On The Farm and In The City

  She grew up on the farm, the fifth child and the only daughter.  Her grandfather built the farm and the massive and very beautifully detailed thirteen bedroom farmhouse.  He did not have it built… he built it, from the posts and beams and purlin roof to the modest trim and paneling inside.  Her parents had moved permanently to their large “cottage” on the coast of Maine, and now she and her husband raised their three young children in the house and on the farm.

After college, she inexplicably joined the Navy and served for four years actively and then just as long in the reserves.  She met her husband at the US base in Spain, who was also an Ivy-league athlete.  He was from a rural Vermont town and they got along quickly, with an equally quick marriage at the end of his service (a year before hers).  They both eventually moved to her New Hampshire family farm (the parents were able to convince at least one of the children to occupy the house) in search of familiar comfort and sensibility.  The farm ran itself from productive acreage leased out to people who pursued it fully, and the husband could focus on his legal profession and the wife could raise the children and occasionally lend her civil-engineering expertise to the State.  The property has always been truly picturesque, complete with the (characteristically New Hampshire) inflated property taxes and woefully neglected secondary roads.  The majority of the growing and animal care was performed by an actual farmer, his wife, and their hired workers who all lived in a detached care-takers house.  The use/payment arrangements were unclear, but it seemed to consist of limitless food and crop for my friend and her family.

We were childhood friends from her summers on the coast, now both with children of the same age.  She was a rambunctious athlete as a young girl, threatening in her ability, but sweet and honest in her manner.  She hated tennis lesson as I did, but unlike me, she was an excellent player.  We raced dinghies together as an unbeatable team, and she taught me how to jump from dizzyingly high bridges into salt water.  Her drawbacks included her four protective brothers, one of whom was sinister in his innate authority (now the ruthless director of a large American corporation).  He tolerated me because I never dared interest beyond “buddy” with his sister.  Her least charming quality was her motivation though.  She had too much to be properly mischievous, and it made her observe a maddeningly early bedtime.  Worse yet, she always studied for at least one hour a day, even in summer, and no fewer than four during college.  When I was sixteen, during a summer ball, I discovered that she was both tone-deaf and a horrendously bad dancer.

---

My wife, son, and I stayed in the back portion of the big house for our visit during a notably beautiful weekend.  After a five o’clock dinner of fresh salads and cumin-roasted pork loin, the exhausted children were bathed together in an enormous iron tub with oversized car-sponges and then put easily to sleep.  Though bedrooms were in huge surplus, her three children slept in two bunks in a single room, and our son happily took the bottom bunk to even out the numbers. 

At eight o’clock, our host and hostess turned in for the night after serving only one round from the bottle I brought like a couple of one-drink Cinderellas.  The sun was just down but the evening was still readably light, and Mrs. and I took this cue to realize that our friends would be awake at some offensively early hour.

The shuffling around began at four thirty in the morning while the summer light outside was still deep blue.  The children were roused later at six for their symbolic "chores": checking on chickens, counting the goats in the barn, etc.  Our host was in his study putting an early billable hour or two behind him.  Because it was a functioning farm with no issues regarding the consumption of its animals, I strolled down the hall towards the brick floored kitchen expecting the aroma of eggs and bacon.  I caught none, not even toast or coffee.  I walked into the kitchen and all of the children were already sitting around the large table eating their bowls ravenously.  A salad of ice-cold watermelon, fresh (homemade) goat cheese, and raw honey (from combs forty feet away) piled in each.  A few mint leaves were thrown unpretentiously in as well, and the children drank iced black tea.  They were shirtless and making horrible slurping gratifications in the warm summer kitchen as they knelt on the seats over their breakfast.  When the bowls were emptied, they were told to go “directly to the pond” instead of any kind of napkin, and they sprinted out across the lawn towards the pond, back within moments of half-giddy screeches, still dripping wet and wide-eyed.  It was quarter past six in the morning on Saturday, and within two hours, one of the children threw up from an overly-zealous consumption of blackberries from the bushes in the back garden. 

The lunch of herb-rolled fresh chevre (“Chevy Cheese” as her children called it) was accompanied by tea and giant slices of homemade toasted bread and cold lamb.  At my urging, we later fired my host’s functioning musket, and then all watched as our hostess sutured a wound on one of the goats (unrelated to our musketry, of course).  My wife and our hostess spent a few hours in town and returned with about ten fresh trout for dinner and the children gathered greens and herbs from the garden.  Mercifully, the mosquitos were mild, and we had more iced tea on the back porch as the children watched with mixed reactions as the house cat slowly tortured a sparrow it had caught.  Another five o’clock dinner, this time with trout rolled in salt, pepper, and butter, then broiled, and served with fresh greens and some homemade feta.

