I have never been consistently active and fit long enough to establish any pattern. I have years of being very fit followed by years of being a complete couch potato. Here I am, turning 70 in a few months, and I can't really gauge my status because I'm always in between.
On the one hand, I can still hike for miles and manage elevation gains of up to 1000' without much trouble. The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night's sleep.
On the other hand, elevation gains of more than 1000', or any hikes in 80+ degree weather (never mind humidity) are so much more draining than I think they should be. My lungs seem to get a weird spongy feel, which DuckDuckGo tells me could be COPD or fluid, gee thanks.
I have told a friend I'd love to go with her on her next Mt. St. Helens summit hike. I have a LOT of conditioning to do before that, and am hoping I am capable.
On a more whimsical note, I was about to wish us all a happy Autumn Solstice Eve when I looked up what date it actually is and - ???- the Autumnal Solstice is September 22.
Solstices and equinoxes always being on the 20th or 21st was good enough while I was growing up; it should be good for the current generation!
That's wonkie, I've been going into the backend and changing it and was going to contact her about fixing it, but that was sort of down on my list. I'll change these, and I've just written a message to her and we will sort it oul.
Since lj mentions it, and we are not far from the end of the month and I still have 8 free gift articles left, this is the relevant Ezra Klein piece that Ta Nehisi Coates was addressing:
The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress.
Who delegated some amount of that power to the President, in the event of an emergency. Congress didn't specify what was an emergency and what not. The current SCOTUS seems inclined to the position that absent a specification, an emergency is whatever the President says it is.
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
lj, I rather doubt that there would be an amendment about tariffs. The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress. The problem we face is that we have an administr3which cares not at all about what the law or the Constitution says. Well, except when it is convenient to use as a cudgel. Otherwise, they just do as they please, confident that neither the Supreme Court nore the Congress will try to stop them -- nor could do so if they tried.
Just as we see with "Originalism", if you don't care what they explicit constraints on you are, and if nobody has the power (or perhaps the willingness) to stop you, then anything goes.
Ta Nehisi writes the plain truth. Kirk was unabashedly a white Christian nationalist. For me, all his various bigotries flow from there.
No one who isn’t an immediate threat to others deserves to be shot. At the same time, it doesn’t make Kirk a good person simply because someone killed him.
GftNC was thinking of putting a gift link to the Klein piece. I haven't read it, usually, those articles are read by Klein as a YouTube video, but I haven't seen this one, and I am thinking that he knows he's going to get clobbered. As I think he should. Ta Nehisi Coates only mentions Klein at the beginning of this piece, but the whole thing is basically a reply to Klein.
I was very disappointed that Ezra Klein succumbed to both-sideism in that article, especially since he just had taken a firm stance on Gaza (together with Phillipe Sands). But this recent book review in tge TLS made it clearer for me where he's coming from. It's just good old fashioned status quo affirming 'centrism'.
https://app.the-tls.co.uk/212578/content.html
(I would love to be a centrist since I'm conflict averse by nature, it's just that the Overton window has shifted so far to the right.)
Michael, you've got me rethinking things. If I had to narrow it down to a single event, during COVID, when we were having some classes on campus but still a lot of online stuff, a colleague and I went to the basketball gym on campus. I used to play a lot of basketball, but that was over 40 years ago and I was totally embarrassed that my shots were basically a foot or two short of the basket. Free throws seemed like a heave. While we were 'playing', a gym class where the students played basketball came in and the teacher asked if I wanted to run with them. I said sure, and did about 15 minutes of running up and down. It was a PE class, so none of the students were very good, but they were young and running and about 5 minutes in, I thought 'I could really hurt myself doing this'. After they did the first rotation, I said thanks and bowed out, but now, any kind of really strenuous play that is random seems like asking for trouble.
Thanks so much for posting that. I'm tempted to post Rick Blaine's line at the end of Casablanca, but I don't want to scare you off.
