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.
Mrs. BD and I caught the Balanchine/Stravinsky show at the NYCB on Saturday. As the premier ballet company in the world (not that I could tell the difference but Mrs. BD is a dance expert), it's definitely worthwhile to see what Balanchine did with Stravinsky. Once does it for me, but whatever...I don't get most of Stravinsky, regardless of how long I close my eyes and concentrate. All I end up doing is admiring the athleticism of the 1st violinist.
There was one piece that I got a good kick out of (Dances Concertantes), but for me the best part of the outing was brunch at Jean George's Nougatine on Columbus Circle. The downscale version of that Jean Georges. Haha, in the Trump International Hotel but nothing to do with the President. We both had the caramelized foie gras appetizer with a pineapple sauce. Food for the gods. She had the parmesan chicken with a lemon sauce, and I had the best, juiciest boneless piece of short rib I've ever had in my life, with a mystery sauce which I forgot to ask about. I had a Bloody, but shoulda had a Pinot.
A fancy brunch and ballet was my Christmas present to Mrs. BD. She wants nothing material. Makes her very happy that I will sit through 2 1/2 hours of ballet just to please her. She sees plenty of modern dance and ballet with her dance pals, but it's special for her when I go.
For me, fun is meeting people. We had great chats with people at adjacent tables at the restaurant (including couple who come for Restaurant Week every year, with a daily theater outing), and a late-80s lady at the ballet who chatted mostly with Mrs. BD during each intermission about the NYCB style. I said jokingly to the couple from South Carolina who love Restaurant Week "Isn't NYC such a cold and unfriendly place?" He said they feel it's the friendliest place in the world because they get into fun chats with smart people everywhere here, like with us. Yep. That's us! Semi-smart and kinda friendly.
I love New York. To visit, anyway. It's one of our magnets on this planet. Just wandering around is a blast.
Stage 4 lung cancer is a bad deal. He's been a breath of fresh air, and highly entertaining, for decades although I have not had time to hear him very often in recent years.
He is 69 years old. I hope he can keep going as long as possible. I feel certain that he will. A great American voice, always with humor, grace, and good cheer but I will not do an obituary yet.
Jerry Nadler was overheard on the metro bragging on the phone about how he should be the one leading the impeachment against Trump … the day after Trump took office
Is this latest Chinese influenza over-hyped, or serious? You never really know until time passes because there are always hysterias. The news is always about hysterias, because they sell.
Already 6000 Americans have died from the ordinary flu this year. It can be the last straw for the frail elderly and otherwise fragile and ailing. Normal, natural final straw.
As greeters at church this morning, I refused to shake hands because I am getting over a stubborn cold/cough. To good friends, I explained "Just back from Wuhan."
Mrs. BD was NOT amused. Your Editor can be a jerk sometimes. I like dark humor but not everybody does, especially when entering church.
She's at the theater and dinner in NYC this afternoon/night with gal theater friends, so my high crimes and misdemeanors will blow over as long as I do the dishes, the laundry, and a bunch of indoor and outdoor pick up (I am doing, including clipping the heck out the the Wisteria as best I can - but I would do them anyway on a winter afternoon without plans. Except a steak supper out with a dear old pal later today cuz whenever She is out for an evening, I get together with pals. Me not much of a sitter except when I edit this darn website - and for my day job).
There is always a reason for not sitting, unless at work. I am off to the damn gym while the laundry cycles. Beer after. Life is pretty good in the good old USA.
A significant new book by Andrew Marantz, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has reinvigorated the gatekeepers’ efforts to censor the internet. Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation is an account of our ongoing democratic revolution, a historical moment that brings into relief two realizations for Marantz: (1) conservative influencers are now able to out-compete legacy media outlets, and (2) it was this that led to the election of Donald J. Trump. “[T]hey helped propel their man to the presidency,” he writes.
For Marantz, these two realizations justify all-out censorship of the internet. But his extremism comes as little surprise when you recognize that, from start to finish, Marantz’s argument is grounded in his contempt for the intellectual and moral capacities of ordinary Americans.
Everything you must know about the biggest diplomatic event in Israel’s history - Who’s coming and who’s boycotting the event? Who will be allowed to speak? Will Putin sit next to Pence? What are the leaders doing in their spare time? And what’s on the menu?
Big issue is that women want/need sex too. They love it. It's not talked about much in media, but women talk amongst themselves about it all the time. Many women are sex-starved (and men too). That's not good for the soul or biology/health.
Consider how many powerful ideas Donald Trump has cast into the national consciousness. He has exposed both major parties as socialist globalist cults more concerned with government health care and foreign nation-building than a policy for American freedom. He has exposed how free trade can never be free when based on slave labor. He has exposed how the silent destruction of towns across the Midwest came not from China's comparative advantage, but from American companies' use of slavery by proxy. He has redirected investment away from Wall Street and toward Main Street for the first time in over thirty years and has unleashed three decades' worth of pent up entrepreneurial energy in the very towns long deemed dead. He has questioned how the federal government can have any legitimacy if it fails at enforcing its very own immigration laws.
Not one Nobel laureate imagined this American renaissance of GDP and stock market surge, record-low unemployment, wage growth, and low inflation in one bubbling cauldron. It took a change agent. Not one foreign policy mandarin suggested unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit of the American oil man in order to destroy our enemies' power over us permanently. It took a change agent. Not one State Department official questioned why the United States was still subsidizing Europe's generous socialist welfare system seventy years after WWII. It took a change agent. Nobody wondered why we were enriching China at our own expense and preparing for a world where a communist dictator would lead. It took Donald Trump...
Apparently the "cannon" of everything academic is about white supremacy. Science, too. I worry about people whose "identity" and career is based on their ancestry.
40 Privacy Groups Warn That Facial Recognition 
It's Brexit Day. 
Colorado bill allowing 
Is this latest Chinese influenza over-hyped, or serious? You never really know until time passes because there are always hysterias. The news is always about hysterias, because they sell.