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.
My older son turns 18 this year and heads off to Miami of Ohio. Sadly, he will not be home on his birthday, as classes begin that week. While discussing what he'd like for his birthday, we heard "I want to eat in a real Manhattan steak house". No argument from me.
There are plenty to choose from. Keen's, Smith & Wollensky, The Palm, Peter Luger (technically Brooklyn, but one of the originals), The Strip House, Sparks (I worked across the street from Sparks in 1985 and heard the shots that killed PaulCastellano - we all thought it was a car backfiring), Del Frisco's and The Old Homestead are all top notch. After some discussion, the choice was The Old Homestead as this is a classic, original New York steak house.
It seems to me that stories confer value, or at least meaning, generally. Not just to objects. The brain is a creative machine, as Eric Kandel says. We indeed live in stories: stories about ourselves, our families, books, movies, songs, legends.
My work is all about stories. I rarely worry about objective truth during my workday unless I am concerned about being lied to. My concern is with psychic themes and subtexts.
In my non-work life, I care a lot about truth and rebel against self-serving "narratives" presented to me in advertising, by politicians, or anywhere else. As a shrink, I have a pretty good BS Detector.
In my field of study, work, and interest, the wonderful Roy Schafer made a major contribution to the field by highlighting the analytic attitude towards the patient's story. He noticed that the life story, and the day's story, changes as maturity and insight develop. Donald Spence's Narrative Truth And Historical Truth condenses many of these themes.
Politicians, activists, and the like have learned the power of narrative from the Psychoanalysts and the authors, and bent its power to the dark side. Propaganda no longer has simple big lies. Now it has whole stories which appeal to emotion for self-serving purposes, usually money, and/or power over others.
Propaganda, whether commercial or political, now appears as manufactured story-lines. "Truthiness," and all of that. Mark Twain: "A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
The solipsistic fallacy is that there is no truth, just psychological truth. While that is often the Psychoanalytic approach to the soul and mind of a patient, when applied to the real world it becomes insane, and possibly dangerous.
One reason we need to dine at Pearl on each visit to Cape Cod is because of Mrs. BD's addiction to their grilled Bluefin Tuna with wasabi bean crust. The Tuna are local.
I like Pearl for its raw bar (which every restaurant up there has), its marsh views, and to watch the bar scene. Plenty of other joints up there that we also enjoy. Who wants to spend time in the kitchen when away from home - unless you have a pile of little brats from whom the public should be protected?
When grilling or sauteeing (on high heat) Bluefin Tuna, I have a terrible tendency to overcook it. I think it's because it keeps cooking after you take it off the heat. Tuna should look as in the photo, like rare steak. Maybe a minute or so per side on high heat or red coals.
Here's the recipe. Sharp knife, thin slices. A little soy or teriyaki sauce on the side, lime on top.
I had a chat with the owner of this Sakonnet 23, moored on the tidal flats in Wellfleet Harbor. In fact, I swam out to the mooring to see her up close and to chat with him one day last week when he was getting ready to go out for a sail. I was attracted to the classic, double-ender lines, and figured her to be a repro of an antique. Nope.
Here she is at low tide. That's a 1000 lb. half-keel. I think it's cool the way she stands on the keel when the tide goes out, holding the rudder out of danger.
Below the fold, pics of two of the most common Cape Cod boats -
She begins her post with this: "'The universe is made of stories, not atoms', poet Muriel Rukeyser famously remarked."
It's true enough to be a truism. We live by stories, in stories, telling stories.
Furthermore, atoms are stories too.
A simple ring supposedly owned by Jane Austen recently sold at auction for $236,000. Its value without the story? Probably a couple of hundred bucks. It's just as easy to think of stories which detract from value, eg the value of Jeffrey Dahmer's house.
Naturally, attempted to eat my fill of Wellfleet Oysters, but I never will. Life is too short to complete that pleasure.
A number of Obama bumper stickers out there on the Cape (but MANY fewer than 4 years ago). Most of the Priuses there this year had no political stickers. Mrs. BD kept track of that. We used to think that Obama stickers were part of the Prius brand and paint job. The enthusiasm is gone. We tried to keep track of the Scott Brown bumper stickers. "Take America Back". They were easy to find, but I still think he has only a fighting chance. People ignore the details. Warren is a hard Lefty, and that's usually good enough for wealthy Massachusetts.
Will provide more fun pics later. This is at Pearl's (the old Capt'n Higgin's, upscaled with a hopping bar scene) on the dock. My apologies if you drool on your keyboard. Sweetest oysters in the world, thanks to the Herring River. Mrs. BD is addicted to the seared raw Bluefin with the chopped wasabi-bean crust. Dynamite food. I love that, but my soul needs the raw shellfish every summer. All I can find, plus some steamers too. And some mussels.
(Some readers wonder how your editor Bird Dog posts when on sabbatical from Maggie's. I pre-post and pre-date some items when away. I cheat. Got to keep the rhythm section - the basso continuo - rolling along. That's my well-paid job here. Happy that everybody pitches in and keeps the posts coming when they can. We're a hippy hippie commune.)
I pretty much agree with everything in it. From the blurb:
Ability varies. Children differ in their ability to learn academic material. Doing our best for every child requires, above all else, that we embrace that simplest of truths. America’s educational system does its best to ignore it.
Half of the children are below average. Many children cannot learn more than rudimentary reading and math. Real Education reviews what we know about the limits of what schools can do and the results of four decades of policies that require schools to divert huge resources to unattainable goals.
Too many people are going to college. Almost everyone should get training beyond high school, but the number of students who want, need, or can profit from four years of residential education at the college level is a fraction of the number of young people who are struggling to get a degree. We have set up a standard known as the BA, stripped it of its traditional content, and made it an artificial job qualification. Then we stigmatize everyone who doesn’t get one. For most of America’s young people, today’s college system is a punishing anachronism.
Being a natural-born, many-generational New England Yankee, I have to confess that I have disdain for "relaxation." Engagement with life can be passive or energetic.
Don't blame me: it's my culture. We must respect different cultures, and Yankees value effort.
Over the years, I have come to realize (slow-learner that I am) that energy level is a major determinant of success in pursuing one's goals. IQ? Not overly important. Physical appearance? Important only at the margins although being tall does help. Education? A slight edge up, but only for your first job.
Here's how I assess peoples' level of life vigor:
1. Play computer games? Low vigor by definition
2. Watch over 1 hr. of TV/day? Low vigor
3. Read at least book per week? Good mental vigor
4. Read Maggie's Farm daily? Good mental vigor
5. Play sports instead of watching sports? High vigor
6. Make music instead of listening to music? High vigor
7. Exercise daily above and beyond walking (or hold down a physical job)? High vigor
8. Work under 60 hrs/week? Low vigor
9. Sleep after 6 am? Low vigor
10 Live on takeout instead of home-cooked? Low vigor
I need to work on this and produce a copyrighted "Vigor Score." I'll get rich off of it, and annoy millions in the process.
“As an administrator, those are the kinds of things I’m really sensitive to – what are the students saying – because even if it’s not true, the perception is their reality,” said William L. Howard, assistant vice president of academic services at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. In other words, while a student’s method of calling attention to perceived prejudice may be flawed, that perception of prejudice still exists. “If you say, ‘This is not an issue on my campus,’ and a student has an experience that is counter to that, you have to listen to them.”
Baloney. If the fraud is their reality, they do not belong in school.
Yesterday I received a notice in the mail. Apparently, Obamacare be beri beri good to me. My kindly insurance carrier is sending me government has forced my insurer to send me a rebate on 0.5% of my premiums from last year. That should be about, let's see, $32.50.
I really like getting money back from anyone. I suppose I should be pleased. But I'm not, I'm offended.
It seems that the ACA has set what is considered to be a 'reasonable' amount for spending on administrative costs and the coverage of medical fees. That split is 15% for administration, 85% for fees and services. My carrier hit only 84.5% on the fees and services portion, which means I get .5% back.
Like most parents, at least those who care or don't give up, I argue with my son Jason about some of the music he listens to, the Rap music. Aside from its lack of musical skill, when I can get past the speed with which they speak, the jargon and the accents, the message is misogynistic and elevates drugs and violence. Yesterday, Jason told me about a rapper he'd been listening to, Marcus Hopson, who goes by the stage-name Hopsin. He is very successful and has gathered some other rappers to his recording company. In this video, below, you can understand the words, and I hope that others who listen to Hopsin will take them to heart. Warning, there is cussing in the video, NSFW. (In case you do not understand the words or want a record of them, here's the same rap with the words.)
