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.
Our perception of time and space is arbitrary and inherently meaningless. It’s like the xy-grid we used in school. It’s useful for talking about the information dotted on it, but on its own is meaningless – it's just there. The information dotted on the grid would always be, regardless of the xy-grid.
Now on 83 acres with some imperfectly-maintained gardens, the place has little use. It would make a fine campus. We had dinner with friends last night who love to explore the more obscure corners of NYC. They found the place to be fascinating, but Staten Island itself not so much.
Despite countless cuts, slashes, and penetrations of my feet over the years from broken shells, stones, sharp twigs, coral, etc., I have always resisted water shoes. After my last visit to the beach in 2014, Mrs. BD sent me to the store to get some.
They are excellent. You can swim in them, and they protect you from burning-hot sand too. Now I will not go to a beach without them.
Another good use of them is exploring shallow waters for critters and things at low tide. No more slipping on rocks or getting a toe sliced by a sharp oyster shell. They might look a little pussified, but they can keep you functional. I also use them for kayaking.
In the car, Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition. The lecture on Pascal is mind-blowing, a math and physics genius who invented the first binary "computer," who gave his life to Christ. Also, the lecture on Francis Bacon, where the prof reviews Bacon's False Idols of Knowledge and Science (from The New Organum (1620):
- The Idol of the Tribe: the arrogance that comes from agreement with one's colleagues - The Idol of the Cave: bias coming from one's psychology and background, and the vanity of attachment to an idea - The Idol of the Marketplace of Words: Wherein words take the place of real knowledge. - The Idol of Theater: Our received philosophical and scientific views as given by tradition and authority
It's better than college. Buy them on sale, and don't pay the library prices. Or trade with friends and neighbors, as we do.
You will thank me for this free ad for them. We are reviewing the big topics we have forgotten, or didn't have time to take in school. Things we need a guide for. Lifelong learning, like lifelong fitness, is a cliche but for good reason.
Now that I'm back to an empty nest, there is a greater need to fill time on the weekends. Which means more relaxation and fun for the wife and me. We went into the city for a walking tour through Central Park. I get to walk it whenever I want, since my office is only a block away and lunchtime strolls are normal. I found out she had never been to Strawberry Fields, so that was a stop along the way. In addition, we walked through the zoo and saw the seals, the statue of Balto, Literary Walk, The Mall, the statue of Balto, and a host of other sights which require only the time and energy to walk for 2 to 3 hours.
There were two things which I don't see much of, though. The first was a street show on The Mall. About 8 young men exhibiting their athleticism, performing gymnastic feats for a crowd they'd assembled. They must practice a lot, they were all perfectly timed, in great shape, and their sales pitch was hilarious and frequently done in unison. I was plucked from the crowd, along with 8 other men for a supposed athletic feat. I had a feeling it was as much a shakedown as it was my being part of the show, and I was right. I was fine with it, though. After all, I was part of the show for 15 minutes, and I spent another 15 minutes or so watching them as part of the crowd. I figure they collected about $400 for all 8 of them after a half hour of work. Lots of people handing over 10's and 20's. They aren't earning a living doing this, but it's a good way to fill time and make spare cash. We enjoyed watching (and being part of) their performance, even if it cost us $20. I'd have spent more at a comedy club or at the US Open (which I won't be attending for the first time in several years).
Then there was this guy (or gal - not sure), and I realized "walking the park is so much fun...you just never know who you're going to see." I think I'll leave defining normal to others. The pumps are a nice touch.
Unless you need to carry lots of stuff, kayaks have mostly taken over from canoes for water recreation. I grew up with rowboats. Kayaks are much more fun. Some links:
I recently learned that artist John Grillo had died in December, aged 97. He worked in his studio until the day before he died. I knew last year that he didn't have long to go.
I have a couple of his watercolors, aiming for one more for my HQ before the prices get out of hand. Met him a few times in his old age. Crusty, ornery old Cape Codder, eager to make money from his work. A stroke barely slowed him down.
Our friends at the Cove Gallery were nice enough to assemble a bunch of his Circus pictures for us to look at. A master colorist.
Our hosts in Wellfleet last week provided abundant and elegant breakfasts. Fresh fruits first, of course. I am not a fruit fan, but with a good dollop of Trader Joe's Lemon Curd I can enjoy them.
They provided fruit forks and knives with the beautifully-presented fruit course. Civilized and quite effective tools for all fruits and berries. Yes, old-fashioned. We need some.
With decent cutlery and Lemon Curd, I may yet become fruit-tolerant. Is fruit "healthy"? Not at all. It's really just nature's dessert.
Humans love stories. "Mom, read me/tell me a story." Fiction is/was written for entertainment. Before movies, there was mostly music, theater and fiction. There are well-told stories and poorly-told. There are revelatory stories, life-contaminating stories, and everything in between. There are stories which vary in their demands on the reader.
One quote:
I once delivered a paper in Norway on Anna Karenina, and a prominent scholar replied: “All my career I have been telling students not to do what you have done, that is, treat characters as real people with real problems and real human psychology. Characters in a novel are nothing more than words on a page. It is primitive to treat fictional people as real, as primitive as the spectator who rushed on stage to save Jesus from crucifixion.” Here is the crux of it: Characters in a novel are neither words on a page nor real people. Characters in a novel are possible people. When we think of their ethical dilemmas, we do not need to imagine that such people actually exist, only that such people and such dilemmas could exist.
I'll do an informal series on some interesting exercises for functional (as opposed to body-building) improvement. I think we basically covered serious cardio a week or two ago, and we covered The Planks too.
