College Street.

You can see the new seating area they created for El Cortijo out of a parking space.

Phoenix Books to the left.  The next block to the right with all the lights is the prettiest block in town, I always thought.

Downtown Burlington is good for my soul.

 

 

Us on our anniversary a couple days ago, waiting for Richmond fireworks.

Literally “Swamp of the Cherry River,” Le Marais de la Riviere aux Cerises is a square kilometer or two of marsh, woodland, gravel trail and a boardwalk through the marsh over a kilometer in length.  Alas, walking only; no biking.  Kayaking and standup paddleboarding too.

Speaking of which, “You seem like a stand-up guy.  That’s why I’m not inviting you to my sit-down dinner.”

My

Mary improved the coloring and has kept it bright all these years, but I’m proud to claim the composition as my own!  GOAT!

Smash the Wellness Industry  – a NYT editorial by Jessica Knoll

I’d like to start my commentary by quoting Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey: “[Red hair] is, with me, as with many other redheads, the single most significant characteristic of my life.  If that sounds a little extreme to you, well, you’re obviously not a redhead, are you?”

I am a woman; therefore, I diet.  If that sounds a little extreme to you, well, you’re obviously not a woman, are you?

It’s time we did “Smash the Wellness Industry”.  What does that mean?  Well, make no mistake, as Knoll says, “at its core, ‘wellness’ is about weight loss.”  “Wellness” has now become one of my trigger words/phrases, like “lightly breaded” and “light cream sauce.”  Oh, we are all about health and wellness, that is why we are avoiding dairy and doubling down on grain bowls… yeah right.  You’re trying to lose weight; whether directly and consciously or indirectly by approaching it sideways, you are hoping this will make you thinner, er. more “well”.  (Or keep you that way, if you’re already there.)

The article is fantastic start to finish.  But here’s the other best part – those who do attempt to finally throw the whole dieting thing out the window are often counseled to do so by first accepting and loving their bodies as they are.  Why, Knoll asks?  Why indeed.  “I think loving our bodies is not only an unrealistic goal in our appearance-obsessed society but also a limiting one.  No one is telling men they need to love their bodies to live full and meaningful lives.”

Part of my hopes and dreams as I transition to the big 5-0 involves finally shedding the mentality of the dieter.  Just let the whole thing go.

That said, this should be my final word on the boring subject.

 

Here’s something Xopher found a few years ago: a Dutch map of Nieuw Belgium from 1682:

(The words that follow are his.)

There are two fronts of exploration shown here, both based on water. One is from the south, the other from the Northeast. From the south one finds the Hudson and Connecticut rivers; from the Northeast, the Saint Lawrence and its tributaries.

The year was 1682; the Marine chronometer would not be invented for another eighty years. Distances east and west could only be estimated by travel times. And it’s a long, long way from Cape Cod to the mouth of the Saint Lawrence.

The result is that the bounds of Vermont, the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain, are both shown on the map, but *in the wrong order*. From this we can conclude that no European explorers had yet journeyed between the two.

If you had said that you had come from a land east of Meer de Irocoisen and west of the Versche Rivier, people would say, there is no such place!

 

Second-guessing and doubt and guilt arise when you think, “I shoulda” or “I shouldn’ta”.

Shoulda shoulda shoulda…

Shoulda done this instead of that.

Shoulda gone somewhere else.

Shoulda stayed home.

Shoulda done something productive.

But if you think of the gazillion parallel lives that branch out from every moment…  your path forward is like a set of dominoes falling straight ahead.  But from either side of you, at every moment, you flip another domino, and another series of dominoes falls off to the side.

Surely of those gazillion parallel lives, some would be better, by any objective criteria, than the one you’re in.  Some would be worse.

What sense does it make to regret even one of those gazillion paths not taken?  When there are simultaneously a gazillion better paths and a gazillion worse paths?  A true infinity of a variety of paths.