The next morning, my hostess remembered my passion for a full breakfast and put together a proper farm-fry of eggs, bacon, buttered toast, fried tomato, and coffee, with a separate platter of breakfast pork.  I stuffed myself to the point of near-stupidity and she dug out some humiliating photos from our camp years, one of which included me dressed as The Big Bad Wolf.  My wife roared laughing and accurately jabbed that I looked more like “an emaciated Playboy bunny” with my drawn-on whiskers, furry ears, and red “blood” that looked remarkably like lipstick when viewed thirty years later.

A quiet drive back to the city’s fire engines, helicopters, trains, and car horns, where wife and son fell asleep minutes after dinner, soothed by the familiar sounds of Boston.  I tucked each in, and made it just in time for a roof-top drinks party two blocks away as the sun set.

Brief Stop for a Fast Pen

In the Great Lakes region.  Excellent lodging with noticeably un-excellent service.  Business trip, so naturally, I'm on someone else's bill.

Several of us sat in deep plush sofas today while tray after tray of Martini appeared.  My beloved wife shakes her head when I return from these trips with several unopened bars of soap taken from the room... in true Yankee fashion.  If the hotel or resort has stationary, I write letters to her each day, even though I get home before the letters do.  I never touch the $5 entrapment bottle of water in the room, and I scoff at the idea of a mini-bar key, obviously preferring full-sized bars for my liquor consumption.  Service... true service... seems gone in most non-membership lodging options.

Speaking of membership, there was once a time when such things were quietly offered to business leaders, artists, curators, and diplomats.  Now, I am saddened to see young men covet mileage-based memberships or access granted by virtue of frequent stays with ludicrous names like "Platinum" or "VIP" or "GOLD", etc.  Where men once gathered with art or literature in common, the modern club aspirant only has soul-deadening air travel in common with his fellow "club" member.  Disgusting.

Loud mobile phone discussions mixed with athletic wear and undershirts insult the vaulted ceiling at the hotel here.  Running shoes and shorts with light beer and ball-caps poison the Corinthian columns and marble floors.  Curse to management for allowing this, and curse to men for insisting on dressing as boys.

Home to Boston tomorrow to lift the son in the air, kiss the wife, activate the Martini shaker, and hoist the drinks flag.  

Boat Shoes & Boating Shoes

Is there a difference?

Yes.

A "boat shoe" is a style of shoe, while a "boating shoe" is a shoe worn boating.  Am I being smug?  Annoyingly, yes.

The Sperry Boat Shoe is obviously the most popular, the sole for which is rumored to have been modeled after a dog's paw.  The lacing starts at the heel, continues forward, alternates through eyelets, and finishes with whatever type of knot you can come up with at the top.  In theory, the lacing is meant to cinch the topline to the ankle.  The white sole serves the same purpose that a squash shoe requires: the soles are non-marking.  Black rubber-soled running shoes leave streaks on teak, fiberglass, and the nice floors of squash courts, which are nearly impossible to remove.  A slightly beveled heel allows added grip to ratlines and footropes when going and working aloft.  The thick leather provides protection and structure, making the shoe surprisingly effective for tucked-toes under the gunwhales during high wind sailing in dinghies and open boats.

Up until the about 1999 or so, they were still the most popular sailing shoe in the Northeast, and during races the row of tanned legs dangling over the weather rail would be shod in Topsiders only... rain or shine.

They were favored by sailors and yacht clubs for two very simple but important reasons:
1. They were effective and superior boating shoes, and
2. They satisfied the dresscode at most yacht clubs and seaside restaurants (even when wet).

As a casual shoe, they were popular because they were comfortable, more "dressy" than athletic shoes, but mostly because people already had them.

Men and boys wore them throughout the winter with socks and nearly all manner of pant, while women and girls wore them with skirts and knee-socks, jeans, kilts, and khakis.  Bleachers were always, ALWAYS filled with Topsiders during school games both on students and on visiting parents.

