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.
Pic above is a remnant of Bridgeport's grand experiments in public housing. I-95 in the background.
Bridgeport was the first city in New England to construct municipal housing for the poor. Father Panik Village was built in 1939 under the administration of long-time (1933-1957) Socialist Mayor Jasper McLevy. (Go figger that surname.)
"Slums" were bulldozed and replaced with modern buildings. In retrospect, how naive but well-intentioned it was to believe that Bridgeport's poor would be lifted up by government housing?
Gov. Wilbur L. Cross, speaking at the ground breaking, talked of an ''expensive and beautiful village'' that would ''take boys and girls off the streets into playgrounds.'' Governor Cross said that ''good housing opened to sunlight and fresh air and ample play areas are the best preventives we have against disease and crime.''
It's easy for us to understand, now, that orderly, pleasing people and environments are not made from the outside appearances, but from the inside. As Insty frequently points out, orderly and pleasant environments are produced by orderly and pleasant people: good environments are not causes, but results. Signs, not causes. NYC's Hell's Kitchen is now expensive and fashionable Chelsea because the slums were never cleared. One of my in-laws grew up with an urban outhouse and it did him no harm at all - or to any of his many siblings. He remembers helping his baby sister get to it during snowstorms.
At first, many happily settled into this heavily-subsidized housing with the modern luxuries of hot water and indoor toilets. Industrial jobs disappeared, but people stayed. Over time, like so many later government housing projects, Father Panik became a no-go zone for police, dominated by drug gangs - so much so that the project became famously emblematic of Bridgeport's decline.
"It used to be beautiful here. You could go downtown and leave your house unlocked and you wouldn't have to worry about anything," said True Hamilton, 72, who has lived in the project for 15 years.
"Now, we're scared to even come out of the door at night. And when we hear gunshots, we hit the floor," she said.
"I've been here so long. I treat the people here like family and they treat me like family. I won't know how to live out there," said Kathleen Vila, who moved into the project with her family in 1943, when she was 9 months old.
When the project opened in 1941, it was a clean, modern complex touted as a solution to slum housing. Built to replace shanties for factory workers, it housed nearly 5,000 people in 46 three-story buildings spread over 40 acres.
Vila's poignant sentence "I won't know how to live out there" captures one of the problems: insulation from the realities of the world can create something akin to the crippling effects of "institutionalization." Designed as a park-like area for the working poor - at first, it was highly diverse in population - but the 1935 introduction of AFDC, it is argued, gradually converted the project into a ghetto of the dependency subculture dominated by a new era of single mothers and their ungoverned kids.
The Village has now been demolished (I wonder where the residents went). This YouTube contains some photos and memories of the place:
"Building a better you is the first step to building a better America."
On Wednesday, Zig Ziglar died at 86. Zig Ziglar's many books carried the motivational message of hard work and faith will out, and doing so to fill others' needs is the path to success. I remember my father reading Zig Ziglar when he started a business from scratch in the early 1960's, and so was I when I started out in the '70s. Ziglar was correct, I think, because he wedded hope with effort with common sense that didn't make or tolerate excuses. Ziglar kept writing books until last year. Here's an obit. Here's another obit.
Pleasure Beach is a 3-mile barrier beach that runs from the outside of Bridgeport Harbor east to Stratford. Once known as Steeplechase Island when it was made into a beachside amusement park by the developer of Brooklyn's Coney Island. That's all gone now.
Parts of Pleasure Beach are owned by both towns. Arsonists burned the bridge in the 1990s, and it has not been rebuilt. There are abandoned summer shanties on it now - and Piping Plovers.
It probably did not do too well during Sandy. I'd propose leaving it as a nature preserve with a small summer boat landing for picnics.
This is part of our week-long series on Bridgeport, CT.
Pic is the long-departed University Club of Bridgeport (1905) on Golden St., once filled with mostly Yalies at lunchtime.
