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.
It is remarkable and noteworthy to me when anybody successfully opens an independent business in this country's anti-business climate, whether it's local plumbing, money management, or a clothing line.
It's good for people whenever somebody has the cojones to do such things. Many people get jobs from it. Why does government make it so hard to do?
One high-energy young gal we have been following is Nora Gardner, whose online shop for conservative upscale professional women's wear ("Day-to-Night" clothing, made of Italian wool right in New York City's garment district) has added a flagship shop on 58th between Madison and Park.
Mostly online, though.
Lots of people try being employees, and conclude that they ain't gonna work for Maggie's Farm no more. That's good, that's the American spirit. I tried to be an employee for a while. Hated it, never looked back despite the "security."
Problem is, it's a bitch to be your own boss, because boss is too hard on you. Gotta be tough, bold, and brave, and take a ton of self-criticism.
Catboats are popular in the greater Cape Cod area. I'm not sure about other areas.
Catboats of any size tend to be beamy, stable, and comfortable. With no jib, they can not point worth a darn. Not a bad idea to have a motor for when wanted. Picking a horsepower for a sailboat is a bit complicated.
Salt Water New England posted the pic below of a Marshall 22 quite close to the (not under power, I assume, or just holding in place) Queen Mary 2somewhere in New England. Marshalls come with a diesel engine.
If you ever have the chance to take a Cunard liner across the Atlantic, do it. She is a true ocean liner, not a cruise ship. Today, the Queen Mary is at dock in NYC, due to leave for Hamburg soon.
A sail on a catboat on a breezy day is is good too. Marshalls for sale here.
"I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game." Bear Bryant / Alabama
"It isn't necessary to see a good tackle, you can hear it!” - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame
"At Georgia Southern, we don't cheat. That costs money, and we don't have any." Erik Russell / Georgia Southern
"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it." - Lou Holtz / Arkansas - Notre Dame
"When you win, nothing hurts." - Joe Namath / Alabama
"A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall." - Frank Leahy / Notre Dame
"There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you." - Woody Hayes / Ohio State
"I don't expect to win enough games to be put on NCAA probation. I just want to win enough to warrant an investigation." - Bob Devaney / Nebraska
"In Alabama , an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in Bear Bryant." - Wally Butts / Georgia
"I never graduated from Iowa. But I was only there for two terms - Truman's and Eisenhower's." Alex Karras / Iowa
"My advice to defensive players is to take the shortest route to the ball, and arrive in a bad humor. - Bowden Wyatt / Tennessee
"I could have been a Rhodes Scholar except for my grades." - Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State
"Always remember Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David." - Shug Jordan / Auburn
"I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn't recruit me ." He said,"Well, Walt, we took a look at you, and you weren't any good." - Walt Garrison / Oklahoma State
"Son, you've got a good engine, but your hands aren't on the steering wheel." - Bobby Bowden / Florida State
In how many ways can we live, today, like kings of olden times? For one, we don't need a court orchestra to keep our ears stimulated, altho that would be pleasant for sure.
My house radio music has always been WQXR (live streamed or sometimes regular radio), but on the Cape I discovered Chatham's Cape Classical 107.5. They are at least as enjoyable as WQXR and they also live stream. OK, I do CDs also, but only radio introduces me to music I haven't heard before.
My perennial question to my readers is this: How do I get live-streamed music to go through my fancy speakers? Or is streamed music of such lousy quality that it doesn't matter?
What about a Bluetooth audio receiver? I don't know how those work.
The movie "Jaws" ruined beach fun for millions of people. Like "Psycho" with showers and "Snakes on the Plane" with airplanes, the idea was to make money by creating disturbing mental images for people who live lives blessedly free of elemental terrors. Shark attacks on humans are extremely rare, and probably mostly accidental. Still, the thought of it is disturbing and resonates with our deepest "monster under the bed" terrors.
