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.
As you know, Eton College is not a university. It's a private (what they term "public" in the UK) prep school. High school. Eton is right to keep girls out of there. Girls are a fatal distraction to lads during the intense learning years, and vice-versa.
Basically, they are looking for IQ, curiosity, and capacity for the life of the mind because they will want to push you beyond your limits if they accept you.
The humane treatment of the mentally ill was a major civilizational advance. At a time when there were really no effective treatments for the major disabling mental illnesses (ie Schizophrenias and Bipolar Disorder), providing these patients asylum from the rigors of real life was better than Bedlam or locking Aunt Jane in the attic.
Today, our treatments for Bipolar Disorder (aka Manic-Depression) are pretty good. Our treatments for the group of Schizophrenias are not very good. We can often remove acute symptoms but can not help people function at a normal level. They are mis-wired.
Efforts to help the seriously-ill, in hospitals, hospices, was termed "Moral Treatment." The asylum approach was largely undone with the deinstitutionalization movement under JFK. Thus bag ladies.
Here's a summary: A New Moral Treatment - Humane institutionalization can help the mentally ill and protect society. He might be right. I am not sure.
I thought the American campi were pushing hard for abundant and indiscriminate sexual experimentation and promiscuity. How can that animalistic utopia (aka "zoo", aka "monkey cage") come to pass if the Feds are trying to make every potentially-romantic encounter a crime?
Here are the new campus rules: Rape is illegal, a felony. That's a non-issue and a non-campus issue. But if she or he likes you, and wants to come to your dorm room for sexual fun, it's not harassment. It she or he doesn't like you, it's harassment. If he or she wants you at first, while half-drunk, but changes her mind, you're in big trouble. It's always safest to keep romance "50 miles from the flagpole," as they used to say. However, the primal urges of the young can not be suppressed, even by campus Thought Police and the Federal government.
Across some of our farm fields. After a cold, rainy day the clouds began to clear out, leaving fresh snow on top of the Berkshire hills and a frost on the grass. That's our Climate Change. We had spent the afternoon providing a much-needed, if late, pruning to the apple trees (not in photo). I like a fruit tree to have plenty of air and light in the middle, remove crossing branches, but the darn suckers take most of your time.
Also put up 6 new Bluebird houses. On Sunday morning, one had already been claimed. Birds are not stupid. They pay attention.
Tree on the left? Black Willow, on the riverbank. Looks like we're going to have a herd of yearling Black Angus in that field this summer. Very handy, because they can go down to the river to drink and will need no care other than fence maintenance (which is obviously needed). Plenty of grass. Barbed wire.
Our farm boasts the lack of several modern amenities: no shower, just old bathtubs; no TV; no cable; no internet; and you have to get on the tractor and drive up a hill to find a cell phone connection. Peaceful. The only radio we get is NPR from Albany. They are crazy, but have good music. The wallpaper is 70 years old but my Mom liked it. There is more to life than materialism and conveniences and comfort, and my Mom understood that, deeply. We did break down and install propane heat 2 years ago. Decadent, but welcome after a cold rainy day when you come in soaked.
We're 20 minutes from Tanglewood. That's a good thing. Civilized. Cold lobster and champagne on the lawn.
At dinner Friday night I was chatting with a lady about all of the farm stands that were here in Connecticut when I was growing up. Every truck farm had one: a rickety structure on the roadside with a little dusty space to pull up on, with baskets of eggs, tomatoes, corn, eggplant, red and green peppers, cut flowers, potatoes, apples. melon, raspberries, blackberries, turnips, bundles of fresh herbs, honey, dried strawflowers, giant Sunflowers, squash, pumpkins, corn stalks for fall decorations - whatever was ready that day.
Business, if steady, was never sufficient to justify manning these roadside booths. They usually had the prices written on pieces of cardboard, and one of those large mason jars to leave your money in.
The nice lady told me that Holbrook Farm in Redding, CT still uses the honor system, but not during the height of the season when things are too busy. Hearing that cheered me very much.
No spy cameras either - just good old-fashioned American country-style trust in one's neighbor. I do not think I would like to live in a place where a shop could't have an honor system, but I guess credit cards and sales tax collection complicate things these days.
Kenyon College, founded by Episcopal Bishop Philander Chase in 1824. It's considered one of the "Hidden Ivies" or "New Ivies."
Alumni will be relieved to know that even Kenyon now offers a useful major in "Womens' and Gender Studies" but, other than a little token faddish nonsense, it's a serious and rigorous place.