Why was Bridgeport, CT so prosperous from 1830-1950? It was a major manufacturing city with a large seaport and a railroad. Its prominence as a center for shipping, medicine, law, news and radio, and banking followed from those. From a population of 20,000 in 1820, it peaked in the 1940s - near or below where it is now. Rise and fall.
Industrialization and the presence of the railroad made Bridgeport an ideal manufacturing center producing Bridgeport milling machines, saddles, corsets, carriages, brass fittings, sewing machines, and ammunition. By 1930, Bridgeport was an industrial center with more than 500 factories and a thriving immigrant population. In the late 20th century Bridgeport remained a manufacturing center, producing electrical and transportation equipment, plastics, and machine tools. Like other urban centers in Connecticut, Bridgeport fared less well during the deindustrialization of the United States in the 1970s and 80s.
Remington Arms and Ammunition Co. Union Metallic Cartridge Co. General Electric Warner Brother's Corset Co (now Warnaco) The Bead Chain Manufacturing Co. Singer Sewing Machine Sikorsky Aircraft AVCO-Lycoming Pratt and Whitney The Frisbie Pie Co. Columbia Gramaphone Mfg. Co. Lake Submarine Boat Co. The Locomobile Company of America (electric cars, then gas-powered) Bullard Machine Tool Co. Bridgeport Brass Co. Bridgeport Bronze Co. The Liberty Bicycle Co. Harvey Hubbell Co. (Bridgeport's HH invented the electric socket - and the pull-chain light socket among other things)
and hundreds more. There were abundant jobs for everyone, from unskilled to the most highly-skilled.
For a working-class and middle class city, by the turn of the century central Bridgeport boasted large neighborhoods consisting of the McMansions of the time. Real in-town mansions on once-Elm-lined boulevards.
Also, large neighborhoods of less grand but entirely spacious and respectable upper-middle class homes with 5-6 bedrooms, usually a sleeping porch upstairs, servants quarters on the third floor, and rooms off or above the barn-garage for a driver, whether of carriage or of automobile. The economy was booming, new Irish and Italian immigrants were eager for factory work or domestic work - and there was no income tax. (Here's a bird's-eye view of one such neighborhood only blocks from downtown.)
Instead of government spreading the wealth around, people spread their wealth around in their own ways. Even the then-ubiquitous trolley lines were privately-owned.
Here are a couple of Bridgeport mansions. These survivors are in the South End. There is essentially no market for either category of the old big homes which, if situated elsewhere in Fairfield County, would fetch millions.
The title of my second unpublishable book will be "George Washington's Nurse". This time, instead of foolishly writing the book first, I plan to market the title, and to come up with an idea and write the book afterwards.
One good reason to have kids is to keep you young with ideas. A pupette recently read PT Barnum's autobiography. She was fascinated by his hutzpah, and wonders how much of his autobiography is a con job.
The statue of ol' PT Barnum in Seaside Park overlooking Long Island Sound. He donated 35 acres of his own property in putting together this 2-mile seaside public park.
The city has two fine, large public parks: Seaside and Beardsley (with its municipal zoo), both donated to the city back in the good old days.
Storm damage from Sandy on the walkway, last weekend:
Barnum's last Bridgeport home, Waldemere (now burned down), overlooked the park. He built it because doctors told him his ailing wife would do better with sea breezes. Who wouldn't?
"I have a degree." No one assumes you're smart because of it, so what was the point? You were tricked, your parents were tricked, your peers were tricked, your employers were not tricked at all. "There's more to a college education than employability." No there isn't. I am not anti-liberal arts, I am all in on a classical education, I just don't think there's any possibility at all, zero, none, that you will get it at college, and anyway every single college course from MIT and Yale are on Youtube. Is that any worse than paying $15k to cut the equivalent class at State? Name me one contemporary fiction writer who required his college training to be a writer, and if you say David Foster Wallace I swear to god I'm going to pumpkin your house.
