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.
We'll leave out the billionaires, because they are too few to move the dial. Let's just look at the very high-income people who make America look unequal in the statistics.
Who are the piggish people with multi-million annual incomes?
Pop music stars Pro athletes and coaches Hollywood stars, producers, and agents Fund managers of large popular funds, hedge and regular Large urban real estate investors and brokers Successful creators of new businesses and venture investors in highly successful businesses A small number of CEOs of major corps. A microscopic number of authors Investment bankers? Not much anymore
I don't begrudge any of these people their incomes, but I sometimes envy it while aware that I would not be capable of doing what they do. Still, if we taxed them all 100% over 1 million, we'd eliminate the statistical "crisis" and people would have to bitch about something else.
Pic was the Maggie's HQ tree set-up in the parlor last year. Yes, there is an outlet in the floor. This year, we're in process of going back to colored lights for the darn pagan tree.
Tree is a fire hazard, but the fake ones just feel fake and seem to create the unpleasant feeling of bank-lobby to me. I don't like to keep a real dead tree up for over 14 days but maybe I'm a scaredy cat.
I like the tree in the middle of the room, away from heat and far from a fireplace. I keep the water full, and I use this tree water recipe. Same trick that makes cut flowers last longer. Best to use warm water to soften any sap that would block water uptake. Cut trees are thirsty.
I use a heavy and heavy-duty welded steel stand like the one below. It holds a gallon of water and could easily hold a 12' tree.
After 14 days or so, I carry the tree with its stand and lights out to the front of the house to abide a while, or even months, with an extension cord to keep it lit. I don't even try to keep last years' lights anymore.
Good news: Mrs. BD is already practicing her carols on the pianny. It's a delight for Bird Dog, even the missed notes.
There is no such thing as progress in music, art, architecture, or littacher, is there? Changes in style, culture, tradition, and fashion is all. Baroque is endlessly interesting, and mostly very fast-moving.
Despite the formality of the title, it's a very readable and persuasive book about our experiences of reality and the role of our local cultures in shaping our experience of reality.
Berger was on my mind because Pastor Keller had mentioned the idea of "relativizing the relativizers." I like that idea, because nobody can really think outside their own culture, and relativists and multiculturalists of all sorts tend not to be aware of how deeply Western and, indeed, parochial their views really are.
1. WHY: Why do men's clothes have buttons on the right while women's clothes have buttons on the left? BECAUSE: When buttons were invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push buttons on the right through holes on the left. Because wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the maid's right! And that's where women's buttons have remained since.
(I've also heard some claim that it's to make it easier for guys to unbutton ladies)
2. WHY: Why do ships and aircraft use 'mayday' as their call for help? BECAUSE: This comes from the French word m'aidez - meaning 'help me' - and is pronounced, approximately, 'mayday.'
3. WHY: Why are zero scores in tennis called 'love'? BECAUSE: In France, where tennis became popular, the round zero on the scoreboard looked like an egg and was called 'l'oeuf,' which is French for 'the egg.' When tennis was introduced in the English-speaking world, it was pronounced 'love.'
4. WHY: Why do X's at the end of a letter signify kisses? BECAUSE: In the Middle Ages, when many people were unable to read or write, documents were often signed using an X. Kissing the X represented an oath to fulfill obligations specified in the document. The X and the kiss eventually became synonymous.
5. WHY: Why is shifting responsibility to someone else called 'passing the buck'? BECAUSE: In card games, it was once customary to pass an item, called a buck, from player to player to indicate whose turn it was to deal. If a player did not wish to assume the responsibility of dealing, he would 'pass the buck' to the next player.
6. WHY: Why do people clink their glasses before drinking a toast BECAUSE: In earlier times it used to be common for someone to try to kill an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously. When a guest trusted his host, he would only touch or clink the host's glass with his own.
7. WHY: Why are people in the public eye said to be 'in the limelight' BECAUSE: Invented in 1825, limelight was used in lighthouses and theatres by burning a cylinder of lime which produced a brilliant light. In the theatre, a performer 'in the limelight' was the centre of attention.