I wonder if it is a possibility that, after all the dust has settled (if it does) and the MAGAists are cast out (if they are), we would have a round of amendments. ERA, possibly expanded to deal with the Roberts court's assaults on it, something dealing with tariffs, an amendment specifically about environmental protection, possibly couched in terms of the rights of future generations, would be what I would hope for. I realize this is improbably optimistic, but that's what's for dinner.
Thanks for the observations and comments. After I posted this, LGM posted about another person I should have suggested as a precursor, Alexey Stakhanov. When lining them up, Horst Wessel, because he was shot by a communist, is probably the closest parallel, whereas Lei Feng supposedly died when a telephone pole hit him while he was guiding a truck, (which I take to be part of an electrification project for China along the lines of 'serve the people'), while Stakhanov lived to the age of 71. Nous' point about the 'soldier of Christ' aspect of Wessel and Kirk has me wonder why these conservative types are so damn violent. You can't really imagine their role models dying while helping out others, or living to an old age. This plugs in to my idée fixe, which is that the problem with Western society is the hard nougat filling of individuality.
Interesting article. The narrative of how the Supreme Court came to be so weaponized is good, and the role that Originalism played in it is plausible. I'd like a much more solid set of grounds laid out for that, but that would likely push the length of the article beyond what a popular venue like The Atlantic would support - more of an academic press book argument than a middlebrow magazine argument.
The part I found weakest, though, was the connection implied between Originalism and the abandonment of constitutional amendment as a path to change. It seems to me that the procedures for amendment codified in the Constitution themselves account for why that process has been abandoned. The threshold of support required for amending the Constitution is excessive.
The only times it has ever worked, it did so because of either war or an extension of franchise to a broader group of Americans that created the potential for new cross-cutting alliances which could overcome those difficulties. I don't see that Originalism has altered anything with regard to amendment. What it has done is given conservative legal activists a recognizable brand on which to build a legal sophistry that can provide cover for a judiciary coup.
The Constitution is deeply flawed and limiting. It probably should have failed in 1860 or in 1929, and only extraordinary extra-Constitutional means preserved the nation in both instances, but the flaws remain. We would probably be better off with a new governing document, but there is no way that the nation would ever go back together as a 50-state union if the document went away. We've lost our sense of a common good.
I have had to admit that I will be the slowest person on the trail from now on, because the people I used to pass have all got e-bikes. I’m old-fashioned, I guess — the goal is to conquer the uphill bits on your own, not to pass the job over to some batteries.
I hear you on the e-bike thing despite riding one myself most of the time. Paradoxically, I too want the uphills to be a challenge, and chose my e-bike because it promised *less* than the other e-bikes. I wanted minimal added weight and the ability to be able to set the pedal assist low enough to keep the rides challenging and natural feeling, with just enough of an electric tailwind to make the steepest parts of the trails rideable, rather than forcing me to hike-a-bike. It's not quite as challenging as riding full-acoustic, but it reduces the effort by a third, while doubling the time I spend riding, so it's a net gain for my fitness.
Alas, the rest of the e-bike knuckleheads I encounter seem to be addicted to the thrill and illusion provided by the boost, or are wanting the motor to shuttle them up the hills so that they can bypass the struggle and just get the downhill rush. And the social riders among them are hopeless on this front. The most competitive among them always rush to be first up and are in a hurry to get to the gnarly bits, and they haze everyone else into conforming and upping their boost just to keep from being dropped. Most of the group would be happier with less boost, but the biggest man-child always seems to drive the consensus.
I am in the process of turning my older, non-electric, hardtail mtb into a more gravel-and-excursion oriented bike for when weather limits me to the mixed-use bike paths. Those hills are much more manageable than the local wilderness trails.
My latest tests show my cholesterol getting out of hand despite having a healthy diet and getting the recommended exercise. Not a surprise, given the family history. Will probably end up on statins soon enough. Diet and exercise have held off genetics for a decade-and-a-half longer than most of my line, but there's only so much to be done with that.
For someone soon to turn 72, I seem to have remarkably few aches and pains. My sister is younger, and I have quit comparing notes with her because I feel guilty. Given our two histories, I'm the one you would expect to have painful worn-out joints*. All of mine seem to be cranking along fine. She's replaced both knees, one hip, one shoulder, and had an ankle rebuilt.