and
When we see a welfare mom we assume she can't find work, but when we see a hipster we become infuriated because we assume he doesn't want to work but could easily do so-- on account of the fact that he can speak well-- that he went to college. But now suddenly we're all shocked: to the economy, the English grad is just as superfluous as the disenfranchised welfare mom in the hood-- the college education is just as irrelevant as the skin color. Not irrelevant for now, not irrelevant "until the economy improves"-- irrelevant forever. The economy doesn't care about intelligence, at all, it doesn't care what you know, merely what you can produce for it. The only thing the English grad is "qualified" for in this economy is the very things s/he is already doing: coffeehouse agitator, Trader Joe's associate, Apple customer.................................................. and spouse of a capitalist.
Of course I'm not happy about this, I like smart people, but that's the new reality.
This downtown theater and hotel complex was built in the early 1920s right on Main St. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Plenty of famous entertainers appeared in these theaters as they bridged the space between vaudeville and modern movies.
"In the heart of Bridgeport stands an abandoned 13-acre building complex that includes the Poli Palace, the Majestic Theater and the Savoy Hotel, each of which were once glorious edifices and now are empty and crumbling structures, home to rats, vagrants and … ghosts?"
Both theaters had about 2000 seats. For the price of a ticket, you got a taste of elegance and music from a grand old Hall pipe organ. "Meet me at the Poli." Here are some pics of the Poli Palace (later Loew's Palace).
And here's a stroll through the now-creepy Majestic:
That's the Liberal project. Liberals take the long view and the long march. As Ace says,
The state is benevolent.
The state is wise.
The state loves you.
The state would never hurt you.
The state only wishes to help you.
Will you help the state to help you?
The State is God? Addiction to government "help" is sold and marketed in the same way that drugs are. It is, in fact, a drug in the sense that dependency sneaks into the brain and distorts who you are, strips you of your dignity, corrupts your soul by tempting you to focus on what you can get for free, and enslaves you if you let it. In the end, it leaves you just hungry for more.
Welfare includes crony capitalism, tax breaks for businesses, mortgage deductions, bailouts, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid right down to disability and the now ubiquitous EBT cards.
Naturally, we Conservatives think it best to eliminate all forms of welfare and charity from government control except for the most desperate or hopeless of individual cases. Remove welfare from the middle classes and provide a safety net for the desperate: Restoring a True Safety Net
With the promise of health care completing the project of the 20th-century welfare state, liberals need to envision how to meet the needs of a new century.
Apparently Americans have many "unmet needs" which can only be provided by government - or by our neighbors at gunpoint. It's a sorry sort of mess and will not end well. Americans can do better than this if the government would get the heck out of the way of effort and creativity.
This week's series began yesterday. You never know what you'll find here at Maggie's. America has plenty of Bridgeports these days. We'll have a daily Bridgeport post this week.
Bridgeport, CT (settled 1639 as "Newfield") was a boom town from around 1800 until the end of WW 2. Lots of farming in the back country, fishing, shipping and ship-building on the harbor, and, at its peak, over 500 factories. "Help wanted" signs everywhere.
Few people know that Bridgeport was the first city in America with an auto industry.
Farmers, factory workers, a good share of prosperous folk, tons of Polish, Irish, and Italian immigrants and then southern blacks attracted to jobs during the war, grand theaters, fancy stores, and of course, PT Barnum (who Walt Kelly yclept PT Bridgeport). Today, Bridgeport is about 40% recent Hispanic immigrants, 30% Black, and the rest are various kinds of white.
There has been no gentrification of downtown because there are few jobs and not much to do. Well, nothing to do. The weekend streets, empty of traffic and foot traffic except for the occasional hoodie, give a sense of desolation but not menace. There is no critical mass of activity, which has all moved to the suburbs to escape Blue City decay and taxes. (It's Obamaville for sure. In the previous election, just enough uncounted paper votes were mysteriously discovered in bags in a Bridgeport school basement to turn the election over to a Democrat CT governor days after good Repub Tom Foley appeared to have won the election.)
