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.
The cacophany from the gun nuts is getting intense these days, and very little of it makes logical sense to me. I spoke with a colleague gun nut this week who told me that she'd be afraid even to touch a gun. I promised to take her to the range to get over this phobia. Hoplophobia. Probably a mental illness. A firearm is just a pipe and a hammer.
People talk about "dangerous semi-automatic" firearms. What? A cowboy six-shooter is semi-automatic, and so are most duck-hunting shotguns. Automatic firearms are illegal for civilians in the US. I don't think they know what they are talking about. (My error - were illegal but are not now. Missed that change. Machine guns are illegal.)
Guns are dangerous? Gee wiz. Who knew? I thought large bottles of Coke and table salt and globalistical warmening were dangerous.
Now, I will not get hysterical about this topic because I know that nobody is going to take away my guns or my (heavily-vetted) concealed-carry permit. It's politically impossible. Just one point: How come the gun nuts hate ordinary people having guns - any guns - while it seems fine for "important Liberal people" - like Sen Feinstein, who carries or used to, or Harry Reid, who has carried most of his life, or Mayor Bloomberg, surrounded by armed bodyguards despite his horror of guns, or a President surrounded by a small army of weaponry, or Oprah with her armed bodyguards, etc etc.?
This is America. We're all equal. I'm important too. All of my kids can handle firearms. Basic life skill, same as swimming and tennis and trigonometry and land navigation.
Like many profound books. Coercing Virtue does not attempt to say anything new. Instead, it does something that is at once more valuable and more difficult:It reminds us of old, familiar truths—so familiar that they are everywhere neglected. “Democracy” means the rule of the people and its duly elected representatives,not the rule of unelected judges. Professional do-gooders, intoxicated by the emotion of virtue, are dangerous threats to public tranquility.Traditional morality became traditional largely because it provided sound answers to the hard problems of human frailty. Custom and convention are generally not the enemy of freedom but, on the contrary, something closer to its precondition.The single-minded pursuit of self-fulfillment is self-defeating. Individuality, like freedom, thrives best when limited by commitment and respect for values that transcend the individual.
"If you ban guns, only criminals will have guns." Leaving the rest of us to be helpless sheep in the face of criminals and reckless lunatics.
How did Canada's gun registry work out? After billions spent and years dedicated to it, not one crime solved. Duh. Bad guys do not own legal firearms. They obtain illegal ones on the street or they steal them.
In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.
This past week was finals week for my son. Thankfully, his slow start at college led to a fine rally and his efforts were rewarded with good grades. I give him a tremendous amount of credit for pulling himself together in his new environment. He started out carelessly, as many young people do when suddenly placed in an environment which is seemingly responsibility-free. The reality hits home quickly, of course, and his hit in the first two weeks, details of which are not important.
What was important was how he responded. He buckled down, and realized that while he could have some fun, he was there to do work. I pointed out to him his payment for the work he does is the sense of accomplishment good grades provide.
However, for all the fine work he did, there was one event which bothered me. He handled it well, I can't say that I would've.
His professor, for their final paper, asked them all to write a letter to President Obama asking for increased legislation and leadership to move our nation to a 'green' or sustainable energy policy. All the papers would be graded, but the highest grade would be sent directly to President Obama through a personal friend.
My first reaction was "what right does this professor have to force a particular view on his students?" My son replied, "Look, I don't agree with this and I don't support it. But I can get an A and I've got a good idea of how to write this. If I fight him, he'll probably give me an F on the paper."
As much as this approach bothered me, I was impressed with his maturity and focus on the goal. His paper was, for what it was, pretty darn good. I don't know if it will get forwarded, but it was worthy of a very high grade. He and I laughed and I said "at least if it does get chosen, we can use it as a platform to show the inadequacies of some portions of higher education."
I'm aware that many colleges have become bastions of liberal indoctrination. I'm not sure when the decision was made to eliminate critical thought in the classroom - but I hope it is not fait accompli. Luckily for my son, he and I have active discussions about topics like his paper regularly, so he's aware there is more than one view on the topic. I'm not sure how many of his classmates are.