8. WHY: Why is someone who is feeling great 'on cloud nine'? BECAUSE: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they attain, with nine being the highest cloud. If someone is said to be on cloud nine, that person is floating well above worldly cares.
9. WHY: In golf, where did the term 'Caddie' come from? BECAUSE: When Mary Queen of Scots went to France as a young girl, Louis, King of France, learned that she loved the Scots game 'golf.' He had the first course outside of Scotland built for her enjoyment. To make sure she was properly chaperoned (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from a military school to accompany her. Mary liked this a lot and when she returned to Scotland (not a very good idea in the long run), she took the practice with her. In French, the word cadet is pronounced ‘ca-day' and the Scots changed it into caddie.
10. WHY: Why are many coin collection jar banks shaped like pigs? BECAUSE: Long ago, dishes and cookware in Europe were made of dense orange clay called 'pygg'. When people saved coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as 'pygg banks.' When an English potter misunderstood the word, he made a container that resembled a pig. And it caught on.
Christians use Christmas lights and Christmas candles to symbolize and celebrate Christ's coming to illuminate a dark, painful, and sinful world.
There are two mysteries to those strands of colored lights which I have never understood:
- No matter how carefully you stow them away, they always come out tangled. Are they self-tangling?
- You stow them away for 11 months untouched, but when you take them out in December, half the strands don't work and you have to run to Home Depot or CVS. Do they have a built-in obsolescence?
“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”
Do we humans tend to believe what we want to believe? Do we tend to believe what fits our preconceptions? Of course we do. God, however, has blessed us with a cerebral cortex with which to help balance our wishful fantasies against reality but our frontal cortex is a weak antidote.
Perhaps politics has always been about irrationality, propaganda, pandering, deception, etc. Socrates himself fell victim to a democratic witch hunt. There are always plenty of people out there who desire power, money, easy jobs, public recognition, etc. and who will do lots of things and compromise whatever integrity they have to get them. I understand that, but I do not respect it. I do not respect calculating, manipulative, dishonorable people, and I desire to insulate myself from them.
In recent years, it seems that the contagion of truthiness (useful fictions) goes hand-in-hand with the generation of underlying long-term politically-driven narratives. The seemingly-sociopathic Al Sharpton proved, in the 1987 Tawana Brawley episode, that a lie which fits the right political narrative can be profitable in many ways. In fact, his reckless, destructive ballsiness made his career as a public figure - while destroying many others involved in that famous non-story.
Truthy stories cannot get a foothold without media support or incurious acceptance. The media made Al Sharpton by refusing to treat him like the charlatan he is. The media made the Duke rape story, the "Hands up" story, and so many similar stories now culminating in the UVA gang rape story. None of these things were stories - they were ginned-up fictions to provide data points on a narrative line. That is what novelists and poets do.
These are modern versions of yellow journalism. We need more people willing to call "Foul" against tendentious PC baloney.
I don't really think this is all about gullibility and wish to believe. For the most naive, perhaps, but generally I think it's more cynical and calculating than that. There are agendas which seem, to some, to be more important than the truth. There are hardly enough Walter Duranty awards left to go around these days.
Advocacy journalism doesn't just run with fairy tales. Just as importantly, the MSM refuses to cover stories which would be fueled to near-fatal or fatal levels (eg, the IRS story) were a conservative in power. May I note the dearth of aggressive "investigative journalism" since the Left has held power in Washington? Has the Obama administration done anything worse, thus far, than the Nixon administration did? He has known, all along, that the MSM will cover for him because he is a lefty and has brown skin. Good insulation.
Pretty much everybody knows all of this now. The news is mostly spinfotainment and the only thing the public can do about it is to switch to FOX where "fair and balanced" means something - to the chagrin of the lefty narrative-spinners. Or Morning Joe too.