The city's heyday was probably between 1840 and the late 1940s - a century. In today's post-industrial northeast, the town's population is down to around 144,000, and many of the old factories are now vacant lots and the rest are rotting hulks. Even the old Bridgeport Post-Telegram is now the "Connecticut Post." With the decline of the town's manufacturing and farming base - its main bank used to be Mechanics and Farmer's Savings Bank - corrupt politicians, high taxation, criminals, drugs, welfare recipients, and mob influence have been feeding off the carcass of this failed old Blue State city.
This once-proud city, with abundant advantages, did not deserve this fate. Such bountiful towns are like the third world now.
The main businesses in town now seem to be government services, hospitals, and law, since it's the legal and court center of prosperous southern Connecticut and remains Connecticut's largest urban center. Oh, it also has the woebegone and marginal University of Bridgeport which until recently was owned by the Moonies and one which few would attend given any choice at all. Lots of foreign students desperate for an American degree of any sort.
Nobody visits downtown Bridgeport as tourists except me and a couple of my kids on an urban exploration jaunt last weekend. Well, also visitors taking the Port Jefferson ferry or going to Bridgeport Bluefish games. (They have a decent government-looking transportation hub, with the bus station, the Boston - Washington DC train station, I-95, and the ferry all within walking distance.)
During our tourism, we stopped for a pleasant lunch at The Creek in the Black Rock section of town. They had Palm on tap and the place was full of people. I'm told another good popular joint in the neighborhood is Harborview Market. I'll have to try that next time I'm in the area.
A few of my pics:
A cute old half-block (rest of the block demolished at some point, probably in "urban renewal" aka "Negro Removal" in the 1960s) in Bridgeport's South End, with garbage from Sandy's flooding.
Most of the in-town residential areas look like this. Typical northeast workingman's dwellings from the 1880s-1920s. Cheap housing now, but too-high property taxes for the people who might otherwise afford them. When the taxes are higher than a mortgage, it's not attractive. It leads to a downward, death spiral. The poorer it becomes, the more taxes are raised for government "services." Then voters vote with their feet.
Building on the corner of Main St, a block or two from the big new RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland, for those of you in Yorba Linda) bulding - doubtless located with generous multi-year tax breaks. The graffiti is really pretty well-done:
For a taste, here's Iranistan (pronouced Iranis'tan), PT Barnum's home in 1848 on the corner of Fairfield Avenue and Iranistan Ave. Barnum did a lot of things in his life, made and lost fortunes, was Mayor of Bridgeport for a while, got elected to the CT State Senate to lobby for the railroads (he liked to commute to NYC in the pre-commuter era), promoted and was a major contributor to the creation of Bridgeport's Olmstead-designed Seaside Park, was a great impresario of hoaxes and the strange, and later in life a circus impresario. Everything on a grand scale, always taking risks, a bit of a con man who didn't mind admitting it. An American icon.
His three magnificent Bridgeport homes all burned down but his circus lives on as he first envisioned it: traveling by train and performing in permanent venues instead of under tents. And always, elephants. He transformed the circus industry.
Pine, spruce, hemlock, and fir make excellent firewood. With their pitch content, they may burn hotter and quicker than hardwoods, but they produce plenty of good heat and light. They produce no more chimney creosote than anything else, and probably less. Firs and pines are all they burn out West.
While everybody needs to have a well-used chimney cleaned regularly, creosote accumulates in a chimney mainly from wood with high water content. In other words, "green wood" which has not had 6-12 months to shed its water content by sitting outdoors, or has not been "kiln-dried" like the expensive stuff in stores. Green pine wood is no more problematic than green maple, according to the experts. Ideally, give all wood some time to dry out to minimize creosote build-up.
A second cause of creosote build-up (we are not talking about ash build-up in the chimney, just the greasy creosote) is probably smoldering fires. The hotter the fire, the less likely that creosote will find time to condense and attach somewhere in your chimney. Creosote is, to some extent, water-soluble and thus condenses as it moves up to the cooler parts of the upper chimney.