Now, on to white trash. Yesterday I took Jason to see the film Ted. I thought it was supposed to be a funny movie about a grown man and his wise-acre living teddy bear. What a screw-up that was. Including pornography, I have never seen a film that had so much non-stop vulgar language, allusions, and behavior. To me this film is the epitome of the white trash mentality too common among our artistes and elites. Hollywood and the actors should really be ashamed of themselves. But, of course, aren't. -- I didn't hear anyone in the movie theater laughing.
The U.S. was created to foster human flourishing. The means to that end was the exercise of liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Capitalism is the economic expression of liberty. The pursuit of happiness, with happiness defined in the classic sense of justified and lasting satisfaction with life as a whole, depends on economic liberty every bit as much as it depends on other kinds of freedom.
Another:
... these capitalists of the left are concentrated where it counts most. The most visible entrepreneurs of the high-tech industry are predominantly liberal. So are most of the people who run the entertainment and news industries. Even leaders of the financial industry increasingly share the politics of George Soros. Whether measured by fundraising data or by the members of Congress elected from the ZIP Codes where they live, the elite centers with the most clout in the culture are filled with people who are embarrassed to identify themselves as capitalists, and it shows in the cultural effect of their work.
"Milton Friedman, who would have turned 100 on Tuesday, helped to make free markets popular again in the 20th century. His ideas are even more important today":
Well over 200 million were liberated from poverty thanks to the rediscovery of the free market. And now as the world teeters close to another recession, leaders need to urgently rediscover Friedman's ideas.
I remember asking Milton, a year or so before his death, during one of our semiannual dinners in downtown San Francisco: What can we do to make America more prosperous? "Three things," he replied instantly. "Promote free trade, school choice for all children, and cut government spending."
How much should we cut? "As much as possible."
A Libertarian at heart. The man believed in American freedom from the state and had faith in human potential - when unleashed. Listening to him talk, for me, is like seeing the sun come out from behind a cloud.
And a 15-minute walk to the YMCA and the library. Plus a fairly dense neighborhood where kids can hop on their bike, or just walk down the street, and find tons of kids to hang out with and play ball with. How good is that?
The train would be the New Haven line (NYC to Boston). Fairfield is around an hour and 15 minutes by train to Grand Central Station. Not too bad, especially if you can get work done on the train. A little less time to New Haven. It's part of the "Gold Coast," but this neighborhood is more like Silver. Pricey for what little you get.
The lad and I took our annual journey to the great Pequot Library Book Sale in Southport, CT on Sunday afternoon, then spent a few minutes scouting out the Fairfield real estate (south of the Boston Post Road, near Long Island Sound), just for giggles - but thinking as investors.
With all of the amazing amenities, one might think these neighborhoods near the beaches would be charming as heck. They are not. They are mostly post-war, poorly-built and poorly-designed with lots of split-levels and other charmless ticky-tacky stuff, built on small lots on marsh fill and thus subject to flooding during big storms. But that's the price you pay to walk to the beach. Laws would not permit such wetlands construction today.
My lad says that post-war neighborhoods are rarely gentrified, or spruced-up, due to lack of charm and construction quality. Because of the local amenities and conveniences, the land here is worth about the same with house or without. It's mostly 1/4-acre lots, some less. That means the houses are what are termed "scrapers": the house adds no, or minimal, value to the lot. In fact, the cost of demolition detracts from the value. Those lots are valuable with or without a functional house - around $450-800,000, and well over a million post-scraping and rebuilding. As a result of the near-zero value of the building, many of them are not well-maintained or improved up to modern standards.
Only a few of them have been scraped and replaced by 3-story houses of indeterminate, ungainly style. (Due to setback requirements, you have to build up to 3 stories to get the square footage people want today.)
When people realize their houses are hopeless scrapers, they stop putting money into them and thus make the neighborhood - and themselves - look scruffy, dilapidated, or dysfunctional. Often, they are best off renting the darn thing. Here's an example of one below, a snout house I suppose, which has had nothing done since 1958 except paint. Landscaping, I think, by Home Depot. With a little effort in that department, it could look like a fairly good starter house or retirement shelter. An American flag over the entry, and some interesting landscaping, would add a lot to this basic dwelling without scraping it off.
(By the way, I hate those set-back zoning rules. Stupid. Houses could have friendly porches right off the street, and larger back yards for gardening, etc., without them. People making zoning rules are usually idiots. These are not exactly grand estates with gracious lawns full of grazing sheep.And, speaking of annoying zoning rules, these post-war neighborhoods are zoned as single-family residential, so there are no corner stores to walk to for coffee, a newspaper, an ice cream, or to chat with neighbors over a beer. You have to drive when anybody would prefer to push the stroller a few blocks for a coffee.)