I believe that good writing is a talent, like music. You have a feel for it, or you don't. However, adequate, functional, expository writing ought to be within the grasp of most people who know how to talk and who read things. Clear writing requires clear thinking, but I often clarify my thinking by the task of writing.
However, this is High School training, not college.
I happen to love biscuits and pork sausage gravy. I had a friend from Harlan, Kentucky whose Mom always made "Hot Dog Gravy" for biscuits, substituting Coke for water and substituting sliced hot dogs for sausage. That is not for me.
Yankees often do not know that you split your biscuit, then spoon a pile of the custardy stuff on top of the halves. Yum. If you don't fall asleep after, it will fuel a good day's work.
I had the same experience as Insty did. I refused an MRI because I had zero interest in shoulder surgery and there is no point in paying for a medical test if you have no intention of doing anything about it. (Yes, I pay for my medical care.)
I did not bother with physical therapy, rested it from tennis and weights for a year, and it's pretty good now except that I have had to replace my fast serve with a spin serve - which is probably more effective anyway. It gets sore after four hours juggling a chain saw, but that's ok with me.
Our friend at the Q&O site is having problems with his semi-expensive watch, so I thought I'd repost this.
We posted a while ago about expensive watches, Vacheron Constantin, Patek Phillippe, and all that. I've had a couple of moderately-expensive ones over the years but over time the repair and maintenance seemed foolish and, sad to say, an Accutron cannot be effectively repaired anymore.
As cheap watches go, I don't like digital watches. I like to see the sweep of time.
When I last went for a dreaded and long-delayed medical check up on the insistence of Mrs. BD, I noticed that my fancy doc wore the same one I did - a Timex Expedition. They are good for about ten years or more, and when you need to replace the leather band it comes with with a nice leather band, the band costs 3X more than the watch.
Any watch I wear gets banged around quite a bit, but I feel naked without one. Are they male jewelry, social signals, or are they tools?
Amazon sells them, real cheap. $31. That is indeed a fashion statement: it declares that you are a sensible person.
Surely not by our bourgeois standards. Given the human brain and the human adaptability which is a gift from the most creative of us over the past 150,000 years, I think it's impossible to say what is "natural" for people other than to claim that it is natural for humans to make things and to live in cultures.
Are Savages Noble? The parts about war and sex (naturally) are especially interesting. So I guess war and sex are natural, too.
If that is what brown-skinned Americans are all about, I guess I don't get out enough because I never see people talking or acting like that, regardless of skin tone.
I can report, first-hand, that electronic medical records double the doc's time doing "paperwork," and thus halve their time with patients. There is only so much time in a day. As a private Psychiatrist, I have thus far been able to avoid it. Who would speak freely to me if my notes went into the cloud? I was offered a $40,000 check by the government to go to electronic records linked to the hospital and thence elsewhere, and I refused the offer even though the money would come in handy.
Obama’s Medical-Records Crony- Electronic medical records are being heavily subsidized — to one Democratic donor’s benefit.
If you have a problem with this government-subsidized trend, ask your doc whether he, she, or it - or they - puts your records on the internet. Most hospitals require it, nowadays, as it is required of hospital-employed physicians. FYI, you may not know whether your doc is a hospital employee or not because many are selling their practices to hospitals in anticipation of Obamacare. Times are changing.
Forbes Magazine has hailed it as the most lovely campus in the US. Maybe so. That's a tough call. It's a tiny campus on a hill in the middle of a very pleasant and serene rural "nowhere." Feels more like a New England prep school than a college. One thing I can say is that the kids they admit are committed to the life of the mind, and the faculty is committed to each kid in a personal way. A good combination indeed.
Rigorously-demanding, too. While most famous for their literary and theatrical pursuits (The Kenyon Review, plus Paul Newman and Jonathan Winters at the same time), Kenyon has the highest graduate admit rates to medical school in the US.
My pupette's poetry prof, to my delight, knew Elizabeth Hardwick who was one of my poetry profs (along with the brilliant and inspiring...wait for it...Edward Said. He was not doing Palestinian politics then). Cool.
Memory is famously faulty. Just as politicians and journalists attempt to create stories and "narratives" out of data points, all humans do the same. Often, our conscious memory stories are designed to support our positive self-regard, to rationalize, blame, find excuses, and so forth. Temperamentally melancholy people tend to do the opposite and are often more honest with themselves.
