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.
A beautifully-restored turn-of-the-century summer "cottage" on the CT shore. These sorts of places originally had no central heat as they were indeed summer get-aways for prosperous New Yorkers, but they had plenty of coal fireplaces to take the chill off on cool summer or fall nights.
Third floor, as in most larger, pre-income tax era houses, was servants' quarters.
Very nice carriage barn too, with room upstairs for your chauffeur or gardener. In those days, there were tons of secure jobs for semi-skilled servants.
Theodore Dalrymple put it characteristically well in the City Journal a few years ago when he said that, had she survived to our own time, Woolf would have had the satisfaction of observing that her cast of mind - shallow, dishonest, resentful, envious, snobbish, self-absorbed, trivial, philistine, and ultimately brutal - had triumphed among the elites of the Western world. And if that seems a little harsh on someone who did I think have a considerable gift - Mrs Dalloway is surely a very good novel - just remember that she also wrote the most immitigably stupid book of the twentieth century.
It just goes to show that you should look at how people comport themselves towards the world before accepting that they have something worthwhile to say about turning away from it. But the good news is that, when you do look, what you see is not always a disappointment.
You can turn away from the world without a chip on your shoulder, perhaps without even really thinking that that’s what you’re doing. But of course it isn’t as easy as that. Most of us will turn away from the world because it displeases us, and displeasure with the world is usually going to be our own fault. By comparison, turning away from the world in the full bloom of its loveliness is a gift, and no one will grasp it who has not already begun to receive it.
and
But I think I went too far in worrying that even the best philosophical or literary talk about death was always going to be on the edge of vacuity. By comparison, I’d say nowadays that a well-adjusted sense of absurdity and meaninglessness is much more likely to be good practice for the truth of its expression. After all, death does define existence. And the refusal to face up to it - no, that’s wrong, almost everyone “faces up to it”; the real point is to let the thought of it mature over the years - is as good an explanation as any for our tendency to insist on defining ourselves in terms of contingent things, things that are vulnerable to change.
The examples are endless. A violinist can get her fingers crushed. A footballer can lose a leg. A devoted husband can discover that his wife is betraying him. Children grow up and leave home. We don’t always get the top job. All of these things can induce despair. But, according to Kierkegaard, the real despair is about something else. It is about the thought that one is nothing if not a violinist, an athlete, a man loved by his wife, a mother whose children still need her, someone moving successfully up the career ladder, and so on.
Mrs. BD's pic on the High Line Sunday evening. It's pleasant for a stroll, but surprising to me how much of an attraction it has become. No public funds.
What the Boomers as a generation missed (there were, of course and thankfully, many honorable individual exceptions) was the core set of values that every generation must discover to make a successful transition to real adulthood: maturity. Collectively the Boomers continued to follow ideals they associated with youth and individualism: fulfillment and “creativity” rather than endurance and commitment. Boomer spouses dropped families because relationships with spouses or children or mortgage payments no longer “fulfilled” them; Boomer society tolerated the most selfish and immature behavior in its public and cultural leaders out of the classically youthful and immature belief that intolerance and hypocrisy are greater sins than the dereliction of duty. That the greatest and most effective political leader the Baby Boom produced was William Jefferson Clinton tells you all you need to know.
But gee, Prof Mead, those stuffy old moralities and values like honor, integrity, self-restraint, self-reliance, duty, sacrifice, loyalty, etc. are so...inauthentic, hypocritical, uptight, old-fashioned - and no darn fun.
Long-term mortgages may or may not be a good idea, but they do have willing sellers and buyers. In most of the world, mortgages are either rare or very short-term, ie 5 years, and are not tax-advantaged. From Forbes:
A 2005 paper by Adam Gordon describes the effects of federal mortgage policy from the 1930s until the 1960s. Congress created the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, and gave it the power to provide mortgage insurance to housing lenders. At the time, state and federal regulations strictly limited the kinds of mortgages banks could issue, which meant that mortgages were short—often as little as 5 to 7 years—and came with down-payments of between a third and half the value of a home. In the 1930s, the FHA convinced all 48 states to relax these rules for FHA-backed loans, arguing (correctly) that such loans were not as risky since they had the backing of the federal government. But most states did not liberalize the rules for banks with private mortgage insurance. In practice, this meant that FHA-backed loans were the only 30-year, low-down-payment loans on the market, giving the FHA de facto power to decide who would be eligible for such loans.
and
The FHA’s standards became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Young, upwardly mobile families in the market for a first home (at least the white ones) went where they could get the best deal, and thanks to federal guarantees that was the suburbs. Meanwhile, urban areas were starved of capital thanks to state laws that banned private parties from making long-term loans in those areas. Not surprisingly, suburban home construction boomed during this period, while urban areas stagnated.
