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.
Entry porch of the place where we stayed, Pueblo Bonito Sunset Beach on the Pacific side. Lots of people with kids, but elegant, beautifully-designed, built for the ages, friendly, simple, and utterly free of any tackiness. I nicknamed the place "The Hanging Gardens of Babylon" because it's built into an oceanside cliff.
A few of my random Cabo notes:
- Baja California Sur is a desert, dominated by cactus forest habitat. There are always rocky mountains in the distance, running north-south down the long peninsula. There are no rainy days and no cloudy days except in August and September. That's what creates the huge arroyos and canyons.
- The weather is said to be similar to that of Palm Springs, but with a constant sea breeze. Cool desert nights. No humidity.
- Besides the place where we stayed, other resort hotels that seemed especially appealing were Hacienda Del Mar and Palmilla (with golf) in San Jose.
- Cabo is famous for its fishing, deep-sea and coastal. Lots of tournaments. I like to know that the Marlin and Sailfish are out there, but I don't feel much of a need to hassle a fish anymore.
- In the winter months, whales are everywhere for calving season. Gray Whales and Humpbacks. Whether you go fishing, whale-watching, or just sit on the beach, they'll be out there. On the morning we left, I watched, from our terrace, a baby Humpback leaping and cavorting like a puppy.
- Our place had seven pools, some with jacuzzi jets in the corners and some with swim-up bars. We swam in a couple of them, but I am not a pool person and did not sit by one for a minute.
- I'm not much of a resort guy either, but I have to admit that they do know how to make a vacation as comfortable, painless, and convenient as this life can be. I am adaptable, and can adjust to that for a while before I feel like chopping some wood or doing something useful.
- Overheard at night in a pool between two Texas guys with drinks in hand (the only time I heard any crude talk at all): "My f-ing wife, her neighbor gets a f-ing 20-foot Christmas tree, and she has to have a 40-foot tree. Where the f-ing f- does she thinks this money comes from?" "My wife, it's the f-ing shoes. Thousand dollar shoes, she wears them once and tells me they pinch." "Yeah, well last week my f-ing wife..."
- Once you get off the main drag, it's dirt roads everywhere. Everything is coated with dust until rain comes in August.
- Odd as it seems, Cabo is only a 2-hr time difference from the East Coast.
- The Cabo area seems to mainly attract wholesome people from the Midwest and the West Coast. I suppose it serves similar purposes to those the Caribbean, Bermuda, and Florida do for Easterners. We met a number of delightful people, and spent a good evening having drinks and learning to play Mexican Train Dominoes with them. It's a good game, and you don't have to think too hard.
- Cabo San Lucas is on the southernmost tip of the long Baja peninsula, 1000 miles south of LA. My lad drove from LA to Cabo once. Mexican roads. I would not drive those highways at night - no guardrails or shoulders, cliffs, constant detours, cattle on the highways, etc.
- The ocean-side beaches, alas, are mostly not swimmable but are surfable. They tend to have a steep drop-off with powerful churning surf, strong currents, whirlpools, and undertows. Easy for a strong swimmer to lose control. The Sea of Cortez is entirely swimmable, and swim in it we did. Mrs. BD and I like cold salt water with waves. Chillier than one might expect down there. Most people use the heated pools, and make like a Manatee.
- The old part of Cabo San Lucas and the marina are predictably touristy and honky-tonk, with some fine, relatively inexpensive restaurants. Lively at night. Almost all of the resort hotels are on the Sea of Cortez side, so if you like lots of activity, guys selling faux-Mexican junk, crowded beaches, water taxis, Sea-Doos, girl-watching, boozed-up college kids, etc., that's your place. You have to go to that side to swim in the sea though, which is what we like to do.
- You get the feeling in Mexico that many jobs are either partly completed, never completed, or just abandoned. The ramshackle, third world look becomes part of the dusty charm after a day or two. On the other hand, the jobs which involve the gringos, like the resorts and vacation homes, are done very well and with fine craftsmanship, especially the stonework.
- We saw little of what we think of as "Mexican food" in the East. Yes, they have taco stands all over for the workmen, but the food we had was excellent with nary a refried bean. Not much guacamole either, but sliced avocado on top of lots of things. Saw no lemons, but those little limes are always sliced on a plate.
We ate very well in Mexico. These were seafood enchiladas with a creamy wine sauce, a relish of chopped raw vegetables marinated in lime juice, and some fried plantain chips. The green salsa with the brown corn chips was tomatillo, cilantro, onion, and chilis.