Candlewood Lake in western CT is an 11-mile long man-made lake, built in 1924 for hydroelectric.
Excess power is used to pump water up hill from the nearby Housatonic River into the lake, then allowed to flow back into the river through pipes and turbines when power is needed. An interesting engineering idea.
Turbines, of course, are not healthy for anadromous fish, but Candlewood Lake is good for bass fishing, water-skiing, and swimming.
I am getting a kick out of this dumb Chick-Fil-A story. I suppose it's a good story for late July, for the entertainment value.
As I understand it (never seen one in NY or New England), it's an Atlanta-based, family-owned and very popular chain of fast-food chicken joints. Chicken sandwiches! I don't know whether the outlets are franchised or company-owned.
The founder is a traditional Christian who happens to hold a traditional view of marriage. Most Americans do, but that doesn't matter. President Dan Cathy had the temerity to say:
“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” Cathy said. “We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”
I suspect good ol' Col. Sanders felt the same way. So do I. Politicians who desire to show their cultural leadership (who asked them to do that?) are now all about banning Chick-Fil-A from their burgs. You have to laugh. People want to eat these sandwiches.
I mean, like, you know, they aren't banning Catholic churches, are they? Or Baptist churches? Or Muslim mini-marts? Or mosques? Or businesses whose CEOs are Catholics? I suspect the folks at Chick-Fil-A HQ are just enjoying the free publicity, and wondering about this crazy world. They don't need the money. I think the family is still amazed by their popularity and the growth of their recently-tiny, simple business. Plain old fried redneck chicken on a hamburger bun.
When will the word get out that the owner of Subway is a married, never divorced and never-gay Roman Catholic? Funny thing about this dumb brouhaha is that it makes me hungry for a Chick-Fil-A. I've never thought about it before. They must be pretty darn tasty to deserve all of this attention.
Probably tastes like chicken.
(Almost forgot to mention that the family didn't build that family food business. The government did it. Let's nationalize Chick-Fil-A, and Subway too.)
Nothing wrong with core expectations of elementary and secondary school if people can agree on them (but I'd go to the local taxpayers for that advice, not the national educational establishment). However, no standards can cause those who don't want to, or are not interested in or capable of, learning things in school.
He opens with this: "It's no secret that most high school graduates are unprepared for college." Well, duh. But so what? There's no crisis in that area.
I don't blame teachers or curricula or standards for the fact that many kids do not learn much. It appears to be the case in colleges, too. Pretending that most kids are natural scholars defies all known reality.
Education is not a "product" that can be purchased, any more than "health" is. Such things are not passive purchases. No gym membership can give you six-pack abs, alas.
Is John trying to snag Gelernter as a contributor to his site? Who would not? We have been Gelernter fans since his first book. A quote:
...more surprising than his political super-buoyancy is the resurrection of big-government, 1930s-style economic thinking in the Democratic party long after it was taken out with the trash along with Jimmy Carter, and once more (for good measure) after Gingrich smashed Clinton in the ’94 midterms. The failure of central planning and state-managed economies is one of the big themes of the 20th century. But Obama’s handlers have yet to tell him.
His biggest asset is being black. People feel virtuous when they vote for him, or support him, or at least don’t trash him. We all like to feel virtuous...
He has a winning smile, too. And
While conservatives worry about debt and taxes and huge problems abroad, the left is busy pulling the whole country out from under them. While conservatives fiddle around on the roof, robbers are rifling the house and stealing the children. Conservatives might consider climbing down and having a look. Obama is only the first of a new breed.
What is college for, and why is it so expensive? From John Leo:
Where does all that money go? Much of it to lavish spa-like facilities and grand new construction, including $100 million or so for multicultural centers and sports stadiums. The debt taken on by colleges has risen 88 percent since 2001, to $307 billion. Jeff Selingo of the Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a “lost decade” of wild campus spending: “The almost insatiable demand for a college credential meant that schools could raise their prices and families would go to almost any end, including taking on huge amounts of debt, to pay the bill. In 2003, only two colleges charged more than $40,000 a year for tuition, fees, and room and board; by 2009, 224 were above that mark.” And now many are inching toward (or past) $50,000 a year...