I never saw Jaws. Didn't want to. I do know the famous lines from it, though. Great Whites are cold-water eating machines. They congregate where the food is. They will live on fish, but seem to prefer delicious mammalian flesh so they go where they can find it.
Does the Bird Dog family swim with the seals? Yes, and the gals often with wet suits that make them look like cute seals. You can't have a life if fear dominates every aspect of it. I do not frequent golf courses in thunderstorms, but I do not frequent golf courses anyway.
The idea of retirement from work was a 20th Century invention, growing out of Bismarck's utopian vision of the welfare state. It may turn out to have been a short-lived social phenomenon as people live longer, in better health. It's to the point that many people spend more yours in retirement than they did in their productive years.
My observations are that people (mostly men) tend to feel useless if not emasculated by retirement, and end up finding new challenges. Forced retirement, due to health or being let go for whatever reason, is particularly crushing to the male self-image. A vacation is one thing, but a permanent vacation is not so special for most people. You can only play so much golf, and a wife usually does not want a guy hanging around a house all day.
What's your view? Is retirement a life goal or an ending of some sort? I clearly feel that it is a lousy life goal, because life is only today regardless of age.
I don't want to write a commentary on the violence in Charlottesville. What happened is terrible, wrong, and any discussion of violence begins and ends with the violent acts themselves, not the activity commentators choose to associate it with. I rarely take part in group protests or political gatherings because the likelihood of one outlier who wants to impart damage is very high and I neither want to be associated with, nor a victim of, poor individual choices.
I do want to write a commentary on the removal of icons and monuments. In Tuesday's morning news, Bird Dog posted an article about Confederate statues in the Capitol building.
Before I dig in, I want to point out that if a statue triggers your emotions, I suggest you think long and hard about why you're having an emotional response to an inanimate object. I'd further point out that if these emotions regarding the statue are related to taking offense, or increasing your anger or hatred, you may want to see a therapist. I'm not a psychologist or psychotherapist, and maybe one of our other writers who are in that field can elaborate (or even tell me I'm wrong) about this point.
Consider one fact. Since Monday, monuments around the US have been removed, sometimes forcibly, in an angry response to Charlottesville. Taking this further, New York's governor, and NYC's mayor, have decided to review and remove 'symbols of hate'. One NYC councilman said "if not hate, at least symbols of hurt." I'll have to send him my list of statues that 'hurt' me.
I think politicians, and people, get bent out of shape over strange things. When I see virtually any protest forming, I begin to think "Don't those people have better things to do?" It's been a long time since I marched or protested or did anything political in a group setting. I generally don't like aligning with large groups that claim to speak for me. But a bigger personal issue is the current mindset is the assumption that if you don't agree with removal, you must somehow be sympathetic to the white supremacists. Thought Police abound in today's society, driven by emotions of hurt and hate. Moral equivalency is employed with alarming regularity, often unnecessarily and ignorantly.
I'll relate one experience I had in which I'd have to admit I was emotionally 'triggered'. It was a great learning lesson. I was in college. I was working on a TV show about hunger for the college station. A speaker arrived and handed out leaflets. One person pasted several of them on the set. It was an elephant with "GOP" written across his chest, preparing to drop a nuclear bomb. This was 1984, I was 22 years old and Reagan was being protested regularly on campus. I stood up, stated my opposition to the leaflet on the set, saying it neither had anything to do with hunger, and had everything to do with politics which we weren't discussing. I was told to be quiet and do my job. I protested again, saying it "offended my sensibilities" and that I couldn't work on a project like this. The professor who managed the station walked over, put his arm around me and said "you will be asked to do difficult and uncomfortable things throughout your life, and on your job. If you allow your emotions to get the better of you, it will cost you your job. Today, if you walk off the set, you will fail the day's project." I walked off the set, took my "F" for the day and still got an "A" for the class. But I learned a lesson. Don't let your emotions overwhelm you. I could have done the work and still been effective at my job. Today, I guess I could've sued for a "hostile workplace."