The problem with creosote is chimney fires. Readers know that I've had a few, and it is not fun. If you are far from a fire station, it can burn your house down by either sparking the roof or penetrating the flue. People like me who burn wood indiscriminately - any wood from any tree, green or aged - must deal with the creosote issue with creosote fighters. Chimney sweeps cannot remove the grease, but chemicals can. I also enjoy quiety smoldering fires rather than dramatic blazes, so I do everything wrong.
Details on creosote oils here. Some creosote oils are what preserves and gives flavor to smoked meats. I remember painting fence posts with creosote as a lad, with my Dad. I don't think people do that anymore but it is a good and cheap wood preservative.
My family of origin voted to ban Christmas presents amongst eachother years ago. It's my two parents, five kids with five spouses, countless grandkids. However, bringing food, booze, and home-made Christmas cookies to the family gathering is welcome and wanted.
In my own family, as the kids have gotten older, we keep it generally in the area of books, scarves, and Christmas socks.
My in-laws, on the other hand, love the whole Christmas ritual of buying, wrapping, and giving presents, and find joy in it.
Arlo Guthrie, lefty hatemonger and anti-war activist extraordinaire, has become a (gasp!) Republican.
Doc's List of Great Lefty Hatemongers:
Weathermen — Advocated anarchy, mayhem and violence
SDS — Advocated anarchy, mayhem and violence
SLA — Advocated anarchy, mayhem and violence
Arlo Guthrie — Advocated walking into a military recruitment center, singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant", then walking back out
Great hatemongers, all.
But now that Arlo is officially one of the good guys, we'll allow him to preach his virulent, scathing, anti-war screed to the world. God help the ears of any poor recruiting sergeant should someone actually walk in and pull off such a stunt. It sounds a bit cruel to say, but most people don't sing very well.
For another Guthrie tune (and me seriously screwing with your head when it comes to his politics), please...
My Thanksgiving prayers (and many of my prayers), begin with "Lord, help us be fully grateful and thankful to You for being a companion and guide in our lives in good times and in hard times."
These half-crazy Puritans had little to be thankful for materially, yet thankful they were on the chilly shore of Cape Cod Bay. Brownscombe's The First Thanksgiving:
And now Cape Cod, this summer. What would those Pilgrim forefathers have thought of this sight?
Re-posted from last year. I add in 2012: No matter what the circumstances, whatever you have is to be given thanks for, and someone else always has less, and they may surprise you that they give thanks for that.
Wednesday night, my son Jason and I were greeters at our synagogue for the annual Interfaith Council Thanksgiving Service, which brings together ministers and congregants from many varying religions. A real eye-opener for Jason as he met people, US born and from all corners of the earth, all sharing thanks for our bounty and generosity. The service ended with all standing to sing "America the Beautiful." (I wish they'd also added Emma Lazarus' poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty.) I hadn't read all the words to "America the Beautiful" in many years. So, like me, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, you may want to refresh your memory.
America the Beautiful
Words by Katharine Lee Bates, Melody by Samuel Ward
O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet Whose stern impassioned stress A thoroughfare of freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine Till all success be nobleness And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for halcyon skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the enameled plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till souls wax fair as earth and air And music-hearted sea!
O beautiful for pilgrims feet, Whose stem impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought By pilgrim foot and knee!
O beautiful for glory-tale Of liberating strife When once and twice, for man's avail Men lavished precious life! America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till selfish gain no longer stain The banner of the free!
O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till nobler men keep once again Thy whiter jubilee!
Dunkin Donuts is a Yankeeland item which has begun to colonize the world. Mediocre coffee, mushy donuts which are not really fat-fried and have no crunch, but half-decent daily bagels. Also, "Breakfast sandwiches" made of God-knows-what warmed-up plastic-wrapped thawed-out food-like substances.