I am old-fashioned. I think college should be spartan but spartan doesn't sell. It's about branding and sales.
To the slight extent that our higher education has increased social stratification, it is due to the mania for college credentials the system has helped unleash. Some people who can’t obtain the credentials that are increasingly required of job applicants—even for work that calls for nothing more than basic trainability—are shut off from good career paths. That is something of an obstacle to social mobility and if the higher education industry wanted to make amends, it could work toward alternative credentials that would be less costly and better indicators of employability. (There is already movement in that direction, but mostly from outside “edupreneurs.”)
I think the edupreneurs will own the future, especially for those who seek education mainly as an investment in their careers. Traditional colleges don't know whether they are centers for life-enrichment or job-training centers. They are confused about their mission because they do not want to see themselves as credential-salesmen. I have no problem with janitors with college degrees. Why not? I do have a problem with college for people who do not treasure the life of the mind.
The main method Obama and many politicians seek to stimulate the economy is through deficit spending.
What is lost on those who engage this method is that for deficit spending to actually work, it has to be funneled into truly useful production, projects which will yield massive value. Without getting into the problems inherent in all deficit spending, some might make a case that government related spending may yield benefits. It's a stretch to say that the TVA or the Hoover Dam was best provisioned by the government. Fact is, private industry would have managed these projects much more efficiently.
But these are examples of the sort of project which could make the government look better than it does right now by spending massive amounts of money with little to show for it. I'm not saying I support these projects, just that better options exist than Obama's current path. He made a moderately good show by using some funds to try and build a train tunnel under the Hudson which would have saved me 15 minutes on my commute each day. That tunnel, however, was going to be built with limited oversight, meaning costs would've spiraled and New Jersey would have overspent on it, thus losing all the value it would provide.
More importantly, these types of projects are difficult to begin today. Why? Regulation. It would be virtually impossible to build the Tappan Zee Bridge today, and even the current upgrade of the facility has faced massive problems which have increased the cost dramatically. A study of the region around the Hoover Dam, with today's regulatory environment, would end up killing this sort of project altogether due to environmental concerns. My perspective is simply that the Left has hung themselves on their own petard. They want the government to spark job growth, but they want to regulate all sorts of things, not realizing they hamper job growth.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has issued its annual report on the regulatory environment, outlining the economic costs of current Federal regulations. Today, these economic costs are greater than all corporate profits. In other words, one of the fastest and best ways for Obama to earn tax income to drive down the deficit would not to be raising taxes - but by reducing regulation. Of course, this would mean admitting his previous approach was incorrect and flawed.
The very good Whittle video we posted this morning revealed that government in the US provides an average of $65,000 annually in funds, "benefits," and entitlements to poor families in the US. (Little or none of this is counted as income in calculating US poverty stats, as far as I know, nor, of course, does it take into account off-the-books cash income which seems pretty common these days.)
That's roughly the yield of a $2 million trust fund invested at a safe 1-3%, if my assumptions are correct. It's not a hard sale to convince people to vote for their own $2 million trust fund delivered by magic unicorns.
(The current fad for easy Disability and food stamps - anybody can get these things right now and I receive calls daily asking me whether I do Disability forms - is a whole new arena for free stuff, but a different topic. No, I do not do Disability forms on principle because I believe everybody is capable of dignity and self-respect. Speaking of cash, I have been offered good hard cash to fill them out for people in the last couple of years. On the phone "Doc, I'll pay you $1000 cash to complete my form for me.")
I have had plenty of experience with trust fund people, and am even fortunate enough to be the recipient of a very modest one myself, far less than $2 million in capital due to generational dilution. While some use their trust fund luck for productive purposes, many, it seems to me, lead relatively unproductive if not decadent, purposeless, and unstructured lives. People with meaningfully-sized trust funds, and families on the dole, have more in common with eachother than either has with the middle class.
As we often say here, real life is scary and challenging for almost everybody else. I am not convinced that that is a bad thing. It's the nature of real life and helps bring out the best in us. People spend money for lottery tickets just to enjoy the momentary fantasy of security and ease. Security and ease are infantile fantasies in this world which presents one problem after another.