Also, the necessary daily Marguerita or two, to ward off scurvy and to prevent dehydration.
(This nice lunch was at the Cilantro Restaurant, next to the Pueblo Bonito Rose resort on the Cabo San Lucas harborside beach. That's not the hotel where we stayed but it's a good one if you like to be around a lot of activity.)
Gimme The Axe is one of the kids in Carl Sandburg's remarkable American fairy tales, The Rootabaga Stories. Tales told to his daughters.
Welcome to Rootabaga Country--where the railroad tracks go from straight to zigzag, where the pigs wear bibs, and where the Village of Cream Puffs floats in the wind. You'll meet baby balloon pickers, flummywisters, corn fairies, and blue foxes--and if you're not careful, you may never find your way back home.
That was Publisher's Weekly.
ZIGZAG RAILROAD, THE PIGS WITH BIBS ON, THE CIRCUS CLOWN OVENS, THE VILLAGE OF LIVER AND ONIONS, THE VILLAGE OF CREAM PUFFS, HOW THEY BROK AWAY TO GO TO THE ROOTABAGA COUNTRY, HOW THEY BRING BACK THE VILLAGE OF CREAM PUFFS WHEN THE WIND BLOWS IT AWAY, HOW THE FIVE RUST RATS HELPED FIND A NEW VILLAGE, HOW SIX PIGEONS CAME BACK TO HATRACK THE HORSE AFTER MANY ACCIDENTS AND SIX TELEGRAMS, ....
I hope your kids did not grow up deprived this whimsical Americana. In fact, I think I enjoyed hearing them read outloud more than my kids did.
Instead of reading the books, I'd recommend tracking down the audio versions with Carl Sandburg reading them himself. It's pure delight, and his reading sticks in the mind most pleasantly - unlike most things in life.
"Do you want to buy the ticket with the blue flanch to go all the way and come back, or do you want to buy the ticket with the yellow flanch to go all the way, and never come back?"
Almost finished putting the Christmas stuff away, and amusing myself by refreshing my memory about Henry Hudson's voyages.
Given what a careful exploration he did, I am surprised he never ventured up the St. Lawrence, which Cartier had discovered in 1535 and which Champlain was exploring at the same time as Hudson's trip. Also, I am reminded that the English Jamestown settlement existed a couple of years before his Dutch-sponsored 1609 trip, and that the West Indies, South America, and even Peru had been settled by Spanish long before, in the 1500s.
The Spanish knew where the gold was, and it wasn't in New England.
Are all photographers just people who like to make pictures but are too lazy to learn to paint? Who just want immediate gratification?
That topic came up over cocktails with a friend last night. He is an avid amateur photographer who has been taking a watercolor course at night. He told me painting is teaching him to see.
Coyotes have been moving south into the eastern US since the 1970s, presumably from Ontario. About 30% larger (50 lbs and more) than the western coyote, they have some wolf DNA from hybridization in Canada.
They have adapted to suburbia, where they prey on cats (that's a good thing), small ankle-biter dogs (another good thing), mice, rats, fawns, geese, etc. So although they do not really belong here in New England, they eat things that we don't mind their eating. And they have become common.
Massachusetts poet Catherine Reid has written a book about the coyotes which have now entended their range to the southern states, with great success, despite hunting, trapping, etc. The more of them you kill, the larger their litters. They are here to stay - at least until wolves return. Wolves kill coyotes, just as coyotes kill foxes.
Data from more than 1,300 four-year colleges and universities in the United States show that the use of race and ethnicity in admissions declined sharply after the mid-1990s, especially at public institutions. The proportion of public four-year colleges considering minority status in admissions has fallen from more than 60 percent to about 35 percent. Among private institutions, the drop during the same years has been notable but less dramatic, from 57 percent to 45 percent. The major decline came after 1995, when the campaign against affirmative action intensified, and schools, particularly public ones, thrown on the defensive, retreated. They were reacting not only to actual litigation but also to its threat. While colleges and universities that are considered elite are more likely to have practiced affirmative action and to have been more protective of it, even they have retreated. Few innovative or vigorous forms of affirmative action are now in play in the face of courts and federal agencies exercising strict scrutiny when examining admissions procedures and in the face of an increasingly suspicious citizenry.
