Maggie's Farm

Cropsey was a landscape painter of the so-called "Hudson River School."

This is the Adam and Eve Mountains in Orange Co., NY.

Parrish (1870-1966) was an enormously popular New Hampshire illustrator/artist whose prints and posters are readily available. For me, they are highly sentimental and corny in a charming way. He frequently decorated his landscapes with lovely nymphettes. This is River in Ascutney. That is Mount Ascutney in the background, and the CT River.

Too busy for links this morning.

My Christmas present to Mrs. BD was piano lessons from a fine teacher who comes to the house. Mrs. BD had lessons in youth and had an incredible music education later. She is music-oriented, but now can only easily play basic things - Happy Birthday and Christmas carols and Auld Lang Syne - she reads music but wants and needs to be able to play chords, jazz riffs, serious pieces, etc., especially since we replaced the old and now have my late Dad's Steinway baby grand. What a sound! It fills ye olde cabin with rich noise. I don't care about missed notes or the sound of practicing. I love to hear it all, including the "damn, damn, damn."

Barking dogs, "damns" from the pianny, drier thumping, vacuum cleaner roaring, the scullery maids dropping pots, doorbell ringing, Blue Jays squawking outside, a young 'un yelling "Where's my sneakers?" - the lovely sounds of home sweet home.

Mrs. BD "gets" music, but pretty much dislikes pop music, country music, rock - and Dylan. She's not a snob, just finds them all annoyingly juvenile, unrefined, and stupid - except for a little Motown. What she loves is opera - and anything you can dance to. She wins Charleston competitions, and that's saying a lot, because the youth these days are into vigorous retro dance.

I am musically-retarded and tone-deaf but, in my wasted youth, a little cannabis plus a history of music course helped me hear, seemed to open my ears and, for some reason, that effect has lasted despite being drug-free since college. I still have to close my eyes to listen. You can get WQXR via the internets. Good fun.

So are Bob Greenberg's Great Courses. We love them.

When I grew up, we had an upright in the kitchen for kids' lessons, and a Grand or Baby Grand for the grown-ups in the parlor. I am told that the life span of a fine piano is 40-50 years if kept away from heat, sunlight, and given proper humidity - and then it's worthless junk, useless if not pretentious decor to put pictures on, or a $20,000 factory refurbishing. Unlike fine violins, old pianos are basically garbage which you have to pay somebody to get rid of. I placed Dad's in a northern corner of the parlor which has no nearby heat source except a fireplace that we only light up about 15 times per year for a few hours, for holidays and winter parties.

I am going to coat those windows with that UV stuff to protect the wood. It's around 25 years old, so it still has a good life left in it. My Dad would bang out Mozart for an hour a day on this machine, during cocktail hour. The good old days. "Damn, damn, damn" when he missed a note.  Mom would do Christmas songs and children's songs with nary a "damn."

The previous family piano was a black Chickering Grand piano. Like all pianos, it aged and was junked.

Those excellent Legacy speakers? I can play pretty good Bach on the CD player and my old Denon record player. Recorded music mostly destroyed the American family music culture which was based on home-made music. Well, that plus radio and TV all turned Americans into inert and passive blobs.

A medical man, "C.T. Azeff," is interested in this newfangled blogging biz. He emailed me this initial offering which is partly in response to If Obamacare Doesn't Kill Small Medical Practices, Bureaucratic ICD-10 Coding Requirements Might :

OK class, take out a pen and piece of paper, I am going to tell you a bit about ICD 10.

First, don't be alarmed by the prophets of doom who say you docs will be required to use this carefully crafted taxonomy in order for the insurers to refuse to compensate you for your services. This is true. I had dinner with an oncologist friend who is in bankruptcy because even though his patient's insurance company gave prior approval for a $100,000 course of chemotherapy they maintained that did not obligate them to actually pay for the cost. He already had, and on multiple occasions.

Back to ICD 10. This document will allow you to kick back and have some laughs about the conditions you likely will not be called upon to treat. The Monty Python crew had a field day constructing this and they've arranged for the ICD 10 office to be right next door to the Department of Silly Walks. Viz:

V9733XA: Sucked into a jet engine, initial encounter
V9733XD: Sucked into jet engine subsequent encounter (Should this person be allowed on runways?)
V9733XS: Sucked into jet engine, sequelae  ( this is for the litigators)

But, don't overlook,
Index to External Causes of Injury
Accident
E919.1   Bore, earth drilling or mining

            Land  or seabed
E919.7 Bulldozer
E909.9 Cataclysmic:
            Earth surface movement or eruption

So, be grateful if you only have to deal with intangibles and won't get blood on your shoes.