Cloud Atlas — Marvelous, just marvelous. One of Tom Hanks' best.
The Martian — One of Matt Damon's increasingly good roles.
The Great Wall — Superb special effects, great monsters, seriously hot Chinese chick. What more do you want?
Rogue One — This is the '½' flick. It is, by no means, a 'great' movie, but there's an important point to be made.
As always, you're encouraged to click on the icon on the lower-right of the player's tool bar to open them up to full-screen size. Hit ESC to get back to windows mode when through.
Toon on top via Althouse. Image below via the article.
Is academic language in the humanities and social sciences designed to obfuscate, is it just packaged cant from people with nothing to say, or is it smoke-signaling?
One prof claims "As a professor ... one seeks not to find the foundation and the conditions of truth but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.”
The use of words without fixed or clear meanings is a major part of what makes academic writing so terrible. People often complain that academic writing is “obscure” or overly convoluted and complex. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with either complexity or obscurity in themselves; research papers in the sciences have to be complex and technical, and introducing people to obscure and unfamiliar words or concepts can be a key part of developing human knowledge. The problem largely comes when words are vague and unclear, admitting of many possible interpretations. Infamous academic terms like “phenomenological,” “intersubjectivity,” “embeddedness,” “hermeneutical,” and “discursive” are not bad because they describe complicated concepts, but because it’s often not clear just what an author means by them...
There were lots of them. German immigrants nurtured a boom in brewing. 1880s Manhattan was a beery paradise. NYC still has plenty of beery pubs, but fewer per block than back then.
My Meindl "Light Hikers" have over 100 miles on them by now, and are as comfortable as sneakers. Although they are lighter than the Meindl hikers, they are not exactly light (3 lbs). My old Adidas hikers are lighter, but not as tough on rocks so I will keep them for ordinary hikes without steeps, scree, or boulders.
What those Meindls have, besides excellent stability when tied properly, is a velcro-like grip on steep and wet rock, gravel, and mud. I tried many times to see at what point they would slip, and they just would not. That is very cool.
For serious Alpine stuff, I'd go for their regular "Perfekt Hiker", but I have no plans for that.
A couple of points:
- I use liner socks with these boots. Probably don't need to, but why not?
- Since my feet are not used to long hikes day after day, I go prepared for dealing with hot spots and blisters. Didn't have a single problem with that.
- Nothing is waterproof with heavy rain and wind. "Waterproof" boots do nothing for rain pouring in from the top, or from having to cross water that is over boot-level. Fortunately, human skin is waterproof.
- Word to the wise: In Europe, "walking" adventures typically means off-trail steep hill and non-technical mountain hiking with cliffs and boulders. It's not what I call "walking."
Perhaps the author has not read about what Manhattan was like in the David Dinkins era. You can keep that kind of gritty if you want it with the muggings and the morning dead in the parks from gunshot and ODs. What is most obnoxious about the false-sentimentality of it is that the author seems to see Manhattan as NYC.
The author needs to get off the magic island and hike around like the Forgotten New York guy does. There are a lot of neighborhoods in New York, most not Dinkins-era gritty anymore but many fairly rugged and ungentrified. Regular people live there. Millions of them.
The guys began work on one like the one in the photo but with fieldstone not cut stone. It will be on the edge of our bluestone patio. Have to keep up with the Joneses.
Actually, I like any reason to be outside, day or night. On these global cooling summer evenings, a fire, a cigar, and a little whisky make for the perfect contemplative moments. And the smoke keeps the bugs away.
I might decide to learn to make home-made pizza too. How difficult can it be?
A service guy asked me to clean out my dishwasher drain filter because it grossed him out. That was a humiliating experience. Clean your own once in a while to avoid that unpleasant experience. Chances are that it is full of gunk.
Label photo via Salt Water New England. She seems to like Harris Tweed. It lasts forever, except moths.