Another reality is redefining, and probably weakening, the meaning of affirmative action. Although few schools publicize the fact, one of the central historic principles giving rise to affirmative action is being undermined. President Johnson’s speech assumed that affirmative action would help the descendants of former slaves (he made no mention of Hispanics). That assumption from yesteryear is out of sync with today’s realities. Affirmative action more and more functions to open the campus not only to the descendants of former slaves but to black students with different cultural and political heritages. Once championed, as in Johnson’s speech, as a means of reparation or restitution, affirmative action now turns out to be helping hundreds and hundreds of young people who have suffered the wounds of old-fashioned American racism little or not at all. More than a quarter of the black students enrolled at selective American colleges and universities are immigrants or the children of immigrants. African-American students born in the United States thus turn out to be more underrepresented (given their presence in the U.S. population) at selective colleges than one might imagine. At some of the most exclusive institutions (Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania), no less than two-fifths of those admitted as “black” are of immigrant origin. Such facts, as they come into view, blunt the force of arguments favoring affirmative action. Diversity and restitution are better reasons than diversity alone, but restitution seems less and less in play.
Diversity itself, moreover, seems weaker and weaker as an argument for affirmative action when many campuses now appear, at least to the public at large, more diverse than ever before. The increasing presence on campus of students from myriad ethnic groups (Indian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Iranian, and many others) and the consequent reduction of “white” students (witness student populations at the University of California at Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, USC, Columbia, and other schools) undercut the notion that American higher education is still unfairly monochromatic.
Prof. Chace favors affirmative action only for blacks with American heritage.
Mr. and Ms. Moses must make sure the twins qualify for the Ivy league if that’s where they want to go. Don’t want them ending “up having to go, God forbid, to Rutgers,” she writes. So the twins have had plenty of SAT and ACT tutoring at $125 per session. Of course on top of this are the fees paid for the actual testing and travel to all these places of higher learning. Plus, an additional consultant is on the job to counsel the male twin to not do anything stupid that could jeopardize his chance of admission. Moses considers the consultant a bargain at $701.25 so far.
$701.25? Around here, they want a $3000 retainer.
I think things are changing, though. It's not like the old days. Although the clubby signaling part of the elite schools still is a factor in life, it's much more of a factor in social life than in the world of work and career. From an academic standpoint, the value in an elite degree is that you were able to get in there when you were 17 or 18.
It says nothing about what value you have to offer, today.
When I went to college, they interviewed to see whether you had good deportment and manners, and could discuss Milton, Rembrandt and Ovid intelligently in a conversation. You could flunk out, and everybody had tough requirements for graduation (including Math).
In the so-called elite colleges today, I think they are looking for just a few things:
1) Can this person fill the oboe slot in the orchestra? 2) Can this person help make our girls' Squash Team a contender? 3) Can the Dad write us a check for $400,000? 4) Is there any reason to take this kid instead of the Asian kid with better scores and grades and more developed talents (other than the fact that he or she isn't Asian)?
A reader thought this might be of interest: A City of Neighborhoods. (Adjust the % scale to see it in detail.)
I hate to admit that, while I know my way around Manhattan fairly well, the other boroughs are a mostly mystery and an adventure for me unless we are talking about Peter Lugar's, the BAM, Yankee Stadium, the Tennis Center, Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge - and the airports.
After spending several years as a sports agent at Chicago's Interperformances, Biderman founded Ashley Madison in 2002, naming the company after the two most popular names for baby girls that year. A large chunk of his work as an agent involved helping professional basketball players juggle their wives and mistresses, so when he read somewhere that 30 percent of users of Internet dating services were pretending to be single when they weren't, a light went on, pointing the way to an underserved online niche market. What would happen, Biderman thought, if cheaters had a website all their own?
Clever entrepreneurs, but I wonder how Biderman's Mom and Dad feel about his business.
The natural desire for novelty and excitement in romance and sex is always with us. It takes a while to realize that the new one is, well, just another deeply flawed person too. And for them to realize the same about you.
In my work, I tend to deal with the grim fallout of such adventures so I tend to be biased against acting on romantic temptations. Unlike the "sophisticated" Europeans and Asians, Americans tend to expect vows to be deadly serious. Especially church vows.
I say "tend to." Here are some US infidelity stats. Relatively few American marriages survive adultery, and those that do have some permanent damage.
3 cups fresh blueberries 3 cups fresh raspberries Cup of strawberries, cut up 3 cups fresh blackberries or boysenberries peel of a whole lime, cut into strips peel of a whole lemon, cut into strips 1 cup of fresh mint leaves
In a saucepan, combine 3 c. of water with peels and bring to boil. Remove from heat, add mint leaves and steep for 30 minutes.
Strain, then put liquid back in saucepan with the sugar until boiling and sugar is fully dissolved.
Remove from heat again, cool or chill until at least room temp, and add about a tablespoon of juice from your lime and the lemon.
Gently mix liquid with the berries and chill in fridge for a few hours.
I am always behind the curve on gizmos. I was so pleased with the Keurig machine at the inn we stayed at a few weekends ago that Mrs. BD was moved to buy one for us - really for me - with spare miles.
We usually consume only half of each pot of coffee we make, except on weekends. I can drink coffee that has been sitting around for 8 hours, but it isn't my favorite.
My beef with those Keurig cups is that they haven't made a deal yet with Dunkin' for their terrible but comfortably familiar coffee, or with Chock full of Nuts for the same, or with Starbucks, Bustelo, Gorilla, or any of the good Italian brands. Those Green Mountain coffees don't do it for me except in a pinch at a minimart.
A friend reminded me the other day about breakfast at the Regency. That's where he meets with people for business breakfasts when in New York, as do many heavy hitters and financial types who seem to own their regular tables.
He told me that they make an excellent corned beef hash. I love corned beef hash for breakfast.
Pic of breakfast at The Regency from this site (good pics, obnoxious writing).
I'm a bit jealous. I don't own (or need) a suit expensive enough for a Regency breakfast. This is more my speed:
The USA is unusual because wild game meat can not be sold in stores. All "game" meat sold in the US is farm-raised, whether venison, quail, pheasant, duck, or whatever.
That is the correct and righteous legacy of the devastating, 12 month/year market hunting of the past which devastated the seemingly endlessly abundant American wildlife populations.
There is no bird as special for the table as Woodcock, but you have to get out and shoot them yourself. One way to do justice to this diminutive bird (smaller than the European Woodcock) is a ravioli dish I learned from my Cordon Bleu chef friend.
Take a few Woodcock, and cut all of the meat off them - breast, thighs, etc. Chop the meat into roughly 1/2" pieces. Throw in a bowl and mix with a bit of sauteed very finely-chopped shallots and carrots, salt, pepper, a bit of fresh thyme and parsley and a little bit of truffle oil.
Take some wonton squares and brush some whisked egg on the edges as glue. Put a teaspoon or two of the mixture inside, then seal the squares tightly to eliminate any air inside, and place carefully into gently boiling water until done. It only takes a few minutes.
Serve two or three raviolis drizzled with somewhat reduced gibier sauce, with a few shavings of black truffle on top.
A chat with a Physical Therapist today at noon. She told me that they enter the codes of diagnosis etc, and Medicare or Medicaid generates a response telling them how many sessions the patient can have, of what duration, and at what payment.
"What do you do here?", I asked.
She said that their department's policy is this: Patient gets whatever is reimbursable. If 8 sessions are allowed and they only need 4, they get 8. It can't hurt. If 8 are allowed and they need 30, they get 8.
"We don't even bother anymore asking them to pay for more therapy if they need it. If it's not free, they never take it."
If there is any better mental training, or any better test of training and intellect than Chess, I don't know what it is.
(Other than real life, of course. Mastering the vicissitudes, raw deals, unfairnesses, subtleties, luck, and challenges of real life is the real test. Of course, dealing one's own personal limitations is a big part of that game.)
A friend of mine with three young kids recently banned all electronic and computer games from the house. "Enough stupid crap in this house." He announced that they would henceforth play Checkers, Chess, Backgammon, Poker, Mille Bournes, Euchre, or Hearts in the house - and that he would give each kid one game every night.
He's been working on Fritz though, to make sure he can stay ahead of them, and his eldest (9 years old) requested a Chess tutor. But even Fritz is banned for the kids. "I want them to play a real human, to learn to read them and their game."
Daubigny is considered part of The Barbizon School of realism and naturalism, but he is better known as a forerunner of Impressionism. As a friend said, Impressionism didn't come out of nowhere.
I have always been interested in the history of the idea of retirement. Not interested because it is something I want to do (I could financially do it today if I wanted to), but interested in why an intact, healthy person would not want to fully participate in society by being a productive member.
My Grandpa worked until he was felled by a stroke at 86, and my Dad worked until macular degeneration made him incapable of driving around age 76.
Private pensions (especially from the railroads) began in the late 1800s but it wasn't until the New Deal and Social Security that the option to be put to pasture became widely available. Roosevelt was, of course, highly motivated to remove workers from the labor force in an effort to reduce unemployment, and that was the main impetus for Social Security.
In 1900, 65% of men over 65 worked. By 2000, it was 17%. Of course, nowadays many jobs build in forced retirement. I saw some stats somewhere that about 40% of retired men return to some form of paid work within three years of retirement, but I don't recall the source.
Although some employees sitting in cubicles may long for the end to their work lives, sun-drenched days with tee-times, knitting and visiting the grandchildren, Howard Stone said retirees shouldn't retire, at least in the traditional sense of the word.
"Those who say 'I'll never work again' are making a major, major mistake. Because they're going to find themselves adrift, away from a community purpose and a sense," he said.
I found a good piece, with lots of numbers, on the economic history of retirement in the US. It begins:
One of the most striking changes in the American labor market over the twentieth century has been the virtual disappearance of older men from the labor force. Moen (1987) and Costa (1998) estimate that the labor force participation rate of men age 65 and older declined from 78 percent in 1880 to less than 20 percent in 1990 (see Table 1). In recent decades, the labor force participation rate of somewhat younger men (age 55-64) has been declining as well. When coupled with the increase in life expectancy over this period, it is clear that men today can expect to spend a much larger proportion of their lives in retirement, relative to men living a century ago.
Comment from Dr. Bliss: Excellent subject. A few random thoughts:
- I think many folks want to be able to retire. Many enjoy their jobs much more once they have the financial freedom to quit.
- People I have talked to who have retired young, such as cops with full pensions at age 45, and Wall Streeters who walk away with bags of money around the same age, almost always take on a second career of some sort.
- Psychologically, being retired can feel like being unemployed or sent out to pasture. When people retire in their 50s or early-mid 60s, a workplace loses their experienced wise ones who have "seen it all before", and the experienced wise ones feel useless.
- A comment about people who "hate their jobs." People love to bitch about their jobs. But without the job, they lose a lot of human contact, a structured place to use their brains or abilities, and a role in the world.
- Hedonistic retirement: The idea of the fun and sun and travel retirement has been sold hard to the middle class over the past 30 years. From what I have seen, it isn't all it's cracked up to be. A vacation can be a refreshing change of pace and change of senery, but an endless vacation can be like a meal made of all dessert courses: cloying and unnutritious.
- People who do not return to work after retirement, but who jump into unpaid labors of love, like community service projects, local politics, working for charities, churches, and non-profits, often seem to feel a good sense of satisfaction in "giving back."
- "Meaningful work." I hate that expression. All work is useful and contributes to society, whether it is raising one's kids, milking the cows, flipping burgers, or selling bonds. People who use that expression should think hard about what they mean by it. Furthermore, folks who want their work to provide them with meaning may be barking up the wrong tree.
Unless you cover them up too much, men always glance at them. They can't help it. (Women often furtively glance at men's junk too.)
Readers would be amused by the ways Psychologists and Psychoanalysts talk about men's curiousity about our boobs. Very deep and academic, things about mothers and breast-feeding and regressions and so forth.
More to the point, I think, is this explanation from a guy that I found somewhere, and which I recently quoted in a talk:
Why do we like breasts? Cause they're warm and snuggly, bouncy and soft, friendly and cute, playful, kissable, hot and nasty, pointy and happy, round and curvy, squeezable - and there's two of them!
Artwork is from Theo, who is dedicated to the appreciation of the stunningly-designed female format.
1. Frayed cord on my cool Italian desk lamp was sparking. Brought it to my local lamp shop, since I am wary of electric repairs. Guy repaired the wire while I watched. Then he said it's a little wobbly, let's fix it. Took it apart, tightened all of the parts. Then he said that the frosted glass panels needed cleaning. He showed me how they can be removed, and cleaned them all up with their special chandelier-cleaning spray stuff. He replaced the four bulbs with the proper bulbs. They he wrapped it in bubble wrap for the ride home.
Total time: 30 minutes. Total charge: $6.25, which was for the new bulbs.
2. My Dell office computer was making terrible sounds. The IT guy I phone when I have a problem said it wasn't worth fixing, being 4 or 5 years old. My genius son replaced the fan for $10.99 and it's as good as new. Yes, I have a back-up hard drive.
I grew up in "nose bleed" at Ebbets Field, and Duke Snider was my hero and the hero of Brooklyn. I had his autograph, but my mother tossed it when she (finally) cleaned my room while I was in Vietnam. But I never lost my adoration. Last week I was at batting cages with Jason where Duke Snider's jersey, bat and photos are prominently displayed. The owner and I reminisced for an hour while Jason listened. After, Jason said to me, "He must have been some kind of hero for you to look up to him." At 84, the Duke of Flatbush left our field today, and remains in our hearts.