I'll be back soon to discuss Scott Stossel's heroic battle with anxiety and transgressive therapists.

CTAzeff

Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It reads:

A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazingly appealing. She believed him to be her dream guy and soul mate so much that she fell in love with him right then and there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.

A good friend left off this load of split Beech last weekend. I have to unload it, which is fine. An excellent gift. Beech is heavy as lead and as hard as nails, so hard that it destroyed saws so foresters left it alone until power saws came along.

All of the majestic old Beeches around here are dying of a bark fungus.

Here's the place where your editor Bird Dog spends many hours in work and study. Kids and wives wife were never really welcome in here except to search for books to read - but dogs, friends, and cigars are always welcome. No TV in here, thank you, but there is a radio and CD player.

I was experimenting with camera settings, and this was not really as sharp as I was aiming for. I was hoping to be able to capture the antique Eskimo animal carvings on the mantle, but it does give a general idea of The Inner Sanctum on a dark, snowy winter evening. A comfortable if humble study, perfect for me:

Goldberg on Groundhog Day.

I think it's a religious movie.

Of course you recall that story: in a dangerous lose-lose scenario, you change the rules, break the rules.

This, found at American Digest, reminded Mrs. BD of Kirk's KM Test as a student at Starfleet Academy. In this case, thinking outside the box - inside the box, as it were:

I'd rather play touch in the park with my old buddies than watch football on TV while eating junk food, but I guess it's a social ritual like secular Christmas.

Well, there are the top seeds in this game. Offense vs. defense, in a cool weather match-up of laundry vs. laundry with often amusing advertisements. Given Ground Hog day, I'll go with defense.

The game will be played in MetLife Stadium (aka Giants Stadium) in East Rutherford, NJ (aka New York). The stadium is part of the Meadowlands Sports Complex, which was built on landfill on the vast New Jersey meadowlands (aka swamps and marshes), in view of Manhattan.

Everyone who has driven the NJ Turnpike has passed through those Meadowlands. 

Those marshes are recent. A mere 3000 years ago those marshy lands were woodlands, and the Atlantic coast was 40 miles to the east. With the retreat of the last glacial incursion and the slow, steady sea-level rise of the post-glaciation, it became a estuary based on the route of the Hackensack River and a (no doubt lovely) White Cedar brackish swamp. The cedars were all cut down by settlers, for lumber.

Despite heavy industrial pollution (ended now), diking, ditching, impoundments, etc., these meadowlands are now mostly protected from development and are a wildlife resource despite the proliferation of Phragmites australis.  You could not build Giant Stadium there, today.

There are nature tours, or you can rent canoes and kayaks to explore the 30+ square miles of these marshes.

MEADOWLANDS TOURS

Geographic history of the NJ meadowlands

More Than A Super Bowl Site: Meadowlands has Super Natural Treasures

Birds of the meadowlands

"More than 8,000 acres of wetlands across the Hudson River from New York City has been earmarked for a wildlife preserve. The New Jersey Meadowlands was long known as a dumping ground: one of the country's largest landfills — and an occasional burial spot for mobsters."

Antiques Made Fresh Daily

I've reflected a little bit about our post about attire, posted yesterday. It was clearly about white-collar and professional work dress, but the general point about signaling is well-taken. People signal their real, or wannabe, personae.

It's impossible not to be signaling. It's what animals do. And if we wear nothing at all, that's a strong signal too.

A friend recently showed me his new Elmer Fudd hat that he bought on a skiing trip in Jackson Hole. A red-and-black-checked thing with a black tassel on top. Canadian hat. Hilarious-looking thing, but he could pull it off. He called it a Beaver-Trapping Hat...and I'm sure it attracts female glances of various sorts.  It looks sort-of like this, but black and red checks:

For professional women in the early-mid stages of their careers (ie pre-Chanel and pre-St. John), we recommend Nora Gardner's line of conservative but flexible day-to-night attire for gals who are going places in life: