Up From Facebook

Once the movers left early Friday afternoon, we had over 150 boxes to unpack. We spent much of Saturday unpacking the kitchen stuff, and were able to prepare our first meal in the house after arriving nearly a week before. Sunday was devoted to unpacking clothing and storing it. One thing I’ll say for this place, it’s not hurting for closet space. The master bedroom has two walk-in closets (we had zero in our bedroom in St. Louis, although there were two off the 2nd floor landing). So we each get our own walk-in closet, and Linda gets one that has a second walk-in cedar closet off the first one!Yesterday we did some unpacking of books and crystal until we were overtaken by massive plumbing problems. This morning, I filled the chifferobe/stereo cabinet with stereo equipment, hooked up the turntable, CD player and speakers to the amp and fired it up. Listening to Tony Rice and company for the first time in RI. At least something works here, although to be fair, there was no plumbing invo...

A couple of days ago, Linda pointed out a puddle of water on the floor next to the washing machine in the basement. I wondered whether it was from the washer, but the next morning, I went downstairs to inspect and found water dripping off of pipes and the air conditioning insulation above the washer, so that wasn’t the answer. Yesterday, the maintenance guy came in to diagnose the problem and eventually (after punching out a bunch of dry wall in the dining room) found a long crack in the cast iron pipe leading down from the second floor. Long story short, we’ll have to wait a week until someone can come in to repair this. Meanwhile, we still use the upstairs shower, because the downstairs shower stall is cracked and needs to be replaced. Add to that a dripping valve that feeds the hot water tank and SharkBite push fit connectors all over the place that need to be replaced with soldered connections and we have a plumbing nightmare on our hands. In the meantime, we have a fan trained on...

  At the bakery where I ate breakfast this morning, I overheard another geezer ranting about student loan forgiveness. Why not forgive home loans? Why not auto loans? Why not all loans? Look, when you take out a mortgage, the house is collateral. If you default on your mortgage, the lender can repossess your house and sell it to someone else. Likewise for auto loans or loans to buy furniture. It is very difficult to discharge student loans through bankruptcy. If you default, what is the collateral? Can the lender repossess your diploma and sell it to someone else? What if you never graduated? The comparison between student loans and other loans with collateral that can be discharged through bankruptcy is specious and ignorant. I did hear this geezer say he was quoting stuff he heard on Breitbart. Well, if you get your "facts" from a right-wing propaganda outlet, no wonder you're confused. Ultimately, the solution is to make student loans dischargeable through bankruptcy, ...

I never cared much for fish growing up. At home, fish came in brown squares out of the freezer. On family camping trips, we’d have salmon patties made with canned salmon. Once, on a family vacation down east, I raked for clams in the Chesapeake Bay, and my mom steamed them. They were OK, but not special. My mind began to change when I became a faculty and would be invited to dinner with out-of-town seminar speakers. Restaurants get the best cuts of meat and fish, and for many types of fish, the preparation makes a lot of difference. Now, I love sushi and sashimi and regularly grill salmon, trout and tuna. Since we’re ensconced in the Ocean State, I’m looking forward to a greater variety. I’m not a believer in food as medicine. Yes, moderating intake of fats and oils and of sugar is a good idea, but the lettuce in your salad isn’t an antidote for the fats in your salad dressing. For years, we’ve been told that the omega-3 fatty acids in fatty fish like salmon is protective against heart...

  The last leg of the trip to RI on Monday, from Rochester to Rumford, was rainy. In some places, the rain was so heavy that visibility was only about 20-30 yards. Eventually, we found our way to the house. Our celebration was brief, as we discovered that the lockbox containing the key was not installed. We phoned the maintenance guy, who came about 30’ later with the key. In the interim, Linda realized she’d left her purse at the Lee Plaza at the west end of the Mass Turnpike. Of course, that meant her drivers license, credit cards and Medicare card. Since she thought her passport was also in the purse, it meant she was essentially undocumented, since her birth certificate is in the moving van. Eventually, we got into the house and installed the birds in a second floor bedroom. Then, Linda went about canceling her credit cards and ordering replacements. Happily, one of her Visa cards had a different number from mine, so we had one working credit card between us. Then Linda couldn’...

 We just moved to Rhode Island and got wifi set up in our new house. Should resume posting here in the next day or two.

When my parents died a few years back, before the pandemic, they were essentially indigent. My dad's nursing home years were paid mostly by Medicaid, and my siblings and I supported my mom's residency in a senior living community. We don't do aging well in the US, despite being one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. And it's only going to become more challenging now that boomers are retiring. More than 40% of Baby Boomer households (about 15 million American households) lack sufficient resources to maintain their current standard of living in retirement. The GOP will tell you that Social Security is about to go bankrupt, which is a lie. As long as there are people drawing a paycheck, Social Security cannot go bankrupt; in the worst case scenario, SS benefits will drop by ca. 20% in around 2035. Medicare is also facing some financial headwinds. The GOP answer is to increase the age of eligibility for these programs and/or privatize them. In other words, to shrink t...

