Maggie's Farm

From the driver's seat of a 40 mule team. These rigs were used to haul Borax out of Boron Ca. & then loaded onto railroads for manufacturing. All this so you could do the laundry!  

Nowadays, it's 20 Mule Team Borax.

Well, maybe 40 mules = one twenty-mule team. I knew a mule once, named Charlie. He did not like to follow commands. An Irishman I knew walked up and told me to learn how to gain respect from a mule, and gave Charlie a left hook in the face along with a harsh talking-to. Mule remained a bit more docile for a few hours.  Main thing with mules is that they have to be tired out - and do not feed them oats. Anyway, I do not mess with mules anymore.

Poverty, Middle-Class, and Wealthy. This chart at AVI is mostly for fun, I think, because it is so oversimplified and reductionistic. For examples, there are distinctions between Poverty and Genteel Poverty, and between New Wealth and Old.

But let's just say some of it generally applies, sometimes. Differences In Attitudes.  Click on chart to biggify.

The complete and honest answer is we don’t know, and moreover, we can’t know!

Mrs. BD and I spent a balmy (low 50s) Sunday tramping around midtown because we had a special date day for elegant lunch and ballet, and walking around NYC is something we love to do. Golly, it is a blast to walk around and to look around.

Instead of tramping, I should have said "Trumping" around midtown. That is because The Donald was on our minds, and we must have passed ten buildings with his name on them. Not to mention the Plaza Hotel which he used to own. We kept laughing about it, and I laughed some more when we got to one of our favorite NYC lunch joints - Jean-Georges right off Columbus Circle. Wonderful prix-fixe luncheons. Damn if I had never noticed before that it is on the ground floor of The Trump International Hotel and Tower, southernmost building on Central Park West.

View from our table, Central Park on left, Columbus Circle on right, mounted cop in center, construction cranes everywhere in the sky:

Just a couple more pics below the fold. Marianne would have enjoyed all this.

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America

The Name of the Rose.  Eco died last week

A THING OF THE PAST. Tessa Hadley's new book

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

Helen Smith considers that book here. I need it, but it might be too late for me.

My grandfather's first wife grew up in this wonderful farmhouse in New Hampshire. Her name was Mabel Porter, but I don't know what town this was in. I don't know the age of the photo either. She died childless of leukemia shortly after her marriage so she is not really an ancestor. 

Grandpa grew up on a farm in northern Connecticut, but became a bit of a dandy and a prominent cardiologist and found a second wife after a while but my guess is that Mabel was his true love (Run-on sentence). Her name was never mentioned after she died, and he always called his second wife "Mother." He focused only on his work.

Grandma was a farm girl from Norwalk, Connecticut who became a teacher of immigrant schoolkids in Brooklyn. Mostly Jewish immigrants, she told me, but some Irish and Italian. They all had lice. Gramps met her when she was doing summer work at a resort he liked in Rhode Island. She bore Grandpa 2 very smart kids.

Trees are the classic New England streetfront vase-shaped Elms, now, alas, mostly gone due to the blight. The Maggie's HQ has some architectural similarities.

The story of how elite Northeastern Protestants became interested in economics, and invented the idea of the Social Gospel at the turn of the century. 

I think they were in over their heads then, and still are. But I could be wrong. The Z-Man would like this essay.

What gloves do you wear when skiing below zero? 

Seems like lots of people believe Swany makes the best gloves and mittens for any temperatures, for any outdoor activities. Little kids do best with mittens, not gloves.

What do you like for cold weather hand gear?

Can she be put back to work?  Beautiful ship.

Continuing with the theme of painted architecture and sculpture, a reminder that Greek temples and sculptures were always painted and sometimes gold-leafed too. All flaked off except for microscopic residues.

The Roman admirers of Classical Greece did not get that memo, and the Renaissance sculptors didn't either.

Probably because of that historical error, much or most stone and metal sculpture has been unpainted since the Renaissance. To modern eyes, the Pieta would look pretty nasty if painted in lifelike colors but the Greeks would have figured it was waiting for the paint.

Parthenon Once a Riot of Color

Below, the likely appearance of the Parthenon frieze

Mrs. BD and I attended a lecture on Romanesque stone architecture at the Cloisters today. I've seen plenty of it in Europe and have read plenty about the style. I asked the expert whether the stone sculptures on lintels and columns in churches and cloisters had been painted.

Definitely, she said. Columns were painted in primary colors. The church walls, so often plain limestone now, had been stuccoed and then plastered with frescoes. Over 1000 years it flaked off.

I've seen reconstructions of the once-painted Greek sculpture and architecture. I'd like to see the same of Romanesque-era churches and cloisters.

Photo is from Pórtico da Gloria, Santiago Cathedral. The colouring once common to much Romanesque sculpture has been preserved - via Wiki

Regular (ie 3+ times/wk) strength-building exercise requires some extra dietary protein for muscle repair and building. I would include plyometric exercises in that category along with heavy, difficult resistance work, but not low-weight high-rep work.

On the other hand, people focusing on general fitness/endurance/conditioning exercises like cardio (ie running, swimming, elliptical, rowing, jump rope, etc), calisthenics, and isometrics do not require any dietary adjustment assuming a normal varied diet. Obviously, if you lose too much weight, try to eat a little more of everything.

People working on improving their overall fitness usually work on resistance work (weights) and general fitness on alternate days, usually about 1 hr/day. Thus they need some extra protein and fats in their diets to avoid muscle deterioration.

Some pursuers of fitness also desire weight loss/flab loss. Despite what can be read on various sites ("Ten Great Fat-Burning Exercises"), exercise has only a little to do with that. It's 90% dietary, 10% exertion. I see some pudgeballs working out with weights and doing cardio almost daily, and over months they are just as pudgy. Stronger, no doubt.

In my case (3 days pushing the resistance, plus usually 3 days of general fitness) I was losing too much weight and plateauing on my bench, squats, and deads, so had to up my protein and carbs. I had been probably too low on both. Not on purpose, just because I am not an avid eater. Since doing that, I've gained 5 or 6 lbs but my trousers are just as loose as before so it's mostly welcome muscle.

A Diet and Exercise Plan to Lose Weight and Gain Muscle

Dutch museum achieves the impossible with new Hieronymus Bosch show. To mark the artist’s 500th anniversary, the director of small Dutch museum secures 20 of 25 surviving panels by ‘the devil’s painter’

Sounds like it's worth a trip to Holland The Netherlands, where the Dutch people live and speak Dutch, which is close to English. Also where the Frisians live, who do speak a sort of English. (See The Difference between Holland & the Netherlands)

Also, Bosch’s big bash

Detail from the Haywain Triptych (1516)

I recently read somebody questioning how the "Greatest Generation" - meaning the WW 2 warriors, makers, and builders -  could be so great if they spawned the ridiculous Boomers.

Balsamic Dreams: A Short But Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation by Joe Queenan.

How does it happen that so many people from one generation can end up with so much foolishness and self-absorption in common?  Queenan is tough on his peers and on himself, mocking everything from the obsession with staying young and "eating healthy" to the fad for "tag team" funerals with the clergy as an accessory.

You will never touch "organic balsamic,"  a "heritage tomato" or a free range turkey again without a sense of your own absurdity.

Boomers will see themselves almost too clearly in this book. Laugh or cry? Your choice, but the book's mirror could cause a boomer to want to off himself due to self-disgust. The good part is that it offers one good laugh per page, the bad part is that it offers a horror of self-recognition on every page too.