bierkergaard

Above is a picture of my various hats and caps. I am pretty flagrant with wearing them and it is not to conceal a balding pate. My hair is turning gray but seems to be growing at its usual clip. Just got the annual yearly summer short-cut shearing at my 1960's barber with the clippers. Even the radio station is from that era. The barber says that the station's signal waxes and wanes during the day. Coming in and then fading out. Seems appropriate for an old school shop where there are echoes of yesterday.    He is a good barber, handy with the clippers, which many current hairstylists are not. He only charges ten bucks. I particularly enjoy the eyebrow trim, something I am reluctant to do at home on a macro-scale besides a snip here and there of a particularly rowdy eyebrow strand. Cutting my hair short for summer allows my head to be cool in the heat, particularly when I am working out. Nothing worse that a wet mop on the head during a long run. However, I wear hats an...

A couple of Mondays ago, I had a Comp Day from school where I trade one of the days I work over the summer and don't get paid for a day during the school year where I do. I had the day off. There had been a leak in my John for a couple of months. It came and went. Very slight in sound. I often would turn the water valve off when not using rather than address the underlying problem which I surmised was an aged stopper inside the tank. But, I wore the valve out to the point where it was stripped and wouldn't shut the water off anymore. So, I decided to try and fix it on the day off. As is typical, I couldn't just replace the handle of the valve. I had to replace the whole valve unit that had different fittings. Job went from elementary to secondary immediately. I also planned to buy a replacement stopper which I should have done to start several months before. So, back from the hardware store I came. After watching some YouTube videos, none of which quite capture ent...

It might be because my existence right now at age 55 is fairly predictable that I have been opting to take alternate routes to locations recently. It is good to see new sights, have fresh experiences. Although. I must note that even things we believe to be familiar are not really if we think about it and have eyes to see and ears to hear. However, it is helpful to decide on taking different roads to even routine destinations and enjoying the journey there. The differences are more obvious and harder to miss due to autopilot. Call it my staving off dementia plan. The human mind craves new information and if all we are doing is giving it a steady diet of sameness, it atrophies and begins to die. Neurological pathways no longer are formed, and existing pathways are not routinely cleared by complexity.    To wit, yesterday I was meeting a buddy and his son to kayak out on Speedwell Forge. There is a very predictable way to get there up on Route 501 through Lititz. A straigh...

I am working on an essay for Extracted Magazine about the similarities between specialty coffee and craft beer using my trip to Portland over Christmas vacation this past year as the context. In one of my lines in the essay I used the term "platonic ideal" and then had the realization that beyond the Cave illustration, I really didn't have a lot of knowledge about Plato and what he believed and wrote about. So, I quite literally dusted off this book above which, to my surprise, is a hard critique of Plato and his philosophy. This book was from my Philosophy 100 class in college and was one of the few tomes I have kept over the last three decades on my bookshelf from life at the university. I had not recalled that this book is a serious critique of Platonism. Which either demonstrates that I never had really read it to start or did read it, and forgot its main thesis. What struck me as odd in retrospect about it being a critique about Plato was we didn't first...

Back in 1987, the Stock Market had crashed somewhat. It was not a good job market for newly-minted college graduates like me. I planned to go to law school in a couple of years but wanted to work for a while, have some fun, and then figure out next steps. I eventually, mid-June, landed two positions. By day, I was an Estimator for the painting side of an up-and-coming construction company whose owner had another property management firm he was heading which took the majority of his time. That company wound-up making him a multi-millionaire and it is quite likely I could have risen with him had I stayed. He wanted me to work the painting crew for a spell so I could learn this side of the company from the inside out. I balked. I felt like I would wind up painting for a living when there were no jobs to bid. I was being groomed for bigger things he told me. I just had nagging fears that I would become a painter over the long-haul due to shifting winds.    At night and week...

When I moved back to my townhouse in November 2011, I was pretty beat up. I was down and depressed and these two felines greeted me.  The Welcoming Committee as it were. This pic was actually after I kicked them out of my kitchen. I had left the back screen door open while I was out fetching something out front from the move and these two let themselves in. I looked at them, they looked at me. I figured that my previous tenants had allowed them into the house and fed them. The cats/kittens had the look of, "Who are you?" I had the same question for them. The were feral but well-fed. The best of both worlds I suppose. A bit later, I heard a Latina Lady (or Latinx I guess is now the term) from a townhouse down the row calling for them in Spanish to give them some vittles. Who knew the cats were bilingual? As the years have gone by,  the two have become one. I think one of the guys fell down a sewer because I had heard a meowing from below the sewer grate a couple of y...

Been delving deep into the Book of James. One verse at a time. This is the next one in line: James 1:3  Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience. (ASV) We all want spiritual virtues to be added to us without us having to give anything up or having to experience events that would inculcate patience in us. Like minor annoyances to major adversities. That ain't how it works. As I read in my devotional this week, "God, make my back fit my burden."   I am a sucker for quotes and read one today on a Fitness website: Stay strong because things will get better. It might be stormy now but it can't rain forever... Rabbit Trail Alert : I drove by my old apartment in Lancaster City today and was reminded of the time back in the late 1990's when I wanted to become more friendly with the attractive German woman living across the street. I summoned the courage to put a note on her car windshield where I had translated into German the Les Mis song l...