Psychiatrists and Psychoanalysts know how to listen stories and information as "memory data" with all of the selection, distortion, factual accounts, mental constructions, etc. which are part of memory. We are trained to listen as if watching a movie. Since we are not judges or juries, "truth" is not necessarily our pursuit although we can be quick to call "bullshit" when needed because people lie and manipulate too. We are not truth-relativists, but our focus is elsewhere.
One of the fascinating things about Psychoanalysis is to see how memory narratives change during the process.
All elitisms run the risk of inbreeding and sterility. The real benefit of a perceived equality among citizens, as driven by the rough and tumble of economic competition, is not only that it expands the wealth pie but also continuously changes the diners at the table. That means that some at the head table may never have the proper politically correct manners, but that is the price of vitality. The problem with socialism and its near cousins is that it places the selection of winners and losers (even if called “industrial policy”) in the hands of the status quo, who quite naturally will put their friends and family first in line.
Commencement Weekend, and those darn Mennonites hog all the best parking spots in front of the pubs. People tell me they are Amish, others say these people are Mennonites. Same idea.
These people believe our ordinary lives are foolish, vain, Godless, and empty. I can't swear that they are wrong, but they are just ordinary people too.
Nobody in my family, or any of my friends' families, is graduating from college this year. I have a few high schools graduations to attend, but another month before that occurs.
Yet it is the commencement season. I was cruising the web recently and stumbled on two commentaries which I thought were excellent. One was a commencement speech redone as a 10 minute video. The other was from NPR which published snippets of graduation advice from economists. Both are linked here.
This video was based on a commencement speech from Kenyon College, several years ago. (my apologies, the original link was removed by the author's trust due to copyright issues, but the version I linked to does still work).
The letter to graduates (with link to original) is below the fold.
Several aspects of modern life seem to have been very accurately predicted by both Orwell and Huxley. Orwell’s idea of “New Speak,” for example, the deliberate remoulding and distortion of the English language by Big Brother, has been rightly compared to the politically correct manipulation of language that has become all too familiar in western societies over the past twenty to thirty years. The political purpose of “New Speak” is to control the thinking of the populace – not too different in aim from the new terms and words coined by political correctness. Huxley does not go into the language issue in the same way as Orwell, though we note too that in the Brave New World certain “offensive” words – such as “cross” – have been eliminated from public use. Thus for example Charing Cross Station in London has been renamed “Charing T Station” – after Henry Ford’s Model T automobile.
Lovely flat farmland north of Columbus, this weekend. A little further north, the land becomes pleasantly rolling in a way which is reminiscent of New England. Corn ("maize" to you in Yorba Euroland) is just beginning to sprout. It is no wonder that ambitious New Englanders and upstate New Yorkers fled here in the early 1800s for the good farmland. 90% of Americans were in the agricultural industry at the time and they were not stupid about money. It was not about aesthetics: subsistence farming sucks. People desire profit. Farms are outdoor solar factories.
I'll post some more of my Ohio pics later. I took almost 50, which is a lot for me in 3 days.
Sugar in soda pop is no more fattening than any other carb, eg fruit, bread, milk, fruit juices like apple juice and orange juice. Nevertheless, it's not a "public health" issue, it's an individual choice issue. I like that light brown granulated sugar in my coffee.
They are most abundant here in the later summer and fall, but their numbers nosedive during the winter mostly due to predation by owls, hawks, coyotes, and Red Fox. The cottontails' position on the food chain leads to an annual survival rate of around 20%.
When we see one hop out of its nesting "form" when mowing, we mow around it.
The forest-dwelling, nondescript and rather common Broad-Wing is rarely seen except during fall migration. They hang out quietly in deep woods and rarely soar except during migration. I saw one the other day, probably on his way north. They breed in woodlands across the Eastern US and Canada, migrate to South America in large flocks.
I spoke with a Mom yesterday. She mentioned that her daughter was a high school junior, intending to apply to college. I asked what the kid was interested in. She said "Well, she likes to watch movies. Not much else. She hates school and is not a very good student. She doesn't really study." I replied, "So, why college?" She told me that the kid likes her social life and "wants the college experience. She also wants a diploma."
I happen to love biscuits and pork sausage gravy. I had a friend from Harlan, Kentucky whose Mom always made "Hot Dog Gravy" for biscuits, substituting Coke for water and substituting sliced hot dogs for sausage. That is not for me.
We discussed salt last week. Here's 
North America hosts a number of species and subspecies of 
