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.
For anybody who had fun with Chaucer during high school or college, this essay, CHAUCER’S DIVINE SERIOUSNESS, will be a delight.
Chaucer, the Londoner who is credited with the invention of modern literary English, was well-educated and became rich importing wine from France. Writing was his hobby. He invented English iambic pentameter - all credit to him for that gift. He had read Bocaccio too, which probably gave him ideas.
I fondly remember reading Chaucer out loud in class, using the dialect our teacher thought was most likely accurate. Great fun. It still rings in my ears.
Lots of footnotes were necessary. Word meanings change.
Good inspiration for all. He cut his food volume drastically and lost 60 lbs after his quad bypass 3 years ago. Eats tiny meals and feels much better for it. A once- "hearty eater", he learned to say "No" to unneeded food even if he liked it. Two slices of steak and some steamed spinach with garlic is now good for him for supper. One soft-boiled egg for breakfast with a glass of V-8. It only took him 90+ years to learn how to eat in proportion to his needs.
He is recently back from a 10-day tour of Normandy with Mrs. BD, now spending a week, with a WW2 paratrooper vet-pal from the old folk's home, staying with our cousins on Nantucket. (Which my daughters term "Nan-f-it.")
Knowing the old Irishman well, I predict a whisky, clam, and oyster diet, and lots of hiking around. He will regale anybody in reach with stories from the old days. A Blarney Stone gift, endlessly amusing with stories and jokes. Everybody who meets him loves him. What a blessing for him to make friends wherever he goes because everybody wants to hang out with him. I suspect they will go fishing for Stripers for supper this week, offshore. Can no longer kayak due to bum shoulder.
In a couple of weeks, he will join us for 2 weeks in Wellfleet, also in seach of perfect oysters and fun waitresses to flirt with. He looks great, dresses well (new updated wardrobe due to weight loss - no old man clothes). Yes, he drives very well too - strong and steady with his brand-new Outback. Lots of guys in their 90s do not buy new cars, or even green bananas. Or are even alive.
Age is a state of mind, or so they say. If you are not dead yet. Arthitis is the challenge, but that's the price paid for an active life. He has always been very strong and athletic (100 pushups with my wife on his back) and a history student at night. Plus a tennis fan, Giants fan. I used to run 10 miles with him. Good times.
Another fun thing about the guy is that he is always up for a NYC adventure. Worked there for 30 years, but it is still a dopamine fix for him. Theater, music, a walk, a restaurant - whatever. If a long walk, best if he carries a cane. I swear he would do Mt. Washington if I challenged him.
To top it all off, he and Mrs. BD are planning a cruise around the Magellan Straits, BA to Chile. How cool is that? Amazing bird-watching. Carpe diem.
May he live long and prosper - even though he can no longer help me split logs as we used to do. I need help with that. I guess that's why we have a son.
When New York began to build its public-housing system, by far the nation’s largest, it made two ill-fated decisions: not only would the city demolish existing working-class neighborhoods; it would also put into practice a modernist vision of towers-in-the-park architecture. NYCHA residents live in an environment conceived by the city’s political and intellectual leadership, promoted in a famous 1934 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and deeply influenced by the French architect Le Corbusier. “The plan must rule,” Corbusier decreed, and in his designs, it did. “There ought not to be such things as streets,” he wrote. “We have to create something that will replace them.” That something was the superblock...
Where we planted my dear brother-in-law's ashes on Saturday afternoon, in the family churchyard next to my parents. Typical of the Bird Dog family, his widow's first words: "Let's make this quick, everybody, cuz I'm paying the gravedigger by the hour." We all got an F in Solemnity class.
Damn, I miss that good guy, and will miss him terribly in Cape Cod this summer. Navy vet, outdoor-lover, running buddy, fishing buddy, beer-drinking buddy, body-surfing buddy, hiking buddy, farm work buddy. Always up for anything energetic or challenging. Wry, dry humor.
It sucks, as my sister says. Yep. Happy trails, Uncle Bob, and maybe catch ya later in the great unknown.
Just finishing Michael Lewis' Flash Boys, a terrific history of high frequency trading, front-running and markets in general. It reads like a thriller. You'd expect a Wall Street drama to be all about ego, bad guys ripping people off, and money being 'stolen'. Certainly that all plays a role, but it's not central to the story.
One of the best parts is the side story of Serge Aleynikov, one of the few people arrested, tried, and imprisoned after the crash in 2008. What's truly sad is that he had little to no involvement in any of the events leading up to that, nor was he involved in any transaction coding or theft of any kind (though Goldman Sachs and the US Government said otherwise). It's a sad state of affairs when someone capable of 'fixing' the problems that lead to flash crashes and other tech-driven market impairments is listed as a 'bad guy'.
At any rate, he lost his money, his family, his reputation - but eventually won his case and was freed. He has a great quote:
“If the incarceration experience doesn’t break your spirit, it changes you in a way that you lose many fears. You begin to realize that your life is not ruled by your ego and ambition and that it can end at any time. So why worry? You learn that just like on the street, there is life in prison, and random people get there based on the jeopardy of the system. The prisons are filled by people who crossed the law, as well as by those who were incidentally and circumstantially picked and crushed by somebody else’s agenda. On the other hand, as a vivid benefit, you become very much independent of material property and learn to appreciate very simple pleasures in life such as the sunlight and morning breeze.”~Serge Aleynikov
There is an old Hotel/Pub in Marble Arch, London , which used to have gallows adjacent to it. Prisoners were taken to the gallows (after a fair trial of course) to be hung. The horse-drawn dray, carting the prisoner, was accompanied by an armed guard, who would stop the dray outside the pub and ask the prisoner if he would like ''ONE LAST DRINK''. If he said YES, it was referred to as ONE FOR THE ROAD. If he declined, that prisoner was ON THE WAGON.
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were "piss poor", but worse than that were the really poor folk, who couldn't even afford to buy a pot, they "Didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be in England. Here are some facts about the 1500s: Most people got married in June, because they took their yearly bath in May and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women, and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"
We flatter ourselves with the idea that we make our own decisions, arrive at our own rational conclusions, etc.
If psychology has taught us about the unconscious influences that tend to control our thoughts and choices, the current social "science" of influence and persuasion addresses the external forces that control our minds. It is darn interesting, but depressing.
As a prof of Marketing, Berger surely knows how to sell us but gives us tools to see through it all too.
Mrs. BD and her pal attended an open rehearsal at the NYC Ballet today. They are going to the public performance later this afternoon. The NYC Ballet is in the top 5 in the world, but I can hardly tell any difference. Mrs. BD and her pals sure can. They are dance (ballet and modern) enthusiasts. Actually, dance fanatics.
No doubt many of our readers can not fully appreciate the art of dance (it's been decades of struggle for me, but I persist), but attending the rehearsals is an eye-opener. Same goes for music rehearsals.
NYC has more dance, musical, and theatrical venues than any city in the world. If you give those things a try, it's your place to go for an interesting time and a fun dinner out somewhere.
An interesting podcast below about Americans working past "conventional" retirement age. The first half praises the personal and productivity value of working at least until 70, and the second part has somebody claiming that a later retirement age turns mature adults into slaves.
There is no free lunch. I tend towards working until one can no longer work, but I get some pushback from that view. If I retired, I really do not see what good I would add to the world, to my family, or to my finances. I hate the idea of feeling useless, put out to pasture. However, I have seen lives blossom in retirement, but more often I have seen lives shrink and shrivel in retirement. There can be a tendency for regression. Remember, retirement (government savings plans, social security) is a recent invention, from the 1880s by Otto von Bismarck in Germany.
Sure, to save Social Security (SS is a fait accompli), I'd gladly move "the conventional age" to 70 or 72 rather than, as it is now, the maximum. People live longer and healthier than in the past, and thus have more to offer, and longer. Retirement is not an entitlement. SS is. Of course, despite SS, anybody can work as long as they choose.
Part 1 of Kenneth Clark's BBC Civilization series. My favorite line: "These buildings are not wigwams." This series was a big hit when I was young.
Included in this section are Vikings, Celts, Christian history, how the cross became a Christian symbol around the year 1000, the Moslem invasions of Europe, Charlemagne, and art. Years ago, we traveled to Skellig Michael partly inspired by Clark.
A commenter says "I shudder to imagine what a 2017 remake of a series about Western Civilisation would be like."
The protagonist is a 12th C English stonemason who travels to France to learn about the new design fad we now know as Gothic. Besides the architecture, there's a lot of novel in this novel. Good fun and a compelling portrait of 12th C England.
For anybody who had fun with Chaucer during high school or college, this essay, 
We flatter ourselves with the idea that we make our own decisions, arrive at our own rational conclusions, etc.