The FHA and the mortgage interest tax deduction introduced giant distortions into housing markets. Just add "free" government highways to the mix, and you get what you have.
In my view, the FHA and the mortgage deduction are simply subsidies to construction industries and unions, and the freeways simply indirect subsidies to the auto and trucking industries and suburban construction industries.
A proto-bungalow, really. A happy family could have a fine life based in such a dwelling. That's all I need, but I'm not sure that Mrs. BD would agree. A little bit finer if they took the trouble to jack up that porch. This one is in Woodstock, VT (a village I am fond of, and not only for the skiing, and not to be confused with Woodstock, CT or the famous Woodstock, NY. The permanent population has not changed since 1859. Vermont is not about growth).
(Re cars in VT, Maine, and NH: Ever notice how the locals almost never have 4 WD in snow and mud country, but the summer folk and ski folk always do? You'd think that driving to the country is like Lewis and Clark.)
Just found this little stash of poor cell phone pics which one of the pupettes took around town a few years ago, for a school archecture project about roof styles. It's a random selection of where the !% seem to live.
Actress needs work, takes job as housekeeper. Before my time, of course. Gracie Fields was the best. Including "The artfulness, the sinfulness, the wickedness of men."
Like Megan McArdle, I don't give a darn about income inequality or asset inequality as long as people do not starve in the streets, and have opportunity and freedom to make their own path in life, but, in many years of talking to people, the patterns and major causes of very low reported income - bottom 1-4% - just call it the 1% because Life has a bell curve for economics -are obvious to me:
- Youth, career beginning, and education debt - Single motherhood - temporary unemployment - Life style choice - Lack of marketable skills - Living where there are no jobs to match skills - Very bad luck - Mental illness, addiction, etc. - Lack of cultural mastery, whether via recent immigration or whatever - Chronic disabling illness - A history of poor decision-making and life strategizing - Low IQ - Character traits such as laziness, inability to get along with people, lack of organization, initiative, goals, self-discipline, or ambition, no discipline to save money, impulsivity, poor planning, lousy judgement, etc etc. - Income data gaps due to the numbers of people who work off the books (for a dramatic example, our clinic realised that there was a 30-woman prostitution ring working out of a nearby government housing project) - Choosing to work the welfare/disability/food stamp/child care etc. system (with a couple of kids, the all with full government benefits brings them up to a working class standard of living without working. That ought to be good enough, roughly equivalent to a $40,000 salary). Our support system will bring you close to $30,000/yr in cash and/or benefits including unlimited free medical care) - History of criminality or career criminality
Everybody knows these things, but they are never talked about. I think that list covers pretty much all of the income poverty that I have seen. I have been lucky, and have worked my butt off as a physician, and still am not wealthy. I work because I need to be useful. For wealth-building, being a traditional gal, I rely on my beloved hubby. I stand by my statement, however, that money isn't happiness. It just provides choices.
You have to have things and people that you love, independence, and integrity, to make a good life.
The wonderful Nicole Gelinas has an essay up at City Journal which reviews the history of the idea of retirement (invented, as you know, during the Depression in an effort to move older folks out of the work force), and the financial challenges would-be retirees are facing today.
People, especially men, are postponing retirement.
As one of those cussed, cranky Yankee types who intends to die at his desk, I don't think much about it, but for those greying Boomers who aspire to exit the world of productivity, many of them have more debt and less assets than they thought they might have. A quote:
Thanks to Botox and treadmills, the boomers are aging well. Their finances? Not so much, as some Federal Reserve numbers show. Baby boomers, like most Americans, have seen no wage gains for two decades. In 2007, families headed by younger boomers—those aged 45 through 54—earned a median income of $64,200, almost exactly the same, in inflation-adjusted dollars, as families in the same age group earned in 1989. (The comparison doesn’t work well for the older boomers—those aged 55 through 64—because, as we’ll see, people are retiring later these days, which skews their incomes.)
Read the whole thing. I have often said that what people seek, more than retirement, is financial independence. When they have that, they enjoy working more.
Is it just a coincidence that November 11 is the celebration of Veterans Day and St. Martin’s Day? I haven't found documented evidence that the two are connected. (The evidence of the connection may be in some memoir of decision-makers.) Yet, it does seem more than a coincidence, rooted in Christian and European culture.
St. Martin’s Day is widely celebrated in Europe, its roots going back to one of the earlier Christian saints, who as Wikipedia describes it:
The feast day is November 11, the feast day of St. Martin of Tours, who started out as a Roman soldier. He was baptized as an adult and became a monk. It is understood that he was a kind man who led a quiet and simple life. The most famous legend of his life is that he once cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save the beggar from dying of the cold. That night he dreamed that Jesus was wearing the half-cloak Martin had given away. Martin heard Jesus say to the angels: "Here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is not baptised; he has clothed me." …
St. Martin's Feast is much like the American Thanksgiving [a thanking for bounty harvest festival]…In many countries, including Germany, Martinmas celebrations begin at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of this eleventh day of the eleventh month….
In another Wikipedia entry, the widespread adoption of St. Martin as a saint to the military is described. “He was a brave fighter, knew his obligation to the poor, shared his goods, performed his required military service, followed legitimate orders, and respected secular authority.”
The armistice ending fighting (at least on the Western Front) was signed at 5AM on November 11, 1918, scheduled to take effect at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The diplomatic wrangling leading to the armistice had gone on for several months. So, the fighting didn’t end just because of St. Martin’s Day, but the timing of the signing and cessation very likely was a reach into a shared meaning in Christian and European culture.
Today’s Veterans Day, in the US, and similarly timed observances in other countries, owes its roots to Armistice Day, and even to St. Martin.The word “chaplain” – military clergy from the various religions -- traces back to the “capellas”, early churches that had relics of St. Martin’s cloak, later churches being named “chapels”.
President Woodrow Wilson's proclamation of the first Armistice Day is fitting: "To us in America, the reflections of armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations." Those who served, who we honor today, brought peace and justice at the ultimate sacrifices of comforts and, for many, of life. The eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is a well-fitting time to remember that.
Last night, I attended a 50th anniversary screening of "West Side Story". The event was for one night only, and having never seen it anywhere but on TV, my better half felt it would be fun to see on the big screen. As usual, she was right.
The film has been digitally remastered for the 50th anniversary release, with the sound and picture as crisp as if it were filmed today.
Prior to the feature there were short interviews of Russ Tamblyn, Richard Beymer, George Chakiris, and Rita Moreno. Turner Classic Movies then interviewed Chakiris, producer Walter Mirisch, and Natalie Woods' singing voice double Marni Nixon. Each preview offered insight to the casting, the production, the choreography and the amazing amount of training and effort that went into the production.
The seamless nature in which the singing was dubbed is not noticeable. Pitch, accents, and lip synching were all managed extraordinarily well. Meanwhile, the framing of the shots and choreography are phenomenal. This remains true today even if we compare "West Side Story" to movies which take advantage of modern film and audio technology.
I've posted too many pics of particularly charming or interesting houses, and too few of the ordinary houses which constitute the bulk of the housing in the Northeast. This sort of simple, Foursquare-style frame house is everywhere, but this one is in Woodstock, VT. For snow country, I'd prefer a better pitch on the roof:
Iffy as an investment, especially in the liberal arts, but a good thing for a kid who is desperate to deepen his thinking and expand his mental life but who cannot do it on his own. After all, even Thomas Jefferson and Bill Gates took one or two years in college before they quit.
The Occupy Wall Street protestors are right to be angry about the failed promise of higher education. Colleges and universities have fallen down on the job of developing the human capital we need to improve our economy and civic life.
The villain is not the lenders who played an incidental role in providing capital to creative writing majors, however. It’s the tenured bozos who gave them Derrida and finger painting in their formative undergraduate years instead of Plato and Aristotle (or a good course in computer-aided drafting). The Zuccotti Park crew should drop their beef with the banks and demand change from academia instead.
WSJ: Is an Ivy League Diploma Worth It? - Fearing Massive Debt, More Students Are Choosing to Enroll at Public Colleges Over Elite Universities
Most people I know would rather hire a University of Indiana Physics major than a Harvard English Lit major.
A national Baccalaureate exam? Fine with me, as long as I get to design it - and as long as anybody can take it whether or not they attended college because it would be an exam on what is often regarded as post-high school academic knowledge, however acquired. I would not trust anyone to design this thing except me. Among other things, it would contain Trig and Calculus, Physics, Astronomy, Plato and Aristotle, Shakespeare, the Bible, Econ, mechanical engineering, Ancient Greece, Biochemistry, Music history and theory, Civics and American history, Anatomy, Geology, Roman law, Statistics, Architectural history, accounting, a sample essay...and many more things of substance and rigor which one typically thinks of a college grad as knowing, plus special sections on subjects of claimed expertise. There are smart and ambitious high school grads who could possibly pass the exam. This would be an elite degree representing broad and deep achievement, which people could make of it what they will, and not replace the shoddy, ordinary college degree which only means you paid your bills for four years. I doubt my Baccalaureate exam would mean much to the job market, but it would be a meaningful life credential to parade around and would be challenging enough to supercede a college BA and maybe even a Rhodes Scholarship. I'd aim for a Pass rate of around 2-10% of those brave enough to take it.
Well, I'll get to work on a sample exam right now - if there's any money in it for me. Or perhaps just a separate blog post.
Yale is responsible for introducing collegiate sports in the US, at first with rowing teams in 1843. And Yale's Walter Camp, of course, essentially invented the game of football.
When Yale Bowl was completed in 1914, it was the largest stadium built since the Roman Colosseum.
I have had a few interesting experiences with my patients and bill paying over the past few weeks.The business aspect of my practice is usually routine and unremarkable, but these stood out:
1. Phone message from a wealthy law firm partner one hour before his initial consultation: "Dr. Bliss, I just found out that you are not on my insurance so I decided not to come in."
(I threw a fit.)
2. An email from a college student patient with no money who I have seen on a charity basis "Dr. Bliss, my Dad" (who is unemployed) "and I were talking, and decided that we need to pay you something for the phone time and emails to adjust my medicine while I'm away at school. Please calculate something and put it on my account."
(I explained that I do not charge for brief phone calls or emails.)
3. Patient in the office "Dr. Bliss, you made a mistake on last month's bill." "Oh I did. I'm sorry." "Yes, it's the second time in two years when you undercharged me. Please correct it."
(I was naturally pleased by her honesty.)
4. Patient in the office: "My husband nickels and dimes me about every expense for the kids, and last week he went out and paid cash for a new Escalade for himself." "Did he?" I replied, "That's funny, because he told me on the phone that you all had no cash and asked that I give you a discount for a while." "Oh yes," she said. "I'm not surprised. His rule is 'Only suckers pay retail.'"
(I told her that as of today, it will be the full original fee because I was not pleased being one of his suckers.)
5. Business guy: "Doctor, will you take a discount for cash?"
("No. I happen to be one of those people who reports all of my income.")
A teacher put a sample of her 6th Grade summary math exam online, here.
I had forgotten what sorts of things 6th Grade math entailed, but found that I did not forget any that basic stuff because one keeps using it in daily life. 6th Grade math is fun math, no abstractions at all.
A re-post from last December - it's not snowing here yet this year - except for last weekend -
Still snowing heavily up here. Lovely evening for a smoke or two and a Scotch or three, and, as usual in the winter, I am encountering the problem of maintaining humidification.
I generally like to keep them in the mid-high 60s, but mine keep dropping to nearer to 50% in the dry air. And yes, I do keep them well-packed with good and bad smokes of all sorts.
Here's one bit of advice on the topic but, unless you have an electronic system, I suspect you just use solid heavy wood boxes and try to do your best to smoke 'em all - and not try to save a large collection. You can always buy more.
Here's something even better:
A pal who read my piece about humidors in winter was thoughtful enough to deliver me an Opus X along with two 72% Boveda gel-packs. Those packs are news to me. He promised that putting two Boveda packs in there will get your humidor through three months in the winter up here, where our humidity can be quite low in winter. The packs don't activate until opened.
America does have social classes, to some extent, based on all sorts of familial tribal signaling and shared understanding, but the mystery to most pundits especially on the Left is income mobility among economic levels. Social class and income are not the same thing. See "genteel poverty." Via The poor don't stay poor, the rich don't stay rich:
The data showed that fully 56 percent of those who in 2001 were in the lowest 20 percent quintile of income earners had moved up to a higher income quintile by 2007. At the opposite end of the spectrum, 66 percent of those who in 2001 were in the highest quintile of income earners dropped at least one quintile by 2007. And, as Perry notes on his Carpe Diem blog, lest anybody think the period spanning those years might not be representative because of the housing boom that triggered the Great Recession of 2008, data cited by the Fed point to the same pattern of high income mobility from 1996 to 2005. Fully 57.5 percent of those in the top 1 percent of income earners dropped to a lower quintile by 2005, while 57.8 percent of those in the lowest quintile in 1996 moved to a higher one by 2005.
In America, economic "class" is just a moment in time for most people.
We all must adapt! With Global Cooling hastening our certain death and doom by freezing to death, we offer this info in our annual Winter in New England series. God willing and if we survive Climate Change, we will extend this series next fall with some new additions.
Let's face it: 4 WD is is for petite blond yuppie wives who do not know how to drive in snow and mud while chatting on their cell - and for hunters who like to take vehicles to gnarly places. There's a cheap solution.
Snow and mud tires are called "Winter tires" nowadays. They are made of a softer rubber (so as to provide better suppleness in cold temperatures), which is why they don't last as long as regular tires. That's the reason to put them on in November and to take them off in March or April (around here, anyway). At that rate, they will last 3-4 seasons at the minimum.
Important safety considerations with winter tires: Always put them on all 4 wheels and never replace just one: replace all 4 at the same time.
Decent snow tires will turn your old Chevette into the rough equivalent of a 4 WD. But how do you know whether you need them? In my opinion, if you need them, you will know it - but here's a piece on the subject.
With global cooling picking up its pace, everybody may need them soon. 4 WD is good but, where you need them, winter tires are as good or better.
The problem the New Class faces at this point is the psychological and social self-perceptions of a status group that is alienated (as we marxists say) from traditional labor by its semi-privileged upbringing. It is, for the moment, insistent not just on white-collar work as its birthright and unable to conceive of much else. It does not celebrate the dignity of labor; it conceived of itself as existing to regulate labor. So it has purified itself to the point that not just any white-collar work will do. It has to be, as Michelle Obama instructed people in what now has to be seen as another era, virtuous non-profit or government work. Those attitudes are changing, but only slowly; the university pipelines are still full of people who cannot imagine themselves in any other kind of work, unless it means working for Apple or Google.
When I was a kid, we had an old red woodshed out back. It had a little hinged door, down low, to toss logs out of. It was far from the two-holer outhouse.
Mice and squirrels lived in there, and the occasional Black Snake too.
Nowadays, a wood fire is more of a luxury, a comfort, than a necessity for survival. We have grown more wealthy and comfortable than we appreciate. And we always seem to want more.
Some people still have woodsheds (necessary to take your brat kid behind for the wholesome daily whuppin'), but these days I keep my wood mostly out in the weather. Dry wood burns too fast, and causes the dread global warming. Of that, I am certain.
A tree guy I know just dumped me off a cord or so of green wood, for free and freshly cut from one of his jobs. Some logs large enough for splitting, but much of easily-burnable size.
People who are not fireplace experts think you need kiln-dried split wood for heat or for fireplaces. You do not.
As readers know, I keep the fire going in the MF HQ from October to May. I keep a supply of split and outdoor-dried wood, but once a fire is happy with coals I like to burn either green or wet logs. More heat, less flame, slower burn. Green wood burns fine once you have some coals. Sometimes, I throw a couple of hunks of charcoal in there to keep it hot and happy.
Listen Up, Boomers: The Backlash Has Begun
A 2005 paper
The wonderful 
Iffy as an investment, especially in the liberal arts, but a good thing for a kid who is desperate to deepen his thinking and expand his mental life but who cannot do it on his own. After all, even Thomas Jefferson and Bill Gates took one or two years in college before they quit.
Still snowing heavily up here. Lovely evening for a smoke or two and a Scotch or three, and, as usual in the winter, I am encountering the problem of maintaining humidification. 
When I was a kid, we had an old red woodshed out back. It had a little hinged door, down low, to toss logs out of. It was far from the two-holer outhouse.