For the record, last time out on the bicycle I did 20 miles. I have had to admit that I will be the slowest person on the trail from now on, because the people I used to pass have all got e-bikes. I'm old-fashioned, I guess -- the goal is to conquer the uphill bits on your own, not to pass the job over to some batteries.
* Bicycling since I was six with the inevitable falls, plus off-and-on golf, racquet sports, soccer, basketball, softball, hiking/climbing, fencing, lugging around children (and now grandchildren). A variety of joints occasionally sprained, with only amateur stretching and PT routines during recovery. Tossed down the side of a mountain by a horse once.
In the hope that I am done going into moderation, and further to wonkie's point about Goebbels, this is from the NYT in 1939, under the headline Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime:
I don't think that the MAGA movement has an ideology or philosophy. I think they are they kind of people who are susceptible to manipulation by leaders who present as strong defenders and appeal to their need to invest faith in a savior. It doesn't matter that the savior is saving them from an imaginary threat. in this case fear that nonwhite people might participate in American life on the same basis as the MAGAs.
I normally disable what cookies I can when on any new site. I do not recall being asked about this when I first logged on here. Apparently, I have "Third Party Cookies" enabled, for what that's worth.
It would be that very sense of realism that would make him persona non grata in the current GOP.
Imo that also killed the reelection of the elder Bush (pragmatists don't get canonized, in particular if they blaspheme against the party saint).
real St.Ronnie (as vile as many of his policies were) would be hunted out of the party these days as a RINO
Or, given half a chance, purge most of the "Christian nationalists" (and pretty much all of the Trumpys) from the party. The left has demonized Reagan so long** that it's easy to lose track of the fact that he actually cared about this country. And not just some delusional image of what it actually never was. Also, when some piece of ideology turned out to work in the real world, he would accept that reality and change. Something the current Republican Party is either unwilling or flat unable to do.
** Mind, I had little use for him. Not as President. Not when he was Governor here.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
I have never been consistently active and fit long enough to establish any pattern. I have years of being very fit followed by years of being a complete couch potato. Here I am, turning 70 in a few months, and I can't really gauge my status because I'm always in between.
On the one hand, I can still hike for miles and manage elevation gains of up to 1000' without much trouble. The only aches and pains I get are normal ones, gone after a hot shower or a night's sleep.
On the other hand, elevation gains of more than 1000', or any hikes in 80+ degree weather (never mind humidity) are so much more draining than I think they should be. My lungs seem to get a weird spongy feel, which DuckDuckGo tells me could be COPD or fluid, gee thanks.
I have told a friend I'd love to go with her on her next Mt. St. Helens summit hike. I have a LOT of conditioning to do before that, and am hoping I am capable.
On a more whimsical note, I was about to wish us all a happy Autumn Solstice Eve when I looked up what date it actually is and - ???- the Autumnal Solstice is September 22.
Solstices and equinoxes always being on the 20th or 21st was good enough while I was growing up; it should be good for the current generation!
On “An experimental first post”
New place looks nice.
Whatever blessing lies in my power to confer, on all of you, and on all of us.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
That's wonkie, I've been going into the backend and changing it and was going to contact her about fixing it, but that was sort of down on my list. I'll change these, and I've just written a message to her and we will sort it oul.
"
Maybe it's just me, but it's quite hard to interact with someone whose handle is '
On “Precursors”
Since lj mentions it, and we are not far from the end of the month and I still have 8 free gift articles left, this is the relevant Ezra Klein piece that Ta Nehisi Coates was addressing:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nU8.Vndl.HW2nTIeTvTs-&smid=url-share
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
Lest anyone think I'm asserting that I'm immune to aging, I have a list of things to demonstrate that I'm not. It's just that none of them hurt.
On “An experimental first post”
The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress.