"Hand-woven in the Outer Hebrides from Scottish wool." It's still a cottage industry on Harris and Lewis. No factory. I am not sure where the garments and hats, etc. are actually constructed, though.
A Harris wool sports jacket is heavy, water-resistant, and heathery-looking, perfect for Isle of Harris summer or winter weather.
Scotland, they say, has no summer and no winter. The wool just keeps growing. Was that a mutation in sheep?
Mrs. BD and the gals forced a sports jacket on me at the Harris Tweed shop on the harbor in Tarbert. Nice lining in it. Nothing really in the tiny village of Tarbert but a ferry dock, a whiskey distillery (where they suggested coming back in 5 years when they will have something good) and the little Harris Tweed shop.
Pics of a weaver, the shop, and bustling downtown Tarbert below the fold.
I've done reading on the topic of daypacks. I have always used my antique Osprey daypack (made in Dolores, CO) which is about 20-liters. With a replacement waist belt which my shoe repair guy fixed up for me for $10, it sits right and holds anything I might need for an ordinary day hike. (I think any pack without a waist belt is a terrible idea. I have also found that a proper fit and tweaking the adjustments makes a big difference. It has to sit on your butt.)
I bought my Osprey pack in Telluride on a ski trip with the kids. Needed a place for them to put spare winter clothing in as the temperatures went up and down and as snow came and went during the day.
Mrs. BD took the liberty of buying me a 40-Liter REI daypack for our recent Hebrides hiking trip. It fits well, but holds far more stuff than I am ever likely to need other than for lengthy winter hikes.
In fact, it could function as a smallish airplane carry-on. These days, half the people on international flights carry backpacks. They have become standard tourist items, but who needs a backpack or daypack to walk around Florence all day?
Let's say the usual day hike off the beaten track is from 4 to 8 hours. What do you need in the pack? Some liquids, snacks, maybe a sandwich or two, some rain pants and waterproof jacket, a trail map or travel guide, a first aid kit and some blister packs, a wallet, binoculars, a little camera or iphone, perhaps a 2-way radio if remote, maybe a place for hiking poles - and empty space to stuff layers that you might not want as the day warms. A box of ammo if hunting in the wilderness.
Shouldn't a 20-L pack be able to handle that, and more? Unless it's warm weather and you are carrying several liters of water, or unless you are playing sherpa and carrying stuff for other people.
We're about to plan our next wilderness hiking trip (day hikes only, thank you, with fluffy towels and hot water at night), so I will decide for sure whether 40 L is overkill.
If you are a regular day hiker, what size do you use, how do you use it, and what do you put in it? And if you would want a 40-L pack, why?
Alas, not a record-breaking hiking climb, but highly exciting with the cliff edges. July 9, 2017.
"Travis Pastrana crushed the Mt. Washington Hillclimb record reaching the 6288’ summit in a stunning 5:44.72. The #199 WRX STI with a specially fitted 600hp engine actually beat the record two times, running a 5:46.28 on the first attempt up the twisty 7.4 mile race course. This is just shy of a twenty-five second gain on the old record of 6:09.09 held by Subaru Rally Team USA teammate, David Higgins, from 2014."
That is no biggie for his company. The story got me looking into the game of Baccarat. I have never played it. It's a card game, a game of chance with some more complicated versions like Chemin de Fer which I believe is what James Bond enjoyed. Punto banco is the common version of the game.
Is any skill involved in the betting component? I am not clear on that but it mainly seems to be about the adrenaline.
Photo above is Tranby Croft, site of the famous Royal Baccarat Scandal of 1890. A great story.
Superb essay by Victor Hansen: Brawn in an age of brains. Hansen realizes that, even in an age of laziness, many brain workers feel the innate need to stress their bodies daily for a while.