People like Dunkin anyway. It's familiar, predictable, comfortably mediocre. A welcome sign to see on a cold, sleety night of driving in the middle of nowhere. Clean bathrooms. A Dunkin franchise is a cash cow for the franchisee. I know a Greek immigrant who now owns five of them. He's rich. He is fortunate in having a loyal, smart, and pleasant mostly-Hispanic staff. A few Pakistanis too.
I haven't had one of their too-sweet and mushy donuts in years, but once in a while I'll have a toasted bagel. I only like fried donuts.
Bob Rosenberg opened the first one in Quincy, MA in 1949, and the first of thousands of franchises the following year in Worcester.
In 2006 the parent company was acquired by a consortium of private equity firms: Bain Capital, The Carlyle Group, and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Heavy hitters, for a humble donut shop. Dunkin' Donuts is the world's leading baked goods and coffee chain, serving more than 3 million customers per day. Dunkin also bought Baskin Robbins a while ago, which is why you sometimes see the two carbohydrate outlets under the same roof.
Every Thanksgiving, we kids sang this merry song on the way to our Granny and Grampy's Connecticut house: four of us, bouncing in the back seat of the Chevy station wagon on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Their house was a mansion to us, filled with mysteries. Owl andirons with eyes, bathtubs with claw feet, a real ice box in the basement, a big family Bible from the 1700s, a jar of formaldehyde with a dissected human heart, old medical texts, Tiffany lamps, a Chickering grand piano, Persian rugs, the first EKG machine in Connecticut (German made, in a mahogany cabinet, which still worked and which works to this day), the rooms my Dad and Aunt grew up in with all of their books - and my Granny's Mom, sitting and knitting. She died at age 103. An old Yankee, raised on a hardscrabble farm and who worked as a nurse, she never said very much. She was half Iroquois (her Mom), and looked like an ancient squaw with her hair tied back.
They had a cranky, humorless Polish widowed cook called Mrs. Wos (which was an abbreviation of her last name which I never knew) who helped them in the kitchen and who would smack your hand hard with a spoon if you tried to grab something. Granny was not much of a cook, to put it mildly, but she would help Mrs. Wos when asked. Mrs. Wos kept a filled bird-feeder outside the kitchen window for entertainment, and banged on the glass when a squirrel got into it. Come to think of it, she banged all sorts of things: hands, windows, pots and pans, cabinet doors.
And they had an old widower black guy moved up from Mississippi who did chores and yard jobs, and helped with the garden - the sweetest and most dignified Christian guy you could ever know. "Uncle Ed," who my Granny called Mr. Evans, sang hymns while he worked, and read the Bible and philosophy (and W.E.B. DuBois and Albert Schweitzer) when he was off duty in his cozy apartment above the garage - with a wood stove (in addition to real heat) - and walls of bookshelves. He believed that fiction was the work of the Devil but he never refused whiskey.
Being alone in life, both family helpers joined us at the family tables for Thanksgiving dinner. Ed was always given the honor of offering the prayer which came from the depths of his heart. He went on for quite a while, as the soup got cold. Deep and yet simple, which are the things I still aspire to. He prayed for his country, for the enrichment of his and our spirits, for the soul of his dead wife, for his two boys in the service, and for the glory of creation.
I miss him because he was a dear buddy to me. He was the first black guy I knew. He had worked as a railroad Porter, and he said the railroad was the true friend of the black man. He knew the blues, and he knew the hymns. He taught me to fish, with great laughter and jollity. Bait-fishing from a rowboat, for food, with a bamboo pole. No fancy stuff. Long gone, now, but never forgotten.
Happy Thanksgiving, readers. Thanks to God, and God bless us, every one, living and gone - and our free country.
Photos: Station wagons were the SUVs of their time: if you had kids, you had one. '55 Chevy, of course. The '50 Buick? My grandparents drove theirs until the mid-1960s. Old people used to drive old cars. I recall theirs as having been brown, not black, but I couldn't swear to that. My Gramps, who was a doctor, totalled it into a tree while making a house call late at night in a snowstorm at age 84. He was OK, but the car wasn't. Bought a white Oldsmobile with power windows and began to cut back on work and grumble about socialism and socialized medicine. Johnson was President, with Medicare on the table - and he accepted vegetables, flowers, firewood, and labor as payment from those without money. He felt his poorer patients would feel demeaned by charity, so he expected something. I remember a bushel basket of fresh-dug potatoes on his back porch, with a note scrawled "from Sam." Another time, a bushel basket of sweet corn.
Many years ago, I'd read a piece about how we did as much housework today as we did 100 years ago, despite a plethora of labor-saving devices. This may not be as true as it once was, but the recent storms gave me some insight about why it may have been.
I noticed that without power, we were busy doing many things to keep the house going. Finding firewood, getting gas, sweeping, going to the laundromat, getting and cooking food. Clearly having power means the gas lines are shorter and I don't have to seek out firewood on a daily basis. But what is it about labor-saving devices may have caused us to do continue to spend as much time doing housework as we may have prior to having them?
One day, as I was sorting the laundry, it hit me. By being able to do more in less time, our standards and expectations rose, so we tended to do more. We do things we couldn't do before, because we can.
I didn't like that my home's cleanliness took a slight dip during the storm, but given the time I was forced to spend doing other things, it just seemed like there was a logical trade-off in letting some things go for a bit until I had the chance to get around to them.
Bird Dog posted a great quote the other day from the terrific (now deceased) author Robert B. Parker, he of the wonderful 'Spenser' novels:
Baseball is the most important unimportant thing in the world.
So true.
By any real-world measure, sports is a complete waste of time. It has virtually nothing to do with the serious issues we face every day. It's whimsical. It's fanciful. It's frivolous.
Then you head for the news sites and read how global warming or the latest pandemic is going to kill you in 20 minutes, then you read about 'Fast and Furious' and how nothing's been done, then about the Black Panthers invading a voting station and nothing's been done, then about the TSA mauling some 90-year-old woman and nothing's been done. Then you drop by a left-wing blog site and read how the media is controlled by a vast right-wing conspiracy and that Romney is secretly a fascist dog-killing cancer-producing monster, then you drop by a right-wing site and read how those evil hippies are responsible for all your ills, how everyone in California is a drooling liberal, and how San Francisco is full of nothing but whacked-out sign-carrying moonbats.
Then you read how the Giants beat the Cardinals 5 to 3, and it feels like the only real thing you've read all day.
Below the fold I shall expound upon this most unique and wonderful of games, present five video clips, and document how something unbelievable happened in the seventh game of the National League playoff series that had never happened in baseball before.
Or, perhaps more specifically, had never been witnessed before.
I am a great admirer of Tom Wolfe's ability to have his finger on the pulse of the culture, and his ability to crystallize what's going on in a phrase, a concept, or in a story. I read Bonfire twice because it was so dramatic, realistic, and entertaining. Dickensian in scope, but maybe lacking in Dickens' talent for character portraiture.
On the other hand, over the years in real life I believe I have met every character in every one of Wolfe's books.
At City Journal, Tom Wolfe’s California - In the Golden State, the great writer first chronicled the social changes that would transform America. A quote:
“The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” represents the first time that Wolfe truly understood and was able to formulate the big idea that would transform him from an above-average feature writer into the premier cultural chronicler of our age. Those inhabiting the custom car scene were not rich, certainly not upper-class, and not prominent— indeed, they were almost invisible to society at large. Wolfe described his initial attempt to write the story as a cheap dismissal: “Don’t worry, these people are nothing.” He realized in California that he had been wrong. These people were something, and very influential within their own circles, which were far larger than anyone on the outside had hitherto noticed.