No need to cover the big, essential resistance ones: Dead lift, bench press, dumbell press, barbell squat, pull-ups, push-ups.
I categorize exercises in three rough categories: Resistance, Cardio, and Mixed Cardio/Resistance. My favorite group is the latter of those 3. Fitness Crossfit does lots of those too.
The Farmer's Walk is a full-body resistance exercise which is highly-functional. I do 2 sets maybe twice weekly. Head up, chest out, shoulders back, quick walk. Often grip and forearm strength is the weak link.
Anything that requires explosive power, athleticism, grip strength, overall limit strength and core strength will benefit from the farmer’s walk. So, basically, the farmer’s walk is the epitome of functional training for about anything.
Cabo is famous for the fishing, but we were out for meat as much as for sport and, as I mentioned, we are not really into hassling the big fish from the big boats anymore. Leave them fish alone!
We set out early with Carlos in his super-ponga to find "Sierra" - Sierra Mackeral (similar to the Atlantic Spanish Mackeral, but larger) - for dinner for ten invitees. We needed the meat but good sport is always the bonus.
I always say, "Huntin' and fishin' ain't shopping." It's a risk to invite people before catching the fish, but it's never failed for me. The Lord provideth the tortillas and the fishes. We caught 8 but really only needed 6, so had leftovers for breakfast. (We Yankees believe in fish for breakfast.)
Being lazy and on vacation, we brought our 8 cleaned and skinned mackeral over to Solomon's Landing on the marina to prepare it for us all for dinner six hours later. Since we supplied the fish, it wasn't a big expense except for the cocktails.
It was a good dinner party. Margueritas the size of bathtubs. Here was the result at 7 pm that evening -
First course: Sierra Ceviche - the best ceviche I have ever had in my life. Sierra is said to be the best fish in the world for ceviche, and I cannot dispute that. I could live on Sierra Ceviche and Margueritas:
After the dynamite ceviche, they brought platters of our Sierras cooked three ways - chef's choice: Fried with coconut, baked with capers, olives and peppers, and baked Rockefeller style (like Oysters Rockefeller) - all wonderful Mexican cooking:
How to Stay Awake on the Road: Tips to Combat Drowsy Driving. Those are some reasonable ideas, especially the quick nap in the car or a stop with a little walk. If it's a frequent problem that you have, and you need to drive long distances often, you might persuade your doc to prescribe some low-dose amphetamine or adderal for the purpose. That's what truck drivers do. Call it "Driving Narcolepsy."
It is odd, isn't it, that when you arrive at destination you can feel just fine?
I had been hearing how good it is for a while, so I have been giving them a try.
There are two versions of Crossfit - the Fitness version (general full-body fitness - "functional movements at high intensity") and the Sport (the cultish, extreme, heavy weight-lift) version. I do the Fitness version. It is a tough, exhausting group workout where people of all ages (I see age 16 to age 80) and all levels of fitness (fat ladies) do the same thing like a team, but each at his or her own level of ability.
In one of the sessions I like to go to, we have a blind guy. Also, a guy who had a stroke, and a couple of guys who have had heart attacks. It is good fun, bonding, and everybody helps and supports each other. It is also inexpensive, and a good place to meet gals. One of the cool things about the program is that you never know what they will have you doing. It's varied, so it stays interesting and challenging.
It has been surprising to me how quickly your body can respond to these sorts of demands. There are now 10,000 Crossfit "boxes" in the US.
It was more black families 50 years ago, now the decay has expanded.
The goal of the Moynihan Report, he said, had been to begin a serious national conversation about the implications of those sizable numbers of out-of-wedlock births and what they said about the condition of the family and marriage. His fellow liberals believed that the social and cultural pathologies Moynihan had identified could be effectively addressed by an historic expansion of the federal government. President Johnson’s War on Poverty, launched in 1964, was defined in part by a series of programs that would intervene against family and marriage breakdown, helping to arrest, reverse, and eventually eradicate the problems that Moynihan had identified.
But Moynihan was skeptical. Government could not tuck a child into bed at night; government could not save a marriage; government could not help a broken family fall in love again. These were, he said, primarily cultural problems and not economic or political ones—a bold assertion at a time when trust in big government was embraced by members of both parties.
Percy’s diagnosis was that when we are mired in the everydayness of ordinary life, we are susceptible to what he called “the malaise,” a free-floating despair associated with the feeling that you’re not a part of the world or connected to the people in it. You are alienated, detached. As Percy put it in “The Moviegoer,” “The malaise has settled like a fallout and what people really fear is not that the bomb will fall but that the bomb will not fall.” The heroes of his books, each in his own way, embark on a search for the cause and cure of this syndrome. “What is the nature of the search?” wonders Binx Bolling, the narrator of “The Moviegoer.” “The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life.”
On Saturday morning, we'll be kayaking through the vast Nauset Marsh, checking out the wildlife, communing with the marsh gods, and getting a moderate workout for a few hours. It's a maze, easy to get lost when you can't see over the marsh grasses.
Everybody understands that water wants to kill you.
6 Tiny Cavers, 15 Odd Skeletons, and 1 Amazing New Species of Ancient Human - 
Despite countless cuts, slashes, and penetrations of my feet over the years from broken shells, stones, sharp twigs, coral, etc., I have always resisted water shoes. After my last visit to the beach in 2014, Mrs. BD sent me to the store to get some.
I recently learned that artist John Grillo 
Our hosts in Wellfleet last week provided abundant and elegant breakfasts. Fresh fruits first, of course. I am not a fruit fan, but with a good dollop of Trader Joe's Lemon Curd I can enjoy them.
