and all that, but that is just being "active" and alive. It's not "exercise". Exercise means high stress, high intensity.
In 5 days without stressful exercise, a fit adult begins to lose strength and endurance to a measurable degree. A non-fit adult deteriorates more slowly because there is less to lose.
Hotels and ships all have fairly decent gyms in them, but when you go somewhere quiet with no gym I think 45-60 minutes of early morning calisthenics is the best way to begin an active day. Calis are great for outdoors, even if it's raining, sleeting, snowing, or storming. More fun outdoors.
So, for our beach house "vacations" with the whole family and my in-laws, and all of our sisters and our cousins and our aunts, Mrs. BD and I have a pre-breakfast cali program to prevent any backsliding.
(My sibs, who join us on the Cape with us with their kids, do an early morning biathlon, alternating days between a 16-mile run + a one-mile swim, and a 40-mile bike and a one-mile pond swim. They race each other. They are such strong swimmers that the last time I competed with them in that I came close to drowning. Not exaggerating. They would never have noticed if I sank because I was so far behind the rest of them. Years ago I swam a mile daily but have not done so for many years. Some of my kids will join my sibs, but I will do my Cali program routines mostly on the empty beach or driveway and I could care less whether I look stupid.)
This is maintenance, not building. Also relevant: Unlike weight lifting, calis need no recovery days. All we bring are jump ropes, 10-lb. weights, leg bands, and a medicine ball. Obviously, no medicine ball or weights on airplanes. We do a varied circuit of things like this but never the same item two days in a row. Just keep pushing it until the time is up:
Jumping squats Lunges with weights 20-30 -second wind sprints and 30-second jogs Jump rope Medicine ball slams, and playing hard side-catch with the ball Jumping jacks Squats with overhead weight lifts Burpees and Mountain Climbers Planks Push-ups (or inclined push-ups) Various walks with leg bands High-rep arm lifts with the wts: forward, side, overhead, curls
Your body can only process about 10 gms of protein per hour. More than that goes to poo and pee. Multiple small meals, for you exercisers and especially lifters.
Debunking The Income Inequality Fallacy - In 'Equal is Unfair,' authors Yaron Brook and Don Watkins cut through the dishonesty of the debate over income inequality and extol the virtue of individual effort.
Guardian: Does the left have a future? All over the west, the left is in crisis. It cannot find answers to three urgent problems: the disruptive force of globalisation, the rise of populist nationalism, and the decline of traditional work.
51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
51:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
51:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
51:4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
51:5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
51:6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
51:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
51:8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
51:9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
The Common Snapping Turtle of the Eastern and Central US is indeed common wherever there is mud and water.
Their eyes are like jewels.
Unless you do a lot of pond fishing, these large turtles are most often seen on land, searching for egg sites or seeking a new habitat. Leave them alone.
Orban tendered a dire prediction if Europe continues to accept Muslim immigration. “There will eventually be more Muslims than Christians in Europe as the continent’s non-Muslim population is ill-equipped to fight the coming cultural competition.”
Europe’s progressives rejected Orban's warning. “In a refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, has set himself up as a bulwark against a generous-spirited, pan-European approach,” The Guardian editorialized.
Why should western Europeans listen to Viktor Orban?
If you plant some now (in the northern hemisphere, temperate zone or above), you will have their foliage and purty flowers busting through the snow in Feb or March. Lenten Rose. Happy with deep shade. The more the better. Too bad they are expensive, but good things often are.
Since the Party was the agent of History itself, it could not be mistaken, and so anything the party did was morally right by definition. “Morality is entirely subordinated to the class struggle of the proletariat,” Lenin declared. At the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1924, Trotsky explained:
"Comrades, none of us wishes or is able to be right against his Party. The Party in the last analysis is always right, because the Party is the sole historical instrument given the proletariat for the solution of its basic problems. . . . I know that one cannot be right against the party. It is only possible to be right with the Party and through the Party for history has not created other ways for the realization of what is right."
On a warm day, you can smell its sweetness 10 yards away. A good thing about this tough vine is that it does not spread undereground, which is why I had to destroy the yellow Trumpet Vine I had there before.
Low- functioning men 
Paris, 
Italian immigrants: 
Photo via 
Finocchio (Fennel) grows wild all over Sicily. In late summer to fall, it has its yellow blooms by the roadsides. A delicious flavor, raw or cooked.
Exciting 
The 
Eton 
If you plant some now (in the northern hemisphere, temperate zone or above), you will have their foliage and purty flowers busting through the snow in Feb or March. Lenten Rose. Happy with deep shade. The more the better. Too bad they are expensive, but good things often are. 