One of the more pernicious aspects of life in the DDR ("East Germany") was the fact that so many citizens were coerced into reporting their family members, friends and neighbors to the Stasi. In the wake of the overturning of Roe, red states are becoming the American DDRs. Sad. https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkvjb/police-self-induced-abortion-arrests?fbclid=IwAR1lWGXpmGmb2yPJ5BebxtHB3K6IljWECUlF1nlwVEnFr0PiFfMuM_47284

Several years ago, I was at a social gathering where I found myself in a discussion with a mom whose sons were asking why they should bother with a college degree. My response was that a college degree marks you as a "finisher." Over the four years or so of college enrollment, each student has to complete a variety of courses with different standards, schedules and content. Much like many better-compensated jobs, there are schedules, deadlines and thresholds for success. A bachelors degree says you were able to meet those criteria, time after time, over a protracted time period. Look, there's a lot more on offer in college, and I hope her sons found courses that were rewarding. Dave Barry called college "camping with tests." There was that, but so much more for me at a large state university. The rationale for paying huge tuitions at elite private universities is that they are so much "better" than public universities. I've been to both, and have b...

The right-wing extremists and the GOP (but I repeat myself) has taken to vilifying immigration and immigrants. Look, we're a nation of immigrants and diversity is the secret of American competitiveness. We should be welcoming immigrants, not scaring them off. Here's an article from 2006 that makes this point far better than I could. Some things are a little out of date, but the core points are timeless. If you're retired or plan to be, you have a personal need for immigration: "One fortuitous result of the enormous wave of immigrants coming to the United States is that the median age here is only a little over 35, one of the lowest among the world's more developed countries. This country also has the most productive population per person of any country on the planet—no matter how you measure it, and especially compared with Japan and the members of the European Union. This is crucial to everyone who plans to retire, because once you do, you'll want a bunch of y...

Trump was the first to announce an FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate yesterday. Josh Marshall over at TPM is pretty confident that this has to do with national security documents. But here's another speculation in a comment thread over at jabberwocking.com: ". . . I wouldn't be surprised if this involves the Truth Social and DWAC merger that basically gifts Trump 1/2 billion dollars. It pretty blatantly breaks the SEC rules over SPACS, Trump and Dim Jr. resigned their board seats the day after SEC announced and investigation, and the SEC would probably get FBI involved if they had evidence of two sets of books being run or something like that." Hey, Trump has been criming for so long that both could be true. Or it could be something else entirely. I'm taking bets, but only those denominated in cryptocurrency.

I consider digital photography and digital recordings to be unalloyed goods. I've spent countless darkroom hours developing negatives and printing pictures, and much prefer Preview, Photoshop or Gimp on my laptop. And although LPs are making a comeback (and I own 700-800 LPs myself), CDs are much more convenient. Ever since CDs became a thing, I'd heard that audiophiles can hear the difference between digital and analog recordings. I certainly can't. And it turns out, they can't, either. https://jabberwocking.com/no-you-cant-tell-the-difference-between-analog-and-digital/

  I really, really don't get the right-wing Christian evangelist objection to gay marriage. Certainly, my marriage to my first wife (which will mark 45 years this month) is unaffected, and Christians of every stripe have been getting divorced at the same rate pre- and post-Obergefell. If I eat a pizza while you're on a diet, does that negate your diet? If I eat pork, does that invalidate observant Jews and Muslims? Folks, this isn't about religion, it's about control and it needs to stop. In a pluralistic society, there is room for many beliefs. Evangelicals who attempt to draft the nanny state to enforce their sectarian beliefs betray both America and the God they allegedly worship. Jesus was silent on the subjects of homosexuality and gay marriage. A true Christian follows the example of Jesus. Wanna know what Jesus actually said? Mark 12:17. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/christian-right-same-sex-marriage-senate-roe

Well, yesterday, nothing. Kansas conservative, moderate and liberal voters resoundingly rejected an effort by right-wing religious extremists to exempt abortion access from the Kansas state constitution privacy rights. Forced birth is often branded by the press and the religious right as a "conservative" issue, but it's not. True conservatives want the nanny state out of the private lives of citizens. Nearly 60% of voters rejected the proposal to exempt reproductive choice from constitutional protection. This is consistent with polling showing that the right-wing extremist GOP is out of step with the views of most Americans. Of course, the fact that Trump lost the popular vote twice should have hinted at that already. I hope this is harbinger for November.