Sipp makes the case that life is accumulated error. Lots of truth in that. Even small errors in facts, in choices, in judgement, build on eachother and you eventually you can have a mess that you drag along with you. It's difficult in life to start on a clean slate.
In Maritime Academies, they always teach the famous case of the cargo ship leaving NY harbor headed for Brazil in the 1960s. After a day at sea, the ship beached itself on Fire Island on Long Island, NY. The autopilot, as today, was controlled by a gyro. When a gyro malfunctions and drifts, everything checks out and agrees with the malfunctioning gyro. When the ship hit the beach, the crew had no idea where they were. Degree by degree, over three watches, the ship had made a 180. I'll assume they hit the beach at night.
Well, everything checks out as consistent - unless somebody bothers to check the heading against an old-fashioned magnetic compass. There is a reason all ships still carry a sextant and a copy of Bowditch too.
"Ted Dalrymple" (Dr. Anthony Daniels) is, as readers know, a retired Brit Psychiatrist with experience in the prison system (as a physician, not as an inmate).
With or without prison experience, Psychiatrists, priests, and police officers have the experience to view people with a jaundiced eye, knowing perhaps better than most about what dark thoughts and motives lurk in the human soul because they are not in denial about the nature of human selfishness, deception and self-deception, envy, manipulativeness, sin, and evil.
In A Word to the Wise, Dalrymple questions the very premise of the idea of "man's inhumanity to man," from the Poles' treatment of their Jews to the modern British welfare state.
When Isaac Newton went to the University of Cambridge several centuries ago, he studied seven days a week, at least ten hours a day, and actively avoided the revelry that some Cambridge undergraduates engaged in even then. No one expects American undergraduates to work as hard as Isaac Newton or as medieval monks. However, what seems to be happening on many American college campuses is the development of such a powerful "fun" culture that a quarter of the students or more arrive thinking that having fun is the main reason they are at college and that the pursuit of knowledge should be resorted to only when they have nothing better to do.
There was a time when the upper classes approached college casually, more as a rite of passage than anything else because they were confident about their futures, while the aspiring classes put their noses to the grindstone the way Newton did. That was in a time, however, when probably 1% or less of the population even considered higher education. It has been democratized, which might be another way of saying that many colleges are now glorified high schools.
A simple jump rope is possibly the best cardio exercise device one can own. It is also the cheapest and most portable.
Jumping rope will burn also 11 calories per minute (more than anything else) while offering almost total body fitness. If you have the fitness and endurance to jump rope for half an hour, you can burn off one candy bar or one donut but few people could go that long even if they wanted to. At a very fast pace, maybe a donut in less than half an hour. However, nobody I've seen can go that long.
At my gym, it's mainly men who jump. Amazon has all sorts of jump ropes. Many people like the beaded ones and the weighted ones.
Done properly on the toes, it's a low-impact exercise. Most people seem to jump in 30-second to three- or six- minute stints. It is demanding for people over 25.
In the course of our basement water pipe flood this summer, I seem to have lost my couple of pairs of light shooting gloves. I like to shoot with gloves even when it isn't too cold. Most of the hunting I do tends to be in cold weather so I like to get used to the feel of gloves on a trigger.
And I have a very mild but uncomfortable case of Raynaud's.
Glovemakers vary in what they mean by L,M, S, etc. Here's a great way to determine your numerical glove size when ordering online. Leather, of course, tends to stretch a bit with use. (That image in the link might need to be reduced before printing)
The right gloves for hunting grouse in the snow or ducks in the sleet at 10 degrees F is another topic. The perfect gloves for those things do not exist, as best I have been able to determine. Heavy waterproof gloves, obviously, do not fit rapidly and easily inside a trigger guard, and if you are using a double-triggered old s/s, it's really a problem.
Ideas are welcome. I wonder what the Army uses in Afghanistan in the winter. Maybe things like this.
Since 1498 - the Vienna Boy's Choir. They have four touring groups of 25 kids each. They sing like angels. We caught their Christmas in Vienna concert at Carnegie Hall today with Mrs. BD's music-loving parents after a very pleasant brunch at Petrossian down the block (the prix fixe, friends - but festively with caviar and blini, and champagne). Mrs. BD got us good parterre seats.