"What is truth?" asked the very clever Pontius Pilate
We'll see what happens with that UVA story eventually. To my mind, a "rape culture" is a feminist invention to keep their movement alive.Rape is a serious felony in the US, and is becoming more rare as time goes by. The criminality of rape is not controversial in the US although it is acceptable in many parts of the world and in many cultures. Dubious rape stories, like dubious racism stories, only harm a cause and create backlash. The same thing has happened to the "climate" hyperbole. For rape or attempted assault, call the cops, same as with a burglary or mugging. It's that simple. For climate, enjoy the day whatever the weather. Not to worry, in New England it will change tomorrow.
In no place in history on this planet has there ever been less sexism or racism, or more opportunity, or more generosity to the unfortunate, the feckless, the disabled, the homosexuals, and the transgenders, than there is in the Anglosphere today, and especially in the US. So why are the voices so shrill?Could it be because they see their relevance disappearing?
Mrs. BD snapped this pic of one of the wonderful tiles in NYC's Astor Place subway station."In the mid-to late-19th century, the area was home to many of the wealthiest New Yorkers, including members of the Astor, Vanderbilt and Delano families"
Why beavers? Because John Jacob Astor, at one time the wealthiest man in America, made his fortune in beaver pelts (and wisely went on to invest his beaver wealth in NYC real estate).
Why the Waldorf-Astoria? Because Johann Jakob Astor was an immigrant from Waldorf, Germany.
"I'll go on a diet after the holidays." Right. Sure you will, just like last year.
Being fat in the US is highly correlated with social class. Like academic degrees and choice of clothing, being heavy is a social marker of sorts for men and women.
In a sexist way, men are given some leeway for a few extra pounds but only if they are wealthy, powerful, or brilliant.
Black women, recent immigrants, working class and lower middle-class, and the poor seem to display the most consistent overweight. (In the midwest US, fat in women seems to be near-universal outside of urban centers. What is that about?) Cause, effect, coincidence, or what? I have no idea what it is all about.
There was a time, over 100 years ago, when prosperous men displayed their prosperity in their bulging bellies. Fashion and expectations change. In eastern Europe and Russia, fat was good. It meant you had more potatoes than the next house. In the 1600s, fat was popular in western Europe too - see Rubens. Today, see a WalMart aisle. It used to be difficult to be pudgy and today it is difficult to be fit. Fortunately for us, we do live in a fitness-oriented world despite our (mostly) daily lack of manual labor. Fitness makes everything in life better and longer, reduces indolence, lethargy, and fatigue, and puts old age farther into the future. Nothing but sinful laziness stands in our way.
In the Western world today, with its abundance of cheap and tasty carbs, thin has been in for 100 years and being fat has been a public sign of giving up on an energetic life in many aspects: sex, romance, social attractiveness, sports, fun, agility, and overall vitality.
In my view, you can be too thin, you can be too heavy, but you can't be too rich.
We have posted recently about firewood, green or dried.
Of course, it all depends on whether your fires are for pleasure, comfort, and ambience or for the BTUs. We have an old wood stove in the kitchen which provides tons of heat, but my fireplace in the den warms that little room up very effectively, to the point that I have to open the window.
Fireplaces do radiate heat, just much more ineffectively than stoves.
What wood to burn? Any wood is good. Some people are too afraid of burning fir and pine, but they are excellent, produce wonderful smells, and probably produce less chimney creosote than slower-burning hardwoods. However, if you keep a home fire burning as we do, you must have the chimney cleaned at least twice per winter, and ideally once per cord or two whatever the wood. Chimney fires are the reason so many churches and old houses have burned down in New England.
Generally speaking, the hotter the fire, the less creosote condensation in the chimney. Here you can read all about chimney creosote.
I have read that it takes a year to air-dry unsplit green wood, which can contain over 50% water when freshly cut (dry wood is around 25% water, depending on where you live). I burn green wood sometimes once I have a good bed of coals and don't want a blazing fire, but it certainly does not burn as hot as air-dried wood. I don't care because I am not reliant on wood for heat except when our power is down.
Around this time (1744), the deputy governor of Pennsylvania, George Thomas, made an offer to Franklin to patent his design, but Franklin never patented any of his designs and inventions. He believed “that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously”
Brick-lined chimneys? They are obsolete. Best thing is to line them with stovepipe.
Always bear in mind that every time you light a fire you are producing CO2, killing Gaia, and destroying the planet. Coal and oil, after all, are just very well-seasoned old wood. If you truly love Gaia, you would do without mechanized transport, or horses, or A/C, heat, and the internet.
It's wonderful to see how regionally-diverse this big nation of America remains, but I would not touch some of that stuff. I mean, Snickers Salad for Thanksgiving? Sheesh! Nothing against Snickers but oh, well, it's all good as long as we are grateful. I don't want to be a food snob, but, gee whiz, there are some limits!
Pic is my standard Yankeeland cooking. I use half the sugar, twice the berries. My mother in law always makes raw cranberry and orange relish - deliciously tangy and different from this.
One historical detail I picked up in reading Philbrick's wonderful Mayflower is that the Pilgrims only permitted civil marriage ceremonies - no religion involved, and no preacher present.
As Calvinists, the Pilgrims/Puritans/Separatists of colonial New England viewed the Anglican sacraments as Papist, and thus representative of the Anti-Christ - and they meant it. As a consequence, Congregational Churches, the heirs of the Puritan movement, still have no sacraments per se, although many have liberalized (or backslided?) to the extent of doing baptism, communion - and, of course, weddings which, even if not technically sacramental, are viewed as sacred vows. People long for a touch of the sacred and sacramental.
It is fascinating to be reminded that our nation's deepest roots are in Calvinist theocracy: pre-enlightenment, for better or worse. They viewed the Indians as equals (though living in spiritual darkness), but they hung some Quakers in Boston as blasphemers (but mainly tried to just send them away).
They even hung an ancestor of mine, who ran away from her husband and kids in Kingston, Rhode Island and was caught on a trail outside of Boston, headed north. Her crime? She refused to return home. We suspect she was not overly fond of her husband, who had previously been suspected of throwing his first wife overboard on the way to Rhode Island in 1640.
Solomon’s startling proposition in Far from the Tree is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, and Solomon documents triumphs of love over prejudice in every chapter.
What I am reading now - judge me if you must, but be gentle because there is too much of our culture to keep up with, and it is up to each of us, as a duty, to contain and to transmit all of it that we can. Duty.
The Salt book: Lobstering, sea moss pudding, stone walls, rum running, maple syrup, snowshoes, and other Yankee doings (a good deed to write all that stuff down)
Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric
Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life by Dr. Alan Francis
A rule not ultimately backed by the threat of violence is merely a suggestion. States rely on laws enforced by men ready to do violence against lawbreakers. Every tax, every code and every licensing requirement demands an escalating progression of penalties that, in the end, must result in the forcible seizure of property or imprisonment by armed men prepared to do violence in the event of resistance or non–compliance. Every time a soccer mom stands up and demands harsher penalties for drunk driving, or selling cigarettes to minors, or owning a pit bull, or not recycling, she is petitioning the state to use force to impose her will. She is no longer asking nicely. The viability of every family law, gun law, zoning law, traffic law, immigration law, import law, export law and financial regulation depends on both the willingness and wherewithal of the group to exact order by force.
When an environmentalist demands that we “save the whales,” he or she is in effect making the argument that saving the whales is so important that it is worth doing harm to humans who harm whales. The peaceful environmentalist is petitioning the leviathan to authorize the use of violence in the interest of protecting leviathans. If state leaders were to agree and express that it was, indeed, important to “save the whales,” but then decline to penalize those who bring harm to whales, or decline to enforce those penalties under threat of violent police or military action, the expressed sentiment would be a meaningless gesture. Those who wanted to bring harm to whales would feel free to do so, as it is said, with impunity — without punishment.
Without action, words are just words. Without violence, laws are just words.
I'm talking about good casual leather shoes and boots, and dress/dress work shoes. "Casual," of course, is relative.
Well-made examples of these should last a lifetime, and often would except that our feet increase in size somewhat with age (due to gravity).
If cheap shoes are disposable items, that's one thing, but $300-$500+ men's shoes deserve some attention and the custom-built deserve the most, for sure (for example, John Lobb's custom leather shoes cost as much as a lady's fancy handbag).
Guys with fancy jobs wear $1000+ shoes, but I would die first. Lady footwear is beyond my ken, but I overhear things about it from my daughters and it sounds insane to me. With the cost of appropriate womens' shoes you need to be a Saudi to afford your harem. (We had a fun time last year waiting in the Milan airport while Mrs. BD identified the multi-thousand dollar shoes under the black burkhas.)
Hard-work shoes, hunting boots (if resole-able) and athletic shoes (which you throw out when worn out) are different topics.
- Everybody knows that you should never wear the same pair of nice shoes two days in a row. They do not get time to dry out from your foot sweat. I often ignore that rule out of laziness.
- New shoes, I am told, should be polished and maybe waterproofed before wearing.
- Waterproofing is not a bad idea, does not damage or discolor leather (but mink oil does).
- If your feet expand a bit and you want to keep the good old shoes with the patina of age, shoe stretchers do work.
- Rule of thumb (for men's and women's footwear) generally speaking, I think, good shoes are not noticeable except to women and to gay guys but bad or ugly shoes are, and make a bad impression. You have to be either very rich or very powerful to get away with wearing bad or inappropriate clothing.
- Cleaning and shining are not just for appearance. They are for endurance. Pros do a better job (your local shoe man, or those guys in Grand Central Terminal if you ever pass through there and have a spare 20 minutes). It can be a good exercise to do it yourself: The Perfect Shoe Shine
- Good source for shoe care stuff: Shoe Care Supplies.com . Paste stuff is better than the hard waxes, it seems to me. It doesn't take much. The challenge is matching the colors.
Pic is Brooks Brothers' cordovan tassel loafers - for some people they are casual weekend shoes, and for some - like me - they are more like dress shoes but my life does not require dressy tie shoes altho I have one or two.That applies up here in Yankeeland and the Northeast US, anyway, where lizardskin boots would be an affectation and Ralph Lauren things are for wannabes. Choice of dress in general, besides appropriateness and just plain "what you are comfortable with", is part of tribal identification and signaling, like Indian headdresses.
More random shoe topics -
Most comfortable shoes for men and women? Definitely Mephisto. They might not be proper for high-level white collar work, but they are, by far, the best for comfort.
Our urban hike just won't go away. Yesterday, Bird Dog posted pics of Trinity Church. Today I'm posting one location we didn't happen to visit. It was on the original agenda, by the time we got to Washington Square, taking a swing west would have added too much time to the walk. Spirits were high, but it seemed too much to ask. There's always next year.
As a young arrival in New York, I was single and had small amounts of cash to spend on entertainment. There were plenty of ways to find that entertainment at South Street Seaport, midtown in some of the (much more expensive) watering holes, Greenwich Village, and even portions of the West Village. In particular, The White Horse Tavern (warning - the full article, if you wish to read it, requires joining the site, but there is plenty in the portion I've linked to) was one of my favorite places to go after work on Thursday and Friday. For some reason, I never stopped in on the weekends.
Humans are innately tribal, are we not? We have ways of communicating our tribal identifications by dress, manners, comportment, tone of speech, appearance, etc.
People can almost instantly identify a fellow tribesman/woman, and can just as easily tell the real from the fake (eg, Ralph Lauren Polo is fake).
Here's the preppiest website I have ever seen. It's for real, and done by a gal named Muffy: The Daily Prep.
We'll leave out the billionaires, because they are too few to move the dial. Let's just look at the very high-income people who make America look unequal in the statistics. 
Pic was the Maggie's HQ tree set-up in the parlor last year. Yes, there is an outlet in the floor. This year, we're in process of going back to colored lights for the darn pagan tree.
The Thanksgiving Recipes Googled in Every State - 
I'm talking about good casual leather shoes and boots, and dress/dress work shoes. "Casual," of course, is relative.
Humans are innately tribal, are we not? We have ways of communicating our tribal identifications by dress, manners, comportment, tone of speech, appearance, etc.
Hooray for sexual liberation!