True signs of the boating shoe's wearer using them correctly:
-Green-oxidized eyelets from the sea's salt
-Retro-fitted with open brass grommets on the instep for better ventilation/water draining
-4th set of leather laces (or replaced fully with synthetic cords for the offshoremen)
-Regularly treated with wax polish or oil
-Disproportionately unworn sole compared to mangled toe and heel sections of the leather

Offshore sailors tend to not slip them on or off, preferring to untie and retie them each time.  If they can be slipped on and off in the house, they will certainly slip off when the deck is fully awash during heavy seas.

One drawback to the boating shoe is that the sole is relatively hard and solid, giving the foot a flattened soreness after a full day's sailing or strolling.

It's doubtful that the new generation of sailors will adopt this shoe seriously.  If their parents, camp counselors, baby-sitters, and sailing instructors are not wearing them, why would they?

As a young college man, my pulse would always quicken when I would catch a glimpse of a gal in Topsiders worn with a skirt, which showed that she was either a coastal Yankee skeptical of popular fashion or she was an exchange student, and I could attempt to impress her with the only two Dutch words I knew and would inevitably butcher.

"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Montevideo," she said somewhat coldly.
"Oh... I thought I heard you speaking Dutch," I said, thrown off.
"I was," she said as she stared plainly.
"Isn't Montevideo in Paraguay?" I said, giving a last lurch at a dignified exchange.
"No, it's in Uruguay. I went to school in the Netherlands."
"Uhhh... mmm... well..." I sputtered as my cocktail small-talk arsenal evaporated.
"Have a good evening" she said, putting me out of my misery.

These days, one can get a boating or boat shoe in any sort of color, material, and style.  If you are using them for sailing or boating, they must have non-marking soles.  Other than that, find a brand and style you like and have at it.  I'm not a staunch purist when it comes to the brands.  For the record, the single best pair I have ever purchased were at a shop near Searsport, Maine in 1998 and they were made by Dexter.  They have outlasted three pair of Sperry's throughout everything from coastal to blue-water sailing, so don't feel heckled or pressured into just one manufacturer.

Gross Old Station Wagon Competition

I received a request from a commenter on Maxminimus to turn this into a larger post.

Where we spent our summers, the matriarchs had an overt and ongoing competition to see who could drive the nastiest station wagon.  Grandmothers and Grand Dames and matriarchs competed for the title of most wet-dog/cigarette/seaweed/mildew smell in the car.  Their cars were nearly always American, and were usually station wagons.  Occasionally a diesel Mercedes wagon would appear, and there was the rare Volvo wagon.  One wealthy old dame drove a 1970's Datsun pickup truck to better facilitate her love of buying fresh lobster and fish directly from fishermen.  In those days, children were allowed to ride in the bed of pick-ups, and we all called it the "sardine tin" because of the smell, shape, and construction.  She would drive us all to Four Seas for a few cones, and we would eat them on the drive back, the salty air and late summer sun, the wind from the truck's movement, and the ice cream all came together to become childhood bliss.

 The majority of the old gals had American wagons, though.  These cars would spend 9 months in a garage during the off-season, where the festering stench of wet dog, seaweed, vinyl seats, and general grime would ferment, and be barely tolerable the following year. One old gal, who was married to Mr. Largest US Chemical Company, drove a wooden-paneled wagon with a muffler that dragged for almost 8 years. She would replace the muffler when it would finally grind down to nothing, but the replacement would magically drag on the ground within a day or so.  Liquor stores all had accounts (still do, actually) as did grocers and hardware stores, which we all abused mercilessly as children with bags of  candies and cap-gun caps.  If you were lucky, an old grandmother would give you her wagon to drive into the village to pick up a large liquor order for one of her parties:

"Do you drive, Dear?" She would ask.

"No, I'm only fourteen, Mrs. Sutton."

"Well, go slowly and there won't be a problem." She would say.

My father says that this was to avoid having to tip the kid at the liquor store who loaded up the car.  He wasn't going to ask a 14 year old for a buck or two.  My grandmother was the opposite.  She saw generous tipping as investments, and was afforded the better selections from shops because of it... better bottles, unsanctioned discounts, and priority "dibbs" from affectionate business owners.

Grandmother had a white Ford wagon that smelled of all the previously-mentioned stinks, and after the summer of 1982, her grandsons added the smell of sour milk, cheap beer, and fire-works-melted seat cushions to the bouquet.  The old station wagons often had rotting pillows or sections of ruined rug in them.  If one were to lift the floor mats, the car would reveal nearly an inch of thick sand and garden soil.  Nearly all of the matriarchs smoked (the fun ones, at least), and their ashtrays were packed with butts and ash.  As well-off as most of them were, they were still Yankees, so finding a stray coin under the seats was extremely rare, but since they all were Depression-era ladies, children always looted the glove box for a tightly-packed coin purse that provided soda money.  During college, I rolled up a large sun-room rug of hers and took it to my off-campus apartment during the winter, and nobody ever said anything to me about the shameless theft.  Still have it.

One old gal drove a Peugeot wagon, which she felt complimented her proud Hugeunot lineage, and she donated some legacy silver to the local Episcopal church to be used during services.  Like the Jaguars, her Peugeot rarely ran properly, when it ran at all.  Luxury cars were rarely seen, and were viewed differently than expected.  Nobody had chauffeurs (unless health problems prevented them from driving), and the president of a large East Coast bank drove himself around in a Dodge sedan, with a State trooper following closely behind.  

  

Few had electric windows, and fewer had anything other than a radio.  Air conditioning?  No chance.  The engines were always impressive with imposingly large black air-filter covers over the carburetors, and  the oil was changed with regularity and on schedule.  Dog hair and ratty beach blankets were always in the back, but not in the charming and picturesque way.  All depression-era women it seemed, kept these items in their cars:

-Flashlight

-Rubber raincoat

-Atlas 

-Jug of coolant

-Bungee cords

-Nasty beach blanket

-Coin-purse

-Assortment of half-pencils (from the golf course) or pens

-Binoculars in the glovebox

-Trip mileage booklets and mini-logs

-Twine

-Tissues 

-Flattened cardboard liquor box as a liner for the seatless "way back"

One summer, before ATMs were used, Grandmother had to call around to all of her friends to collect a few hundred dollars in cash.  It was Sunday, and no bank was open.  The bank president was away.  She never used cash, preferring checks and store accounts for absolutely everything.  She sat at her phone table dialing a series of memorized numbers... four digits in the early 1980's.  

"Hello, Patty, it's XXXXX.  How much cash do you have on hand?... I see...  Yes... That would be fine... I need about $400, but I only have about $60 in the whole house.  Yes, I called Alice as well... she sent over about $90.  I'll send one of the boys over right away."

What the hell was going on?  As it turned out, the South Carolinian from whom she had arranged to purchase an impressive cache of illegal fireworks was waiting somewhere near Rt. 6, and did not, would not, could not accept a check.  Getting cash from a Yankee on a Sunday was nearly impossible once they had dropped their set-aside $1 or $2 into the collection plate.

Photo source

Grandmother went by herself to complete the black-market transaction.  In her knee-length khaki skirt, navy blue sweater, wavy brown/silver hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and yellow golf shirt, she returned about 30 minutes later with her cigarette that somehow miraculously failed to detonate the styrofoam coolers packed with explosives in the stern of her Ford wagon.  It was July 3rd, and she intended to have a "nice little party".

They were self-reliant in spirit, and thought that children should be responsible for themselves.  They protected but never coddled, they guided but never hovered, and they they were unimpressed with any sort of expensive or showy car.  The gross-but-mechanically-sound cars usually outlasted the old gals themselves and were occasionally given to grandchildren as first cars.  The last of the grandmothers from that childhood circle died last summer, and at least two of the cars are still in garages: cosmetically fine, low mileage, nearly fifty years old, and un-nostalgically resented by the Baby-Boomer parents who can't get rid of them fast enough.

Urban Practicality: Home Coffee Roasting

Popcorn Air-popper = Coffee bean Roaster

I hate coffee snobs.  I can't stand beer snobs.  Wine snobs are the best because deep-down, they know that they are full of crap, whereas coffee and beer snobs ACTUALLY tend to believe the the stuff they say.  Of all of the drinks-based festivals and tastings I've attended, the beer ones were far-and-away the most insufferable.  Tea and Whiskey/Whisky snobs are tolerable unless the conversation moves toward preparation, then you are better off just leaving.  Vodka snobs?  Get real.

People start laying into me all the time about where to get the best coffee, why their supplier is the best, and their supposed mastery and virtuosity of the incalculable variation in the preparation.  Spare me.  If you use a paper filter, you have no business talking nuance of flavor.  I got so sick of it all, that I decided to just do my own roasting and see how it turned out.  Spoiler alert: it turned out brilliantly.

Instead of a $350 grill-top device, I bought a $19 hot-air popcorn popper and some green ("raw") coffee beans from Polcari's in Boston.  As you can see, they have everything, including a selection of Assam-based tea (of which I am particularly fond).

 

 

I prefer the more sensible and lower caffeine content of Arabica beans to Supremo.

Once back home, I loaded the air popper with the raw beans and watched them roast.  I monitor the color and smoke in order to prevent burning or even the very dark "French Roast". You have to lean it back so keep the beans from flying out.  In the photo below, one can see how I roasted them to the Full/Full+ City Roast range (linked guide below).

Husks everywhere in the aftermath.

Let the beans cool for two hours in open air (this is very important) and grind them before each use within a week of roasting.  I use a standard electric grinder followed by a French Press, followed by no milk and no sugar.  Also, the popper can be cleaned with a paper towel afterwards with no flavoring to your popcorn.

Here is a crappy video I made of the process:

If you decide to give this a try, let me know how it goes.  Here is an excellent visual guide to when you should literally pull the plug on a roaster (based on your desired degree of roastedness).

GQ

JMW lead the charge on this one, and I thank her for getting the ball rolling.


I have received tons of emails about the GQ article naming Boston as the worst dressed city in America.  As someone who spouts about men's clothing on a regular basis, I was excited to read the article, but was supremely disappointed by it.  The entire bit seemed to be composed by a group of deadline-desperate staffers as if they were in a car en route to pitch the draft to their editor, complete with anecdotes of go-to caricatures of each city (Seattle is NOT full of flannel or plaid as GQ claims).  The piece simply lists major cities with whatever grab-bag cliche the staffers could generate.  When misguided and patently false claims were structured in, the readers were subjected to a compilation of cheap and smug snark that was obviously being peddled as wit and "scathing analysis", though it contained none.  Well-dressed San Francisco, Manhattan, and Philadelphia were laughably listed in their "countdown" as well.

Thompson says about Boston:

"But Boston is the epicenter of prep style!," you say? That's true, but it's with a little extra that ends up ruining everything: Khakis!—with pleats. Boat shoes!—with socks. Knit ties!—actually, no one in Boston seems to have ever seen one of these.


Thompson lists Bostonians wearing "knit ties" as evidence of poor taste, then scolds Bostonians for never having seen a knit tie.

I like distasteful humor, I like mockery, and I also like mean spirited japes from time to time... God knows I truly adore sophomoric humor, but contributor John B. Thompson brought the already weak writing to an unforgivable level when he then took the cheapest shot at a soft target, riffing off of people with Down Syndrome (a sentence that was quietly removed online from GQ.com).  This was not bravery in the face of eye-rolling and annoying political correctness, and I disagree with those who deemed the language merely as "insensitive".  Certain insensitivity is important in our culture and a very real component to style and to markets in general, but cheap opportunism from a clearly leveraged position is literary profiteering, and that is what GQ is guilty of.

This article was the straw that broke the camelback for our office, and the subscription has now lapsed.

Luckily, they are barely credible at this point in general, but I ask you, Dear Reader, what the "G" in GQ now stands for?    It comes out monthly, so the "Q" is also no longer accurate.

8 Things Normal Women Should Consider

At some point, a child gets lost in what they are told to believe and what they find they actually believe.  This goes for nearly everything, and taste is certainly included.  Magazines will have you believe all sorts of nonsense, and television will do the same.  While the family is always the primary socializing element, it is one's peers who often provide constant influence on people.  We are taught some things that are extensively harmful and socially destructive by those we like the most.

Women are taught that natural hair color is something that should never be allowed.  A beautiful woman with silver (either in abundance or in strands) is often subtly or overtly harassed by her peers, coworkers, family, and friends.  The perpetual obsession with blonding has bloated into a multi-billion dollar industry of insecurity.  The artificial tanning industry will tell you that the best place to locate a tanning "salon" is in a college town.  Horrifying.  Men are of course taught that only sissies and fairies wear pink shirts and that wearing an undershirt with writing on it is acceptable for dinner in someone's house.  Further, men and women are taught all sorts of wretched ways in which they should interact.  I have always felt that magazines purporting to assist women in their confidence, style, etc., do the exact opposite.  If you are the narrow demographic who reads this horsecrap that I write often, you may suspect that I feel that your society has failed you.  I spent the last several weeks asking around to like-minded men friends of mine... some single, some married, some involved, but all who have some good advice on this subject.

In an un-sciency survey, I compiled the anecdotes into my standard unsolicited and pompous advice for the normal and well/semi-adjusted women:

1. Don't color your hair.
Are you over 30?  Deal with it.  Once you start coloring, you can never stop, and life goes on.  Silver, natural brown, red, blond, black... whatever it is, do it proudly.  You will still be attractive. Also, stay away from trendy "hairstyles". A woman attending her son's college graduation should not have coal-black hair or some unnatural freaky two-tone that nature did not bestow upon her.  All agree that it looks terrible when men do it, but it also looks dumb for women... it's just that nobody is saying it.

Wondrous

2. Don't let your boyfriend/husband/partner/date dress two tiers below you when you go out.
I always get embarrassed when I see "date night" between couples... the woman is well put-together but her date is dressed like he's the teen-aged son being dragged along for the ride.  Tell him to shave, put on a jacket if you're going to a reputable restaurant (or at least long pants and a proper shirt), no jeans, and for God's sake, no running shoes. "Welcome to Artico... Sir, may I take your fleece and ball-cap?"

Well-matched

3. If you can't walk or dance easily in certain heels, don't wear them.
You may be up for a lengthy evening of dinner, drinks, and dancing, but if your feet are not, the whole effort is wasted.  A modest heel is still perfectly elegant, and you won't look like a new-born giraffe trying to walk.

From fashionautopsy.blogspot.com

4. Drink well, and hold your liquor.
Don't drink anything that doesn't taste like alcohol (fruit-juice based nonsense) because it will get you into trouble.  Granted, "trouble" as I use it here can mean anything from telling great-aunt Agnes that she "smells old" to being lifted down the stairs by the event staff because the clams casino you ate earlier made an unwelcomed re-appearance into the fountain at the MFA.  Most grown men these days drink like girls, so develop your taste for liquor.  You will be Queen Bee of the gala or party when you ask for "Oban 14 with a little ice".  The mama's boys and childish society bachelors will simply leave you alone.

Sauced

5. Dress like an adult.
What sort of man do you want to attract anyway?  Worse yet, why are you dressing like your children?  Or like you are still 13?  The time to wear little or nothing will present itself easily enough, so in the vertical mean time, elegant and sexy can exist simultaneously.  Work-out/yoga clothing is fine if you are at that moment engaged in working out/yoga.  If you have been painting or gardening, it is fine to go to the store with your painting or gardening clothing on, but shuffling around town in sandals and sweatpants is too overplayed at this point.

Bewitching

6. Apply only a reasonable amount of make-up.
You want to be recognizable in the morning.  Occasionally, certain events call for more, which is perfectly acceptable, but on a day-to-day level, keep it within reason if worn at all.

Candice Bergen: Still has it.

7. Stay away from surgical or pseudo-surgical modifications.
Everybody is pierced like a voodoo doll it seems, and plastic surgery is now a lunch-hour procedure.  Elective vanity surgeries won't cure your self-esteem issues.  If you want to throw money at body modifications to feel better about yourself, do something actually worth while and provide orthodontia or reconstructive surgery for less-fortunate children anonymously.

No Gray area: From once partially lovable to irrelevant

8. Do not pass on your weird hang-ups to children.
Don't let your daughter bleach or highlight her hair until she's old enough to vote.  That gives you 18 years to teach her to be confident and to feel attractive with her natural beauty.  If you have a boy, don't treat things like nudity as if they are family or social sins.  

Natural and honest beauty is not as rare as people think, but it's often hidden deeply under external peer-pressure (especially among adults).  The sexiest characteristic a woman can have is confidence.  Blog after blog talks about "GTH" pants (one of my least favorite acronyms... few phrases are more gratifying to spell out than GO TO HELL, so stop abbreviating it).  Where I'm from, they're just called pants anyway.  That aside, why not apply the same doctrine to everything else?

Our Stupid Uniforms

Traveling, visiting galleries, dining out, exploring museums, sitting in church, sobbing at a cemetery, attending parties, hosting cookouts, and just about anything else... we afford ourselves and each other so little dignity.  We let our hosts know that we cannot be bothered by their preparation or printed invitations, and that our National Monuments and sacred spaces carry the same weight as a trip to a box store.  Damnit, we can do better.

Athletic Wear's Revenge

 

It was unintended to be sure.  The weekend was high barometric pressured, warm, gently breezed, and all around pleasant.  Shorts, loafers, and a button down shirt seemed right for a Saturday trip to the cafe and the activities that followed.  On the way, the Orvis class was practicing their fly casting on the Greenway, children were gearing up for fountain frolicking, and the sun was just getting ahold of everything for the day.



An hour later, I would run almost five miles in this outfit:



When teaching bicycle riding to young ones, there comes a moment when they go from shaky to instantly fast.  When that occurs, one can only run behind encouraging them.  If they are on a circular track or driveway, all the better, but when they are linear-urban, they have to keep going straight.  I ran behind for five miles (round-trip) along the Charles River in leather loafers, stiff khaki shorts, and a French-cuffed TM Lewin shirt as Jr. peddled chin-forward, both of us having the times of our lives.  I don't mean to imply that I did this effortlessly... after the third mile, I began to wonder (hope) that his little legs would tire out... but they didn't, and I did not have the heart to ask him to stop.

For all the griping I do about people wearing athletic clothing to social events, here I was doing the exact opposite.  I guess that makes me the jerk.

Later that evening, at a party near the harbor, my legs were feeling a bit wobbly, but those loafers (left at home) were as comfortable as could be, leaving my feet miraculously in tact, as my host refilled my Pimms repeatedly.

Overthinking

A newer area near the water gave itself this bizarre name.  Not "Oyster Cove" or "Oyster Banks" or "Sand Piper Hill" or anything else that might make sense.  Imagine a town elder regaling you with this story:

"We used to hike up high into the hills to search for oystahs.  They grew up on the ridge is those days."

Laughable.

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In Philadelphia Airport, a sign stands as monument to questionable expenditures and procedures.

A camera guards a restricted area, and must be monitored.

Why not just build another fence five feet away?

Wasteful.

(Main Line Sportsman: it was only a connection... I would have alerted you had I been staying).

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In Dutchess County, NY, fifteen miles of the sunny Taconic were perfumed with honeysuckle, lavender, and countless other flowers and plants.  Windows down.

Strangely, their county seal tells you it's a seal.  Does their flag also say "FLAG" on it?

Questionable.

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Finally... this was on the side of a truck (I added the circles):

By my amateurish calculations, that still leaves 14.4 billion.  I've said that lottery is a tax on people who don't understand math.  Apparently, marketing messages are also.

Teachable.


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I recently found this (for cheap) in a vintage shop and couldn't resist picking it up.  Yes, it IS a woman's scarf, and yes it contains only a few natural fibers, but dig this thing... it will likely become a pocket square in a few weeks.

 

In those days, they were called "stewardess", which I still think is better than "flight attendant".  "Steward" and its feminine form are from maritime usage and there was nothing undignified about the term at all, and certainly nothing undignified about the position.  A close family friend became a university professor during the 60's because she didn't make the cut as a stewardess... a PhD was her distant second choice.  Aboard a ship, a good steward or stewardess can often be revered as near-holy.  These days, flight attendants are forced to put up with some of the worst humans alive, and begrudgingly serve as punching bags for their employers and their regulators.

Two ties... the green one was a gift from Giuseppe and the elephant one was from somewhere I can't remember.  Neither one meant as any sort of party identifier, I tend to wear the opposing mascot of the room at hand during functions, parties, or receptions, just to elicit negative reactions which often works very well.  If I can't annoy people that way, I belabor an anecdote until only the lobotomized and/or catatonic remain.

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Back in New England....

For hot-weather days, coastal club-casual still requires a tie (blazer is off in the photo).

A Turnbull and Asser pocket square of silk features bow ties.  They make them with yellow, blue, and green backgrounds as well.  Attractive, lovable, and versatile... my opposite.

A dozen local oysters and some Prosecco at 10:45am, and only a single boat motors by.  I can hear my young son interfering with a croquet game on the other side of the hedge behind me to the protesting of his equally young cousins.  Their aunt demands that the mallets stay lowered, but within 30 seconds the sound of splintering wood (and no crying, thankfully) is heard and the game is forcibly ended by her sharpened voice.  Freshly washed bed linens are hung on lines or draped over shrubs to dry in the sea-side sun, which new-comers dislike even though the largest and oldest houses still do it.  Tubs of water stand at side doors as foot-baths, but the sand is still tracked in on young and old feet.  Later, we'll take the rusty three and ten-speeds into the village to buy more citronella candle pails and I'll wonder why the inside of all the dressers and cabinetry smell the same on the that part of the coast.