bierkergaard

  My dad had made an observation when he was last visiting my place that my front door and back sliding door formed a breezeway of sorts through the first floor of my house. I suppose I had noticed this before but I am not sure I appreciated it consciously until he pointed it out. It is funny how others can illumine something right before us that is so routine as to become ignored.  I doubt the builders meant to create this design feature. This is not the level of domicile that has that level of intention.  The breeze really is quite lovely and as long as the temperature is not hellish and humid, and there is a wind, it makes me like this part of the year quite a lot. Since I am retiring, I plan to head north once the heat becomes oppressive in mid-July. It is the opposite of a snowbird as I like winter. It is my Nordic blood I suppose. If you have not heard the 1970's song "Summer Breeze" by Seals and Croft recently or ever, give it a listen. Much of 1970's popular m...

  The last two years or so, I have been in a very good groove with physical fitness. Once I flipped my running and lifting to the early morning, I have  been super consistent. I am not training for the Senior Games where I will finally put it all together for gold. No, just trying to be healthy and make some gains. I have been doing my Devotional Readings for years in the early morning and it always helps frame the day. Working out is similar in the sense that the structure of the exercise prepares my body and mind for the challenges ahead. I find having limited time where I have to hit my time targets to be extremely useful. Extra time creates room for indecision. Maybe analogous to the saying, "If you want to get something done, give it to busy person." Too much time becomes the rope than our productivity gets hung by. A question that I am still attempting to resolve, particularly with lifting weights, is how hard is too hard? The adage of "No pain, no gain " is a...

  One thing that gives me a small joy these days is looking at a problem that would have, in the past, caused me to be flummoxed and arrive at a solution.  It is all micro stuff for the most part. No seismic shifting insight yet a step to resolution. I  have never had a ton of confidence in being able to solve issues in the physical realm that are material in nature. Hence, my philosophical orientation.  As it is said, don't live in a city where scholars rule. Crumbling infrastructure but fine rhetoric. But, I have made progress in the last few years by observing the problem squarely and then working backwards. Case in point, I have damp basement. I have a dehumidifier running off and on all day and night. Up until last summer, I'd trudge upstairs with the full of water container unit and empty it into the sink. Depending on the time of year, it could be daily or every couple of days. It was a pain. I did this for a decade. I was hanging out at a friend's house over ...

A friend of mine who leans a bit to the Liberal side recently posted a meme along the lines that "Tradition is peer pressure from dead people." Obviously, not a good connotation. I pushed back a bit with the G.K.  Chesterton quote that "Tradition is the democracy of the dead." The truth is somewhere in the middle perhaps, although tradition should be innocent until proven guilty. Give it the benefit of the doubt. Like the old saying, "Before tearing down a fence, find out why it was put up in the first place." Another element irked me about the peer pressure reference; the presumption that peer pressure is always a negative. Anyone who has worked a few years in a high school knows that positive peer pressure exerts an enormous sway on the attitudes and behaviors of teens. There are many more students than staff and if most of the kids don't support the school, it will suffer. I think the high school where I work, the students and staff have historicall...

   Yesterday morning, I had about three hours on my hands. My night owl brother was finally going to bed at 10:00 AM after being up all night and us eating Popovers for breakfast, a family favorite which he has mastered making pop, My dad looked like he was headed into nap zone. I decided to head over to Valley Forge Park to walk the outer loop. It is about 4-5 miles around.  It was chilly, windy, but sunny. I didn't have my work out clothes with me as this was a bit unexpected. So, in my leather sandals, I trotted through the Park at a fairly brisk pace. I completed the walk in just over two hours. As it was Easter  morning, the Park was not super crowded but there were plenty of people around,  either riding bikes, jogging, or walking. A lot of Chinese families (from what I could tell) riding bikes. Not sure what that was all about.   Valley Forge Park is an open space of land. Being that it is surrounded by King of Prussia Mall, Chesterbrook, and th...

We just hit the one year mark for COVID-19 in regards to the macro-side of it. The shut-downs, the masks, and the social distancing. Last Spring, Friday, March 13 (I had to check to make sure that I was not just retrofitting Friday, March 13, on to a cataclysmic event), we at school had waited until Friday afternoon to cancel the SAT exam the next day, we were one of the last high schools to do so. We didn't know what the future held but sensed that this was just the first domino to fall in a long chain.   Soon, everything A-Zoom changed. The New Abnormal. I will never call it the New Normal as it was far too strange and surreal. Everything went remote. I had to upgrade my technology at home to ramp up for the virtual world. New router, new modem, and new Chromebook. New wineskins for a new reality. Change is hard and we often don't play that card until we have to, holding onto old hands until the dealer of life pulls a card off the top of the deck. Adapt or die.  Last Sa...

About three years ago, I splurged and bought a nice espresso machine. As a rule, I am not terribly materialistic. I live in a humble neighborhood of moderately priced townhouses. I drive a car with nearly 200,000 miles on it. I buy most of my beer, admittingly good beer, on the bargain rack (past expiration) or make my own, and do most of my shopping at the surplus grocer. I do have a bit of a weakness for books but I generally read them all. But, great coffee is truly one of the few luxuries I indulge in daily. I'd say I really like beer but I love coffee. I love the ritual, the taste, the caffeine, the aroma. It is so entwined with my life that it is inseparable from it. I particularly like espresso. It is both lusciously creamy and bitterly strong. No sugar, no dairy or equivalent. The bean itself is sweet and its oil creates the crema, along with carbon dioxide.  To my shame, the espresso machine, like a piece of exercise equipment that falls into disuse, has been taking up a l...