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.
13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
13:3 Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured.
13:4 Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept undefiled; for God will judge fornicators and adulterers.
13:5 Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for he has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you."
13:6 So we can say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?"
13:7 Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
13:15 Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.
13:16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
Thanks to readers for comments on the exercise diet and weight gain issue. I am digesting, as it were, the idea that I need to eat more. That will have to mean 5-6 small meals/snacks per day because I am rarely hungry despite my weigh training plus my cardio and calisthenics on "off" days.
My goals with all this, as I have mentioned, are to improve and maintain strength, agility, endurance, and energy in the face of Father Time and the dread apoptosis. While some muscle hypertrophy is inevitable and amusing, wiry strength is more what I want to pursue.
With increasing resistance, you might be able to barely gain, at most, one lb. of muscle mass per month. Doubtful, because even that is a lot unless you live in the gym or in jail. Strength, however, can be increased without much measurable muscle mass.
Cardio and calisthenics, as we have explained, build strength minimally if at all but seem good for agility, endurance, and general athleticism. In other words, worth doing as part of the triad of Resistance, Cardio, and Calisthenics.
With the help of my nutritionally-knowledgeable trainer, we have worked out a nutrition plan for the next 3 months, with the goal of gaining 2 useful lbs per month (possibly - but doubtful - 1 of muscle, and 1 of fat - can't gain one without the other unless you are already overweight) while upping my carb intake to speed exercise recovery and to increase energy. To be a good client, I will do my best with something like the below, but I will take a several weeks to work up to this much daily volume ( the "/" means "or"):
- After morning work-out, a 20- gm protein 200 cal. shake or 2 scrambled eggs with tomato and cheese - Mid-morning, a banana/handful of Greek olives/half an apple, and a small glass of whole milk (I can't drink a large glassful) - Mid-day, a slice of meat/hard-boiled egg, and an avocado/cup or so of vegetables with salt and olive oil - Mid-afternoon, peanut butter on a slice of toast/some cheese and crackers/some yogurt with berries/some cottage cheese - Supper, a couple of slices of meat or equivalent, a tater/rice/bread, a veggie or salad, maybe a little ice cream or other dessert.
We'll see whether this experiment works to gain 5-6 lbs of red meat by November. I am skeptical. If I gain in the waist, it's a no-go because my trousers fit fine now.
Because there is no evidence that education dollars correlate with schools' success. Rich schools are not the "best" schools, but kids in schools in more prosperous districts tend to perform best because kids perform best in areas where the parents tend to have their act together.
It's the kids that make a school look "good", not the school itself. Teachers want to teach but not all kids are interested in this project. For example, in my state student performance correlates almost exactly to the average town income, regardless of per pupil expenditures (which tend to be highest in "low-performing" urban schools). Thus the "best schools" are in solidly middle-to-upper-middle class, homogeneous towns with no new immigrants, no out of wedlock kids, and minimal social dysfunction.
Schools do not "perform." Kids perform, or not.
Education does not cost too much. Just ask any home-schooler, or any Charter School.
They come in many different color morphs, sometimes rings and sometimes splotches so they can be confusing.
They seem to like forest edges and will hang out in old barns, garages, and buildings. The last two I've seen in Massachusetts had been hiding under old piles of boards outside the barn abd the garage. They are mainly nocturnal hunters.
I always wonder how snakes find their mates in the Spring.
Controlled harvesting of eastern America's Diamondback Terrapin continues today. It's a wonder to me, because I know nobody who eats them. This handsome turtle of salt marshes and brackish estuaries lives from MA to Texas, but is endangered in some states.
They eat snails, small mollusks, and crustaceans like crabs and fiddler crabs that they crush with their beaks. Fish, if they can catch 'em. They only leave the water to lay eggs. They sometimes get ensnared in crab pots and drown.
Whenever we went to Chinatown when I was young, I would always bring a box and some money to buy as many of the terrapins that I could afford from the big crates full of them on the sidewalk. I think they were $5 apiece. I would release them in a couple of good salt marshes in CT. My Dad would chip in a bit for the cause.
Readers know we love our turtles at Maggie's, except we do not love Snapping Turtles. I once stepped on the back of one in a marsh, thinking it was a mossy rock. Big surprise when it moved and a long neck with an open, hissing mouth shot out. It's time I did a post on them, though, unloveable as they are.
- For starters, the view from our deck (photo above)
- Our pup, despite age, is still able to fully enjoy exploring the salt marshes and Cape Cod woods. Half-blind and deaf, but nose still works well. For the first time, we would not let him swim with us. His arthritis is terrible and his athletic endurance is limited. He would probably drown.