As a reprise, they sang the beloved but cornball Leise rieselt der Schnee. Give the tune a listen if you don't know it. You might end up humming it for 48 hours. With all of our German-origin Christmas songs (eg Stille Nacht), it's a wonder we English never took this one. Maybe because of the bland lyrics (but this translation stinks - I can do better even though my German is not very strong anymore). Here's a version of it.
Sippican found some Flame Birch, and finally figured out what to do with it - photo. "Flame Birch" is just birch with ripples in its meat. Birch's desire to be like Tiger Maple.
It’s a week before the biggest day of her life, and Anna Williams is multitasking. While waiting to hear back from the Ivy League colleges she’s hoping to attend, the seventeen-year-old senior at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools is doing research for a paper about organic farming in the West Bank, whipping up a batch of vegan brownies, and, like an increasing number of American teenagers, teaching her dog, José Saramago, to use an iPad.
Language trivia: Greeks use two words for wine. "Oinos" of course, and "krasi." Hence "crazy," or so I am told.
Today, I am doing layered winter clothing, which is only of interest if one is spending more than just a few hours out in the weather.
Dressing for spending hours out in cold weather is a tricky business, because it depends so much on what you are doing and how active you are. If you dress too warmly for a day of aggressive skiing in 10 degree (F) weather, you can easily get soaked with uncomfortable and chilling sweat. On the other hand, underdressing for a 6-hour stint sitting in a Maine duck blind can ruin the entire experience. When it's cold out, you want to be cool enough to enjoy the weather - and maybe just a little bit cold. It's all about layers.
I have spent many hours cold, wet, and happy in Yankee winters, but I have become more of a pussy as I get a bit older. It's impossible to get it right, because if you are hiking uphill at 15 degrees, you get too hot, and when you are sitting, you get too cold. But that's why you aren't being a sloth, sitting by the fire.
Einstein, Newton, and Pascal are hanging out one afternoon.
Einstein is bored, so he suggests, "Let's play hide-and-seek. I'll be it!"
The others agree, so Einstein begins counting. "One... Two... Three..."
Pascal runs off right away to find a place to hide.
But Newton merely takes out a piece of chalk and draws a mid-sized square. He finishes and steps into the square just as Einstein shouts, "Ready or not -- here I come!"
Einstein looks up and immediately spots Newton standing right in front of him. He says, "I found you, Newton!"
Newton replies, "No, you found one Newton per square meter -- You found Pascal!"
23.8 percent of men, and 19 percent of women, between the ages of 35 and 44 have never been married. Tick back a cohort to the people between 20 and 34—the prime-childbearing years—and the numbers are even more startling: 67 percent of men and 57 percent of women in that group have never been married. When you total it all up, over half of the voting-age population in America—and 40 percent of the people who actually showed up to vote this time around—are single.
What does this group look like? Geographically, they tend to live in cities. As urban density increases, marriage rates (and childbearing rates) fall in nearly a straight line. Carville and Greenberg put together a Venn diagram which is highly instructive. Of the 111 million single eligible voters, 53 million are women and 58 million are men. Only 5.7 million of these women are Hispanic and 9.7 million are African American. Nearly three-quarters of all single women are white. In other words, the cohort looks a lot like the Julia character the Obama campaign rolled out to show how the president’s policies care for that plucky gal from the moment she enrolls in Head Start right through her retirement. You may recall that because of President Obama, Julia goes to college, gets free birth control, has a baby anyway, sends her lone kid to public school, and then—at age 42—starts her own business (as a web designer!). What she does not do is get married.
Is this a general cultural phenomenon, or class-related? I understand that Julia feels married to the government, but don't most people feel the need for a loyal human partner and helpmeet anyway? Marriage may be fraught with challenges, but I cannot even imagine trying to run my complex life single-handedly. Even four hands often do not seem like enough. Speaking just practically, romance and friendship aside.
We occasionally feel the need to share the Sierra Trading Post with our readers. It's especially relevant in hunting season, winter, skiing season, and at Christmastime.