The New York Post quotes Snider: " 'If I live to be 100 years old,' he said in 2002, 'I'll always be able to remember what it felt to be young and a ballplayer in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I'll always remember what it meant to be a champion of the world there.' "
The Duke lived out his years in Fallbrook, about 20-miles from where I live now. When I was a kid in Brooklyn, after a game, Duke Snider would sometimes come out of the ballpark to play stickball in the street with us kids. The San Diego Union-Tribunerecalls:
Duke Snider played center in Ebbets Field and stickball on the streets of Brooklyn....Snider hit .295 with 407 career home runs, played in the World Series six times and won two championships. But the eight-time All-Star was defined by much more than his stats - he was, after all, part of the love affair between Brooklyn and "Dem Bums" who lived in the local neighborhoods....Snider is the Dodgers' franchise leader in home runs (389) and RBIs (1,271). He led all major leaguers in the 1950s with 326 homers and 1,031 RBIs....
Snider hit .309 with 42 homers and a career-high 136 RBIs in 1955. That October, he hit four homers, drove in seven runs and hit .320 as the Dodgers beat the Yankees in a seven-game Series.
For a team that kept preaching "Wait till next year" after World Series losses to the Yankees in 1953, '52, '49, '47 and '41, it was indeed next year. A generation later, long after they'd all grown old, those Dodgers were lauded as the "Boys of Summer" in Roger Kahn's book....
A durable slugger with a strong arm, good instincts on the bases and a regal style, Snider hit the last home run at Ebbets Field in 1957....
A native Californian, Snider became part of Brooklyn's fabric during his playing days. "I was born in Los Angeles," he once said. "Baseballwise, I was born in Brooklyn. We lived with Brooklyn. We died with Brooklyn."
The Duke of Flatbush will always live in the lore of Brooklyn.
Here's the menu for the sort of 1890's-style dinner our Ducks Unlimited commitee serves annually. Our Chef for this special annual Game Dinner was making Rillete de Lapin since he was a kid in France. Yes, it is generally Black Tie out of respect for the chef and/or the host.
What's the deal? Our Ducks Unlimited Committee sells this dinner for twelve for significant bucks (usually $10-20,000 - and worth every penny) in our charity auction, provides the game, helps the Chef, and serves. When lucky, we're invited to join the dinner table. Otherwise, Chef and his sous chef feed us well in the kitchen, and we help consume the wines.
All the host has to do is to light the fire, and buy the wine and ceegars. With all of the loins and breasts, this is one sexy menu, and mighty filling:
Cocktail hour hors d'oevres:
Game terrine, grainy home-made mustard, gherkin slices, and toast
Rillette de lapin, capers, toast
Pate of Wild Duck Liver with cognac, toast
Dinner:
Roast Country Pigeon with green and white asparagus, mache salad, truffle vinaigrette
Woodcock ravioli with celeriac flan and wild mushroom sauce, with Black Truffle garni
Pheasant breast, braised red cabbage, lardons, with cognac jus
Satueed breast of Redhead or Canvasback with wild rice and roast figs, jus de gibier
Almost finished putting the Christmas stuff away, and amusing myself by refreshing my memory about 
Coyotes have been moving south into the eastern US since the 1970s, presumably from Ontario. About 30% larger (50 lbs and more) than the western coyote, they have some 
"Favorite" is not a helpful word. Let me ask our scientific poll questions a better way:
I am always behind the curve on gizmos. I was so pleased with the Keurig machine at the inn we stayed at a few weekends ago that Mrs. BD was moved to buy one for us - really for me - with spare miles. 
Got any Woodock left in the freezer?
It's the cat's meow: 
Unless you cover them up too much, men always glance at them. They can't help it. (Women often furtively glance at men's junk too.)
1. Frayed cord on my cool Italian desk lamp was sparking. Brought it to my local lamp shop, since I am wary of electric repairs. Guy repaired the wire while I watched. Then he said it's a little wobbly, let's fix it. Took it apart, tightened all of the parts. Then he said that the frosted glass panels needed cleaning. He showed me how they can be removed, and cleaned them all up with their special chandelier-cleaning spray stuff. He replaced the four bulbs with the proper bulbs. They he wrapped it in bubble wrap for the ride home. 
Cocktail hour hors d'oevres: