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.
And a 15-minute walk to the YMCA and the library. Plus a fairly dense neighborhood where kids can hop on their bike, or just walk down the street, and find tons of kids to hang out with and play ball with. How good is that?
The train would be the New Haven line (NYC to Boston). Fairfield is around an hour and 15 minutes by train to Grand Central Station. Not too bad, especially if you can get work done on the train. A little less time to New Haven. It's part of the "Gold Coast," but this neighborhood is more like Silver. Pricey for what little you get.
The lad and I took our annual journey to the great Pequot Library Book Sale in Southport, CT on Sunday afternoon, then spent a few minutes scouting out the Fairfield real estate (south of the Boston Post Road, near Long Island Sound), just for giggles - but thinking as investors.
With all of the amazing amenities, one might think these neighborhoods near the beaches would be charming as heck. They are not. They are mostly post-war, poorly-built and poorly-designed with lots of split-levels and other charmless ticky-tacky stuff, built on small lots on marsh fill and thus subject to flooding during big storms. But that's the price you pay to walk to the beach. Laws would not permit such wetlands construction today.
My lad says that post-war neighborhoods are rarely gentrified, or spruced-up, due to lack of charm and construction quality. Because of the local amenities and conveniences, the land here is worth about the same with house or without. It's mostly 1/4-acre lots, some less. That means the houses are what are termed "scrapers": the house adds no, or minimal, value to the lot. In fact, the cost of demolition detracts from the value. Those lots are valuable with or without a functional house - around $450-800,000, and well over a million post-scraping and rebuilding. As a result of the near-zero value of the building, many of them are not well-maintained or improved up to modern standards.
Only a few of them have been scraped and replaced by 3-story houses of indeterminate, ungainly style. (Due to setback requirements, you have to build up to 3 stories to get the square footage people want today.)
When people realize their houses are hopeless scrapers, they stop putting money into them and thus make the neighborhood - and themselves - look scruffy, dilapidated, or dysfunctional. Often, they are best off renting the darn thing. Here's an example of one below, a snout house I suppose, which has had nothing done since 1958 except paint. Landscaping, I think, by Home Depot. With a little effort in that department, it could look like a fairly good starter house or retirement shelter. An American flag over the entry, and some interesting landscaping, would add a lot to this basic dwelling without scraping it off.
(By the way, I hate those set-back zoning rules. Stupid. Houses could have friendly porches right off the street, and larger back yards for gardening, etc., without them. People making zoning rules are usually idiots. These are not exactly grand estates with gracious lawns full of grazing sheep.And, speaking of annoying zoning rules, these post-war neighborhoods are zoned as single-family residential, so there are no corner stores to walk to for coffee, a newspaper, an ice cream, or to chat with neighbors over a beer. You have to drive when anybody would prefer to push the stroller a few blocks for a coffee.)
If you haven't seen it, it's the best miniseries ever made for TV. One sample:
Percy Alleline: Merlin is the fruit of a long cultivation by certain people in the Circus. People who are bound to me as I am to them. People who are not at all entertained by the failure rate about this place. There's been too much blown, too much lost, too much wasted. Too many scandals. I've said so many times, but I might as well have talked to the wind for all the heed he paid me. Control: "He" means me, George. Percy Alleline: The ordinary principles of tradecraft and security have gone to the wall in this service. It's all "divide and rule," stimulated from the top. Control: Me again. Percy Alleline: We're losing our livelihood. Our self-respect. We've had enough. We've had a bellyful, in fact. [Alleline exits] Control: And like everybody who's ever had enough, he wants more!
11:1 In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
11:2 It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.
11:3 David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, "This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite."
11:4 So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house.
11:5 The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, "I am pregnant."
11:6 So David sent word to Joab, "Send me Uriah the Hittite." And Joab sent Uriah to David.
11:7 When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going.
11:8 Then David said to Uriah, "Go down to your house, and wash your feet." Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king.
11:9 But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.
11:10 When they told David, "Uriah did not go down to his house," David said to Uriah, "You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?"
11:11 Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing."
11:12 Then David said to Uriah, "Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day,
11:13 David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
11:14 In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah.
11:15 In the letter he wrote, "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die."
Image is David and Bathsheba by Lucas Cranach (the elder, I think), 1526. What a good opportunity to paint a charming nude, but I suppose he had to do what was requested of him by his patron. David and Bathsheba's adulterous lovechild was, as the story goes, Solomon.Correction: that kid died, their second was Solomon. Solomon had, they say, 600 wives but only one had a Neiman-Marcus charge card. The rest of them had to shop at WalMart. Makes sense to me.
Splendid song, I think, and his phrasing is perfect, as usual. Lacking a beautiful - but on key - voice, compelling phrasing is important. Well, I guess it's always important unless you just mail it in or are singing a dance song but Bob takes phrasing to a new level. Word-handling is part of his genius.
Candlewood Lake in western CT is an 11-mile long man-made lake, built in 1924 for hydroelectric.
Excess power is used to pump water up hill from the nearby Housatonic River into the lake, then allowed to flow back into the river through pipes and turbines when power is needed. An interesting engineering idea.
Turbines, of course, are not healthy for anadromous fish, but Candlewood Lake is good for bass fishing, water-skiing, and swimming.
Gunther Holtorf's 23-year road trip - Back in 1989, as the Berlin Wall fell, Gunther Holtorf and his wife Christine set out on what was meant to be an 18-month tour of Africa in their Mercedes Benz G Wagen. Now, with more than 800,000km (500,000 miles) on the clock, Gunther is still going.
MY Love is of a birth as rare As 'tis, for object, strange and high; It was begotten by Despair, Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown, But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive Where my extended soul is fixed ; But Fate does iron wedges drive, And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ; Their union would her ruin be, And her tyrannic power depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel Us as the distant poles have placed, (Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel), Not by themselves to be embraced,
Unless the giddy heaven fall, And earth some new convulsion tear. And, us to join, the world should all Be cramp'd into a planisphere.
As lines, so love's oblique, may well Themselves in every angle greet: But ours, so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet.
Therefore the love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the mind, And opposition of the stars.
Marvell was a diplomat and politician and, when younger, the personal secretary and friend to John Milton. During his lifetime, his satirical writings were more admired than his serious poetry. A mediocre bio here.
Romney sat for an interview with Brian Williams yesterday and Williams garbled the warm-up to a question about Romney’s running mate. “I know how much you love quoting unnamed Romney advisers,” Williams said, then cited a source close to the campaign who said Romney is looking for a “boring white guy.” Romney responded to Williams:“You told me you were not available.”
Over the transom:
At a high school in North Dakota, a group of boy students played a prank.They let three goats loose inside the school.But before turning them loose, they painted numbers on the sides of the goats: 1, 2 and 4.
School Administrators spent most of the day looking for No. 3. And you thought there was nothing to do in North Dakota.
“. . . let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
Carl Hiassen has a new book out, Chomp, for young readers. Other of his books offer hilarious south Florida black humor for grown-ups.
What did I just begin reading? Mark Twain's 1867 Innocents Abroad. Since we're taking a pass on a Europe trip this summer, thought I'd read about what ship cruising was like right when the concept was invented - his trip was advertised as a "pleasure excursion." From the blurb:
Innocents Abroad began as a series of travel letters written by Mark Twain mainly for the Alta California, a San Francisco paper that sponsored his participation in the trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867 aboard the steamship Quaker City. On the excursion from New York to Palestine they traveled a distance of over 20,000 miles by land and sea through France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco, Russia, Turkey and Egypt. Through his humorous and insightful writings, Twain describes countries, nations, incidents and his amazing adventures.
Sicily is a spectacularly beautiful island between Europe and Africa. It is surrounded by sea as clear and clean as gin, but what happens on dry land there is as dark and disturbing as sewage. In Sicily, which gave the world the word “Mafia,” it is impossible to tell the difference between a mafioso and a politician. Follow the money—if you can.
I have been to Sicily many times for work and on holiday. Its stunning countryside is dotted with stately old abandoned houses in the baroque style. I love it there. It would be great to own one of those houses and they cost next to nothing, but what would be the point? How could I possibly live in Sicily? Life is tough enough here in the “red” Romagna surrounded by “ex” communists who years ago sent me a bullet in the post for my eldest daughter (now eight) because of something I wrote.
Shark bites swimmer in Truro
And a 15-minute walk to the YMCA and the library. Plus a fairly dense neighborhood where kids can hop on their bike, or just walk down the street, and find tons of kids to hang out with and play ball with. How good is that?
The hidden world of sharks
Mrs. BD is a big iPhone fan. The other night, she was showing me an iTunes University lecture from a Yale prof on her phone. It was pretty good.
2 Samuel 11:1-15
The Definition of Love