They have all sorts of good stuff. For example, it's the only place the men in this family buy shoes and boots including white-collar work shoes, sneakers, and hiking boots and shoes. For a sampling (their stuff changes constantly as they sell out) here's their hunting boots and their work boots.
At their prices, can you have too many pairs? Best to let shoes and boots dry out before using two days in a row, and, if you do, good ones last a lifetime. They will be sitting, waiting in your closet when you are dead and will end up in the dumpster but still willing to walk a mile for a Camel.
Pleasant place. You can do Cabo rustic or grand luxe. I sorta prefer the latter. Some folks prefer Puerto Vallarta, but some feel PV has gotten too commercial, too popular. Either, I think, are preferable to the Yucatan tackiness and drunk students.
Cabo has the good fishing.
Took a carload of Mexican fellows to Dunkin Donuts today, mid-day. They were felling some ornery post-storm trees for me which were more than I could handle alone, and turning it all into firewood for me for next fall. White Pine and Maple. Wonderful fellows. All from around Mexico City, but they all love PV as a place to visit. They love DD too. Carlos has lived here 25 years. They are all legal, and work like fiends. Ambitious. He owns his own tree bucket-truck, but he also does masonry and driveways. The American Way. His wife does house-cleaning and their kids are in college.
Americans like to work hard, long hours. We are not like the lazy Europeans. In America, people who do not work hard feel a little ashamed of themselves. We proudly retain ye olde work ethic and energy here. Most of us, anyway, hate to feel unproductive.
We should forget about the lower-level government employees. They are mostly union workers working real, useful jobs on fairly short hours plus overtime which most ordinary people do not receive. They are just working for their generous pensions and benefits, far beyond what private employees earn. Don't worry about them too much because they are just people seeking safety and money in a challenging and highly competitive world in which opportunity still abounds for those who want to find it. I still bill about 60 hours/week. But I am essentially self-employed despite being a member of a farm firm. People who work in business work as long, or longer, than I do. People on Wall St. work 7 days/wk, as do people who own corner news shops. Most people do not choose that and do not want to work that long and hard, or do not have the choice to do so. And there is no way to calculate the time of all the folks who travel for business 2-3 days/week, which many of my pals do.
With a little luck, we all work as long or as hard as we choose to do.
Our Editor here reports to me that he happily works around 60 hrs/week including Saturday mornings, weekend duties, and paperwork. He is an eager beaver, and happy to do his job whenever he can. That choice is American.
If you want to tax us too much for our efforts, we'll cut back on vacations, cut back on work, and go fishin' and huntin'. I will not work a single day for a net of 50% of my billings regardless of how interesting or challenging the job may be. I hate idleness, but I require compensation for my talents.
It's the time of year when people tend to make their travel plans for the next 12 months. If you are very nice and never naughty, Santa might put a trip in your stocking.
I vowed to finally get the Maggie's HQ basement renovated after our busted water pipe mess 2 years ago before taking another cool trip. A serious mess. We'll see. Plus we need to build a new tractor bridge at the Farm (new concrete footings, I-beams, etc). Plus it's time for a serious generator. But how's the economy doing out there in America? Oh, not so good, eh? Hmmm. And what's this about these new Obamacare taxes? Damn. I don't even want Obamacare. It is economically retarded. And kid's tuition went up again this year? Why? Income tax increases for all? Why, when I need that money to fix the farm bridge and my basement and to buy a generator from an American generator factory? Not to mention my freakin' dentist.
I have so many needs by which to redistribute my money usefully, but the gummint doesn't want me to redistribute my way. My way is for utility and value, and their way is for vote-buying. They have better ideas for my money, like Obamaphones and Solyndra and Government Motors - so much better ideas than my rebuilding my farm bridge by paying guys to do it so the machines and creatures can get to the upper field.