- While hiking on the Audubon land, we were lucky to come across the hatching of a nest of Diamondback Terrapins. 12 tiny ones pushing up through the sand at the same time. A first, for me. They emerge from the sand, blink a few times, then scamper for cover as if their life depended on it. Which it does. I took photos, but my camera died before I could download them. A dead Lumix with quite a few good pics in its memory. Maybe I can get them from the memory card.
- Wild highbush blueberries. Blueberries are native to North America. There are two wild forms, the lowbush types of the far north and the highbush of more temperate climates. Wild highbush berries are less than half the size of commercial berries, and darker, sometimes almost black. Somebody is farming wild highbush. Expensive. Taste brings me back to my youth of berry-picking in the woods. Mom tied strings through holes in metal coffee cans, painted our names on them, put the strings over our necks and sent us out to fill the cans. We had to let the little sibs climb on our backs to reach the high berries.
- Outdoor calisthenics in salty air and piney woods. About one hour, every morning at 630 or 7. Best way to begin a day of physical activity.
- A car. Friends visited with their older Audi S4 with a V8. Now I want one. Makes a fine sound.
- Blueberry pancakes at The Lighthouse, and dozens of Wellfleet Oysters everywhere we ate. At least 6 dozen, probably more. And the Steamers and Lobster festive supper I made for Mrs. BD's birthday party. Always good to have so much family around. Always buy large lobsters.
- With ocean temps pushing the high 60s, you could body surf until fatigued. Nothing better. Some Great Whites around, but the lifeguards let you know when they spot them. Heck, they would probably grab a little kid out there before they would grab you...
This is a rattler of the central US, ranging from Ontario to Mexico and generally preferring grasslands and marshes. I have never seen one, but I have never searched for snakes in the central US. However, I once came across a DeKay's Snake in central Ohio on a hike. Took a photo. The field biologist said they had never been recorded in central Ohio so I guess I made history in a small way.
Have you ever seen a Massasauga? This guy is well-camouflaged in the grasses. It is good not to be a mouse.
Many thanks to Roger de Hauteville, King of Sicily, for filling in with the morning posts last week. It was a welcome and refreshing change of pace from my usual bla bla bla.
College Profs Admit Affirmative Action Is Failing Students, Get Called Racist
Re-linking E.O. Wilson's wonderful essay Trailhead. He begins:
The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them. She lay there, in fact, as though nothing had happened. She had become a perfect statue of herself. While humans and other vertebrates have an internal skeleton surrounded by soft tissue that quickly rots away, ants are encased in an external skeleton; their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain, a knight’s armor fully intact long after the knight is gone. Hence the workers were at first unaware of their mother’s death. Her quietude said nothing, and the odors of her life, still rising from her, signalled, I remain among you. She smelled alive.
A terrible storm came into a town and local officials sent out an emergency warning that the riverbanks would soon overflow and flood the nearby homes. They ordered everyone in the town to evacuate immediately.
A faithful Christian man heard the warning and decided to stay, saying to himself, “I will trust God and if I am in danger, then God will send a divine miracle to save me.”
The neighbors came by his house and said to him, “We’re leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us!” But the man declined. “I have faith that God will save me.”
As the man stood on his porch watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a canoe paddled by and called to him, “Hurry and come into my canoe, the waters are rising quickly!” But the man again said, “No thanks, God will save me.”
The floodwaters rose higher pouring water into his living room and the man had to retreat to the second floor. A police motorboat came by and saw him at the window. “We will come up and rescue you!” they shouted. But the man refused, waving them off saying, “Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me!”
The flood waters rose higher and higher and the man had to climb up to his rooftop.
A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder. A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man, "Grab my hand and I will pull you up!" But the man STILL refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. “No thank you! God will save me!”
Shortly after, the house broke up and the floodwaters swept the man away and he drowned.
When in Heaven, the man stood before God and asked, “I put all of my faith in You. Why didn’t You come and save me?”
And God said, “Son, I sent you a warning. I sent you a car. I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you a helicopter. What more were you looking for?”
13:10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.
13:11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.
13:12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment."
13:13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
13:14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day."
13:15 But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?
13:16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?"
13:17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
Not really a triptych, a polyptych. Friends took a train over from Amsterdam last week to take a look at it. They said Ghent had lots of creepy-looking immigrants but that it was worth the trip.
Thanks to readers for comments on the exercise diet and weight gain issue. I am digesting, as it were, the idea that I need to eat more. That will have to mean 5-6 small meals/snacks per day because I am rarely hungry despite my weigh training plus my cardio and calisthenics on "off" days.
Do not kill 
Did this teen pregnancy prevention program
A fellow turtle-lover send me this discouraging article about the 
When It Comes to Sex, 
Pic: Me and my brother-in-law last week, taking a dip in Herring Pond, Wellfleet. Not easy to find that pond. 
Re-linking E.O. Wilson's wonderful essay