“Max Weber,” Wolfe tells me, “was the first to argue that social classes were dying everywhere—except, in his time, in England—and being replaced by what he called ‘status groups.’ ” The term improves in Wolfean English: “Southern California, I found, was a veritable paradise of statuspheres,” he wrote in 1968. Beyond the customizers and drag racers, there were surfers, cruisers, teenyboppers, beboppers, strippers, bikers, beats, heads, and, of course, hippies. Each sphere started off self-contained but increasingly encroached on, and influenced, the wider world.
Winter sports are the best ones (shooting, hunting, Paddle, skiing, Squash, indoor tennis), but you have to be in shape. The Official Maggie's Farm Fitness Program (no TM) is neither for big muscle building nor a rigorous fitness regime to regain a neglected physique but is cheap, time-saving, and highly-effective for those in decent shape who want to tighten up for the black diamonds (but ask your physician whether it is appropriate for you before suing Maggie's Farm or me):
1. Want to lose flab? Go on a no-carb, or almost-no-carb, high meat diet. Carbs are the devil, the delicious fat on the meat is not. Salad is for rabbits, anorectics, or for fun. Fruits are pure carbs. A few kinds of vegetables are low in carbs and tasty, but not necessary except to fill the tummy. Little to no nutrition in them. If you are a food-worrier, take a multivit to relieve your anxiety.
2. Aerobics: 30-40 minutes/day (running, treadmill, spinning, erg, swimming, or especially elliptical), pushing it as tolerated
3. Lower body: Several sets of lunges and squats as tolerated.
4. Abs: Several sets of bicycle crunches, as tolerated.
5. Upper: Push up sets and free-weight (not heavy) military press sets
6. Back, etc: Sets of The Plank, pushing sets as tolerated.
This is fun, only takes an hour/day, and gets your head ready for a good day of mental work. To save time, you can alternate days, aerobics on one day and the rest on the next day. That's enough to tune up an already-fit body.
I wonder what our readers do to keep themselves from going to pot in an America in which fewer and fewer people do real labor.
Dr. Tom Sculco at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York gave my mother-in-law a brand new knee on the Friday night before Sandy. She's doing fine, but a new knee is not exactly pleasant for a while. She had a push-button morphine pump for a while, and the post-op PT would be outlawed by the Geneva Convention.
Between Sandy, no power, the hospital and the rehab, and the tree falling on their house, it's been a challenge around here.
Dr. Sculco is the pre-eminent orthopedic surgeon in the world, has a world class bedside manner too. Spreads love, interest in others, and care all around, as we all should do.
The title of my second unpublishable book will be "George Washington's Nurse". This time, instead of foolishly writing the book first, I plan to market the title, and to come up with an idea and write the book afterwards. 
The statue of ol' PT Barnum in Seaside Park overlooking Long Island Sound. He donated 35 acres of his own property in putting together this 2-mile seaside public park. 
Girls Not Coming of Age 
That's the Liberal project. Liberals take the long view and the long march. As 
Every Thanksgiving, we kids sang 
Being alone in life, both family helpers joined us at the family tables for Thanksgiving dinner. Ed was always given the honor of offering the prayer which came from the depths of his heart. He went on for quite a while, as the soup got cold. Deep and yet simple, which are the things I still aspire to. He prayed for his country, for the enrichment of his and our spirits, for the soul of his dead wife, for his two boys in the service, and for the glory of creation. 
I am a great admirer of Tom Wolfe's ability to have his finger on the pulse of the culture, and his ability to crystallize what's going on in a phrase, a concept, or in a story. I read Bonfire twice because it was so dramatic, realistic, and entertaining. Dickensian in scope, but maybe lacking in Dickens' talent for character portraiture. 
Winter sports are the best ones (shooting, hunting, Paddle, skiing, Squash, indoor tennis), but you have to be in shape. The Official Maggie's Farm Fitness Program (no TM) is neither for big muscle building nor a rigorous fitness regime to regain a neglected physique but is cheap, time-saving, and highly-effective for those in decent shape who want to tighten up for the black diamonds (but ask your physician whether it is appropriate for you before suing Maggie's Farm or me):