On the top of my to-go wish list right now is more time in Sicily (I'd maybe like to do some of it with bikes or horses); a grouse shoot at a castle in Scotland with Mr. and Mrs. Gwynnie; a villa or tenudo in Umbria for 10 days with pool and a cook and room for entire family and friends - and rental cars for all as if I were a big shot (not really very expensive to do); more time in Turkey along the Asia Minor coast, maybe by sailboat. Also, Israel but only for the ordinary Christian pilgrimage to the tourist traps. That can wait because I do not believe in sacred, holy places anyway and God is only in the heart. I do need to get back to Montana again soon, a place with horses and Grizzly Bears and maybe a sacred, holy trout stream. Also, those riverboat barge trips down the Rhone with the great French chefs and the wines. Would love to take the kids. I will hold off on Egypt for the moment - missed my chance for the Israel-Egypt combo last year. Dang Moslim lunatics interfere with travel plans, which does them no good at all but supposedly Allah likes it. Well, tourist Egypt had just become a tourist trap anyway so best to keep Allah happy and to stay away from Egypt now.
Such a big world, and so little time. A reader thought this joint sounded good (photo): Riad Knisa in Marrakesh. A fun trip might be to combine Barcelona, Mallorca, Morocco. Maybe Ibiza and do the hippy thing. Tunisia is interesting too, been there. Could do it all these wonderful places via high-speed ferry with a little sensible planning and a straw hat.
For me, a vacation means Go-Go-Hi-Ho, not sit - except in restaurants. I cannot sit on a beach for more than ten minutes. My theory is that you can relax, and catch up on TV, in the grave. I wonder whether our readers are making interesting plans for next year (other than routine travel like Florida or Cabo or Cape Cod, visiting colleges, romantic weekend getaways, hunting trips, family visits, summer houses, or ski trips and other boring things like that).
Carpe diem. My parents and in-laws always say that you have to do it now, before your hips and knees begin to ache.
What's on the top of your wish list for cool new adventures? Even if you cannot quite do it right now because of our horrible economy?
Especially at the expense of their clients, New York lawyers work through the nights protecting against all probable, possible and improbable contingencies. They are also covering their little fannies. However, our lawyer (the one with a sense of humor) was reviewing a corporate note and security agreement from the 1990s and found the following ultimate (in more ways than one) example. It cannot have been an amicable negotiation!
Gotta hate it when the bow digs down into green water. The ocean is not your friend, always wants to kill you, but you want to accomplish something, or have some fun, and survive. That's the game.
Found the stuff below at Amazon. Might be worth keeping some around, just in case. Don't use it if Santa is in your flue. It supposedly suffocates chimney fires so it would do the same to him.
For us wood-burners, woodpiles feel like money in the bank. Here's a couple of Sipp's woodpiles:
My woodpile, yesterday. I do not have a little drummer boy anymore to stack it for me. I reckon close to 2 cords, maybe 1 1/2. I will get to it after I get to a few other things. The stacked pile of unsplit on the left is bigger than it looks. It's a 1/3 cord of green wood, from Sandy: Maple, Piss-Elm, and Black Locust.
Where did Bridgeport's working class and middle class move to during and after WW2? And where did Bridgeport's more prosperous people move to when they, or their kids, moved out of the center?
Of course, they moved to wherever their company moved to - or the suburbs, to the new developments or old houses on farmland in surrounding towns like Hamden, Monroe, Fairfield, Easton, Newtown, Stratford. Also, quite a few moved to the northern, suburban part of Bridgeport. In time, these surrounding towns and areas developed their own economies independent of the city, with office parks, retail, light industry, corporate headquarters, multiplex theaters, churches, and even their own universities (eg Quinnipiac University and Fairfield University).
With this de-urbanization and the simultaneous deindustrialization of the northeast, the city core lost its tax base, its jobs, and its vitality. Crime and drugs became endemic with no-go zones for police. Cars, and government-built highways, made the flight that much easier. In response, the city did what all Blue Cities try to do: they raised taxes, applied for federal Great Society urban funds and programs, and sunk into corruption. Death spiral.
Very few old Connecticut cities escaped that. Stamford, CT for one, barely did escape, but Stamford (pop. 122,000) is really a NYC suburb now. It is alive because of huge tax breaks it offers to giant corporations, mainly banks poached from NY. No breaks for small businesses.
A few pics of houses in a pleasant part of leafy, suburban Fairfield, CT; once a semi-rural suburb of Bridgeport but now it's more economically-attached to NYC despite the 1 1/2 hour commuter train ride.
With wifi and plugs, a train ride doesn't need to be a waste of time.
Bridgeport last weekend, Manhattan this weekend. Yeah, we get around to all the hot spots.
We stopped in to see a (rarely-produced, and I think for good reason) off-B'way Chekhov play Ivanov. Impressive cast, as they always have there because even famous but serious film actors always long to do classic stage. Ethan Hawke writes novels, too, in his spare time and plays lead guitar in a rock band.
Mrs. BD observed that, had Prozac been available in Russia in 1885, the play would not have been written. (Chekhov, the son of a serf, worked as a physician his whole adult life, wrote his plays and stories as a sideline, and died young.)
My point is that I was seated next to two extremely cute and jovial 20-something gals, so naturally I had to chat with them a little. They were from Bulgaria, were working in New York. Student visas, now Green Cards. Where did they go to school? University of Bridgeport! Math majors, cute as buttons with shapely legs in black stockings which I refused to notice. They had a Russian gal friend with them who worked at the same famous investment fund. The Russki gal went to Univ. of Moscow, same as Chekhov, and had a PhD in Physics from MIT. All spoke the (accented) King's English, loved going to theater but were "sick of Broadway musicals" so were going around to all the off-Broadway they could. One every weekend. Wonderful - from Bulgaria to Bridgeport to Wall St. to off-Broadway theater. Only in America.
They found it amusing that I had been taking pics of Sandy's damage to Seaside Park just last weekend, right next to the sad Bridgeport campus.
Before the play, we had a little spare time to grab a bite so we found a counter space at The Oyster Bar, my favorite seafood place in NY. This venerable place in the bowels of Grand Central Station posts a daily list of the 25-30 varieties of oysters they have that day. (They always have Wellfleets.) Mrs. had their famous oyster stew but I had New England clam chowder of course. Pure fresh clam, no extraneous ingredients. The aspiring actor and actress wait staff work their butts off, as do the mostly-hispanic helpers. Busy place, always under-staffed I think.
I heard a beautiful Scots accent from the three gals seated at the counter on my right so I had to say something friendly (because, as everyone knows, NY is a cold, tough city and it is my mission to dispel that idea). They were a Mom and her two adult daughters touring the US for ten days with three teen daughters (who were not lunching with them as they had taken the shuttle to the West Side, then the Broadway line up to the Museum of Natural History - Scots are adventurous people). They all lived outside Edinburgh. I asked them how they found the Oyster Bar. Friends at home had enjoyed it, they told me. They were having Olympia oysters on the half shell, and mixed seafood salads. I've never met a dour Scot, but they do drink a bit so you can't tell. They were having champagne with lunch.
Heading north last night back up to Yankeeland on the train, the conductor was a Chinese gal with a slight accent. She was too busy for me to ask her where she was from. A gal Chinese conductor? The world has changed.
I love it all. As long as it is legal, and they study our Constitution seriously. The whole world wants to come here, especially at Christmastime. Not for freebies or the fun, but for the opportunities too. Our energetic legal immigrants are not interested in entitlements, but many of our home-grown voters seem to be.
The cacophany from the gun nuts is getting intense these days, and very little of it makes logical sense to me. I spoke with a colleague gun nut this week who told me that she'd be afraid even to touch a gun. I promised to take her to the range to get over this phobia. Hoplophobia. Probably a mental illness. A firearm is just a pipe and a hammer.
Sipp makes the case that 
A simple jump rope is possibly the best cardio exercise device one can own. It is also the cheapest and most portable.
In the course of our basement water pipe flood this summer, I seem to have lost my couple of pairs of light shooting gloves. I like to shoot with gloves even when it isn't too cold. Most of the hunting I do tends to be in cold weather so I like to get used to the feel of gloves on a trigger.
Sippican 
Today, I am doing layered winter clothing, which is only of interest if one is spending more than just a few hours out in the weather.
From 
We occasionally feel the need to share the 
It's the time of year when people tend to make their travel plans for the next 12 months. If you are very nice and never naughty, Santa might put a trip in your stocking. 