Progressivism, in the Marxist and post-Marxist forms that have been swallowing the world for a century, is, in its methodology, nothing but the moral infantilization of mankind. It seeks the establishment of a population dominated by the childish fear of facing the world alone. Its pretty slogans are all variations on this theme. From "Workers of the world unite" to "It takes a village," the message is always the same: you can't face this "dog-eat-dog" world without the safety of the herd, which means without material security provided by political force. An all-powerful mother government must always be there to protect you from the ever-present monster, which is just life itself. And such security is not "charity"; it is your right. You are entitled to it, as any child is entitled to his parents' protection.
Today's ever-expanding "entitlement mentality" is literally shamelessness elevated to the status of a moral code. Progressivism has created an entire euphemistic vocabulary to justify the unabashed demand that others sacrifice their liberty to save me from my childish fear of facing life as an adult. "Positive rights," "social justice," "redistributive justice," "creative individuality," and so on, are all part of the leftist lexicon of cowardice.
Read it all. My view is that every American kid is born with a trust fund: their body, mind, soul, opportunities, and the remarkable free culture at hand. Amazing gifts which are rare on this planet. With all of that, nobody needs to lead a life which wastes his talents and capacities, or neglects his spiritual development.
I should add that I have no problem with trust funds per se (and have doubts about the whole idea of inheritance taxes too, which hit small family farms and businesses but never the very wealthy. America should welcome and ecourage family wealth-building, which reduces dependency). Similarly, I have no problem with the safety net for the very poor and/or dysfunctional. I do find it remarkable that American poverty benefits net out higher than the average American worker's income, which, like a good-sized trust fund, can be a perverse incentive for the weak in spirit. That's a shame, but people make their choices and not all Americans, unfortunately, have absorbed the American "Can Do" attitude.
Governments are marketing the "You Can't Do" attitude. It sells.
In this blogger's case, not zero-carb but close to it. He did it without exercise. He helpfully reviews the nonsense about low-fat diets too. There is no evidence, it seems, that a low-fat diet does any good at all for heart disease or anything else.
That's basically the Maggie's weight-loss diet. Fruit, bread, cereal, pasta, beans, corn, juice, sugar - all are instant poison if you desire weight loss, energy, good vigor, and a springy step. Bacon is good for you!
People on no-carb diets feel better, feel less lazy.
I remember when I got upset years ago when my doc advised me to avoid fats and red meats to lower my cholesterol. My doc now (that older good fellow retired) is up-to-date. He says that, if you want to stay in shape, quit the carbs and eat all the eggs and meat you want. He says fruit is the killer, because people have the idea that fruit is healthy.
Somewhat similar to Charter Schools, the academies get a flat rate per student, and run themselves. Britain modeled these after the Swedish system which offers an abundance of choices free from the governmental and union system.
Free choice is always a good idea. Here's another good idea: Schools That Work, Literally. Jobs in the real world.
When I was in boarding school, all students were assigned to work crews all year long. That was good, but the above is even better.
What work crews were we assigned to at school? Leaf raking and landscape clean-up, kitchen duty (dishwashing mostly), prep and maintenance of the outdoor hockey rinks, preparing and serving faculty teas and faculty meetings, working in the printing shop and the mail room, cleaning the chapel after Sunday service (we had daily chapel) and waxing the chapel floor, working in the gym's laundry room (gross), shelving books in the library, snow-shoveling, early morning newspaper delivery to faculty, preparing the skeet and rifle ranges, raising and feeding the pheasants for the shooting club, and so forth. Work crew averaged out to around 7 hrs/week. Most of the work was under the supervision of rough-edged townies who didn't mind calling us spoiled brats and sissies who didn't want to get our hands dirty. They did not give a damn about how you felt, and rightly so. That attitude was motivational and, I believe, endorsed by the administration.
Looking back, the work crews did us all a lot of good. Bear in mind, we had plenty of rich kids from NYC who had never seen the inside of a kitchen or touched a rake, much less a snow shovel. Education takes many non-formal forms.
One reason we need to dine at
A simple ring supposedly owned by Jane Austen recently 
Is the Mojito really the national cocktail of Cuba? This drink seems to be enjoying a craze recently. Sounds like a Mint Julep but with rum.
"Milton Friedman, who would have turned 100 on Tuesday, helped to make free markets popular again in the 20th century. 
And a 15-minute walk to the YMCA and the library. Plus a fairly dense neighborhood where kids can hop on their bike, or just walk down the street, and find tons of kids to hang out with and play ball with. How good is that?
I am getting a kick out of this dumb Chick-Fil-A story. I suppose it's a good story for late July, for the entertainment value. 
In this blogger's case, 
