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.
Check out some of their 1 million listings. A friend told me that his Maine lakeside cabin has never gone unrented since he began using VBRO. In fact, it has permitted him to raise the weekly rent.
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.
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.
Inside Park has taken over the great hall of St. Bartholomew's Church (St. Bart's) on Park Avenue. Inexpensive, good simple food in a cool location. I have had many jolly lunches there.
AOC near Bleeker St in the West Village. Mrs. BD and daughter rave about it. They say their steak tartare, assembled at your table by server to your specs, is dynamite. Country French, I'd call it.
Despite snow today, we are headed towards early Spring. Northward migrating blackbirds have been passing through - Grackles, Cowbirds, and Redwings. Song Sparrows, scarce in winter, are back. Geese overhead all the time - Snows, Brant, and Canadas moving north from the Atlantic coast. Large flocks of Robins too.
Seen any migrants where you live? (birds, I mean)
(Off topic but re Spring: Snow Peas: St. Paddy's Day is coming. That's when we plant Snow Peas around here, regardless of weather. I have planted them in frozen earth and they still come up.)
There are a number of diseases and disorders which can result in dementia, but Alzhemer's is the most common. It seems to be, basically, progressive brain rot. Its progress can be slow or quick. Dementia is not to be confused with the normal memory loss of aging: "Why did I just walk into this room?" "Where the heck did I put my iPhone?"
I like living in a town where I know all the shopkeepers and even the workers at Dunkin Donuts and my mini-mart gas station. At my 24-hr Dunkin, they make my regular when they see my car pull in. That's nice. My Dunkin franchise is owned by a (Dot not Feather) Indian couple, but mostly served by Pakistani male immigrants. One black American lady works mornings there, and a Mexican guy does the night shift. The one black dude who worked there for about 6 months was fired for stealing from the till.
My gas-mini mart place ("Eat Here and get Gas") is manned by a Haitian, 2 Mexicans, and a Dominican. 4 shifts but they often do double shifts. A nice Mexican gal worked a fill-in shift for a while, but quit because nights were too fatiguing for her with three kids at home. I am friendly with the Mexican guy and the ever-cheerful Haitian guy who is always trying to figure out how to get rich and move to Miami. He is a brother in Christ. I briefly trade life stories for a minute or two with those 2, and they save a left-over Sunday New York Times for me on Monday morning. Free, of course, on Monday.
That Mexican guy has finally gotten off Oxycontin after two years of multiple leg repairs from his job in construction when he was in a ditch when a gas line exploded. Kept working through it all, in pain. He finally feels "pretty good, thank God." He has a noticeable gimp. He is legal, is trying to bring his wife and 2 kids to the US but has trouble paying the immigration lawyer. Has not seen his family for three years, sends them money. He lives in a small apartment with a cousin and brother, and the three share a small rusty 15 year-old Toyota. He is a sweet guy but he knows absolutely nothing about America beyond the citizenship test he had to take. Other than this job, he lives Mexican.
The other day he asked me about the bruises on my jaw. "Dental surgery," I said. "Pain?" he asked. "For a while," I said, "but better now." He said he had a very bad tooth, broke it on a chicken bone. Told me that in Mexico the dentist would pull it for $25 or $50. In the US, $400. and if he needs a root canal, $1200., so he is waiting to deal with it. Dentistry is expensive.
I told him about the couple of dental schools which have free clinics. Also, I told him that most dentists will give you a payment plan if you ask. After all, most people cannot walk in and put $4000 on their credit card, or write a $4000 check from their checking.
Very dangerous school, esp. for women and minorites. Remember its history as a school for white boys who wanted to become scholarly ministers in the Congregational Church. At the time, even scholarly ministers had to learn chemistry, physics, math, Latin, Greek, history, etc.
Who is more personally (not politically) unappealing - Cruz or Hillary! ? Mrs. BD and I were thinking about about which candidates we'd be glad to have as next-door neighbors. We came up with Carson and Bernie. Maybe Kasich. Nothing to do with political preferences.
"It cannot be said too often that in the New Testament, the opposite of sin is not virtue, it is faith. Not only does Paul say as much in Romans 14:23: "all that is not of faith is sin"; his endless insistence that salvation is not by the works of the law but by grace through faith . . . bears witness to the fact that our morals have nothing to do with either our salvation or our damnation. We are saved only because God, immorally, has accepted us while we were yet sinners; and we are damned only if we stupidly (that is, as neither faithful nor wise) insist on rejecting that acceptance by unbelief."
and
"Unfaith is its own punishment. All God ever does is confirm the stupid sentence of alienation it pronounces on itself; all he ever condemns are people who want to be more respectable than he is. . . . The best part of it all is that even your insistence on being a moralistic turkey doesn't matter. Nothing ever matters - nothing ever will matter - but faith."
I entirely get the idea of salvation, transformation through Christ. The idea of eternal life, in any form, holds no special appeal to me: What for? Why?
A modern John Deere tractor with 850 horsepower plays tug of war with an 1800s era steam tractor that has about 18 horsepower. While both are capable of getting an honest day's work done, there is only one that proves its dominance through sheer power.
Sooner or later, most of us are faced with helping make plans for elderly relatives who can't quite manage life any more in their own dwelling, whether because of medical problems and risk, or because of non-severe disabilities.
Mrs. BD and I have been moving her parents into an "Independent Living Senior Community" over the past month. (Ros Chast calls these places The Place, but I call them Old Folk's Homes.) Their new place is a one-bedroom apartment in a Senior complex in a suburban area less than a half-hour from us. The apartment is small, but they get the run of the place with its dining rooms (with 2 fireplaces), library (with fireplace), theater, patios, gym, meeting rooms, outdoor walking paths, etc. Their apartment has a small kitchen, large fancy bath, and a terrace to outdoors. You get three good meals, weekly cleaning and laundry, 24-hr handiman and 24-hr RN on duty. There are music concerts, movies, and good lectures all the time, religious services, plus of course Bingo and Mah Jong and all that. You can keep your car there, or they will drive you anywhere within 15 miles - included. That's all - no personal help unless you hire it on your own (which some residents do). These places are costly, but not necessarily a lot more costly that the cost of running and maintaining one's own home.
The next step, if needed, is Assisted Living. Assisted Living places often have specialized Dementia sections.
And then there are nursing homes, aka Skilled Nursing Facilities. Nobody ever wants to need those except temporarily to recover from something.
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.
Image via
Today's masters of the universe are 