Hansen himself has always done farm work and brain work. Just one of many quotable paragraphs:
Sometime in the 1970s and 1980s, millions of Americans—far more than just those constituting an economic elite—decided that a key to the good life was to be free from, say, the need to cook, watch children, mow the lawn, or rake leaves. Illegal immigration promised cheap help for the upper middle classes that had once been the exclusive domain of the aristocracy. In theory, skipping the gym for four hours a week would provide more than enough time to mow the lawn, prune the bushes, or vacuum the floor. Yet sweaty and studied exercise is often deemed preferable to rote labor, given that it is more scientifically calibrated to making one look and feel better. Repetitive muscular work is not seen as commensurately valuable, whether for the exercise it provides or for its psychic benefits. Yet for all one’s degrees and income, a person can still retain some sense of autonomy and an ability to master the surrounding material landscape, if only for a few hours each week, and to appreciate how the other half lives that does such physical labor for wages. It is a choice...
There are so many rating systems that it can be confusing or misleading. And when it comes to off-trail wilderness hiking, which we did a lot of in the Outer Hebrides, you really need a guide who knows the terrain to estimate what sorts of challenges you can handle. In less wilderness areas, of course, we all get a kick out of doing off-trail explorations on our own. Not always a good idea.
Many difficulty- rating systems are based on altitude changes, steepness of grade, length, agility-requirements, and risks (eg weather, cliffs, boulder fields, etc.). Other rating systems are based on technical difficulty alone.
I'll pick one example: the famous and popular Tuckerman Ravine trail up New Hampshire's Mount Washington. Alltrails rates it as Hard on their Easy/Moderate/Hard system. But what does that really mean? 9 year-olds prance up it with daypacks. What it means is that there is a substantial altitude change, variable weather (foolishly-unprepared people have died of exposure up there but it would be difficult to be that stupid), and high rocky steps at times, but it is a relatively easy hike if you are in good health and cardio condition. It's a 7-hr hike up to Lion's Head and back down - what Europeans call "hill-walking." In the European system, the Tuck hike probably would be rated in the 2 range on their 1-5 rating system.
In my view, though, those Euro ratings - "Easy" to "Expedition-Level" - do underestimate the challenges. The Euro level 2 to 2.3 range is plenty for me. On level 3, I suspect that I would be a slowpoke in a group. People do not like to have to wait for the slowpokes. On straight steep uphills, off-trail, with unstable footing, I need a minute to catch my breath every 20-30 steps. I call that "admiring the scenery" or "taking a picture."
Since we're talking about hill-walking - all-terrain hiking - and not technical mountaineering, we are mostly talking about stamina and cardio conditioning. Strength is not a major factor but mental and physical stamina are.
And yet another to rate hikes you have taken: Hike Evaluation Calculator
Photo is from the popular hill walk/climb, Breakneck Ridge Trail in the very pleasant village of Cold Spring, NY. It's a 6-mile hill walk but the first mile involves lots of scrambling and a 2000-foot altitude change which is why some people rate it at a rather high - too high - 3 because anybody in decent shape can do it.
It is remarkable and noteworthy to me when anybody successfully opens an independent business in this country's anti-business climate, whether it's local plumbing, money management, or a clothing line. 
I don't want to write a commentary on the violence in Charlottesville. What happened is terrible, wrong, and any discussion of violence begins and ends with the violent acts themselves, not the activity commentators choose to associate it with. I rarely take part in group protests or political gatherings because the likelihood of one outlier who wants to impart damage is very high and I neither want to be associated with, nor a victim of, poor individual choices.
Toon on top via Althouse. Image below via the article. 
My 
The guys began work on one like the one in the photo but with fieldstone not cut stone. It will be on the edge of our bluestone patio. Have to keep up with the Joneses. 
The 
Photo is the REI 40-L daypack.
There are so many rating systems that it can be confusing or misleading. And when it comes to off-trail wilderness hiking, which we did a lot of in the Outer Hebrides, you really need a guide who knows the terrain to estimate what sorts of challenges you can handle. In less wilderness areas, of course, we all get a kick out of doing off-trail explorations on our own. Not always a good idea.