Who delegated some amount of that power to the President, in the event of an emergency. Congress didn't specify what was an emergency and what not. The current SCOTUS seems inclined to the position that absent a specification, an emergency is whatever the President says it is.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
I'm in pretty good shape for 71--meaning I didn't have weight gain with menopause; don't have cancer; I can see, hear and think; my hair is still brown; and I can walk three or four miles without collapse (if the weather is cool).
As mentioned above, fast movement or sudden movement is jarring and painful. I'm not flexible anymore. I can't remember names. I can't walk very far if the temp is over 80 without getting ill. This is a big change from my previous baseline which included 20 mile mountain hikes wearing a backpack and weekend bike trips of 60 miles or so plus occasional bike trip vacations.
Mostly I'm okay so far. I'm kind of afraid I will follow the pattern with my family which is to lose my sight and hearing while continuing to live into my nineties. I don't want to keep going when it stops being fun.
On “An experimental first post”
lj, I rather doubt that there would be an amendment about tariffs. The Constitution already gives power over them exclusively to Congress. The problem we face is that we have an administr3which cares not at all about what the law or the Constitution says. Well, except when it is convenient to use as a cudgel. Otherwise, they just do as they please, confident that neither the Supreme Court nore the Congress will try to stop them -- nor could do so if they tried.
Just as we see with "Originalism", if you don't care what they explicit constraints on you are, and if nobody has the power (or perhaps the willingness) to stop you, then anything goes.
On “Precursors”
Ta Nehisi writes the plain truth. Kirk was unabashedly a white Christian nationalist. For me, all his various bigotries flow from there.
No one who isn’t an immediate threat to others deserves to be shot. At the same time, it doesn’t make Kirk a good person simply because someone killed him.
"
GftNC was thinking of putting a gift link to the Klein piece. I haven't read it, usually, those articles are read by Klein as a YouTube video, but I haven't seen this one, and I am thinking that he knows he's going to get clobbered. As I think he should. Ta Nehisi Coates only mentions Klein at the beginning of this piece, but the whole thing is basically a reply to Klein.
"
I was very disappointed that Ezra Klein succumbed to both-sideism in that article, especially since he just had taken a firm stance on Gaza (together with Phillipe Sands). But this recent book review in tge TLS made it clearer for me where he's coming from. It's just good old fashioned status quo affirming 'centrism'.
https://app.the-tls.co.uk/212578/content.html
(I would love to be a centrist since I'm conflict averse by nature, it's just that the Overton window has shifted so far to the right.)
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
Michael, you've got me rethinking things. If I had to narrow it down to a single event, during COVID, when we were having some classes on campus but still a lot of online stuff, a colleague and I went to the basketball gym on campus. I used to play a lot of basketball, but that was over 40 years ago and I was totally embarrassed that my shots were basically a foot or two short of the basket. Free throws seemed like a heave. While we were 'playing', a gym class where the students played basketball came in and the teacher asked if I wanted to run with them. I said sure, and did about 15 minutes of running up and down. It was a PE class, so none of the students were very good, but they were young and running and about 5 minutes in, I thought 'I could really hurt myself doing this'. After they did the first rotation, I said thanks and bowed out, but now, any kind of really strenuous play that is random seems like asking for trouble.
On “An experimental first post”
Thanks so much for posting that. I'm tempted to post Rick Blaine's line at the end of Casablanca, but I don't want to scare you off.
I wonder if it is a possibility that, after all the dust has settled (if it does) and the MAGAists are cast out (if they are), we would have a round of amendments. ERA, possibly expanded to deal with the Roberts court's assaults on it, something dealing with tariffs, an amendment specifically about environmental protection, possibly couched in terms of the rights of future generations, would be what I would hope for. I realize this is improbably optimistic, but that's what's for dinner.
On “Precursors”
Thanks for the observations and comments. After I posted this, LGM posted about another person I should have suggested as a precursor, Alexey Stakhanov. When lining them up, Horst Wessel, because he was shot by a communist, is probably the closest parallel, whereas Lei Feng supposedly died when a telephone pole hit him while he was guiding a truck, (which I take to be part of an electrification project for China along the lines of 'serve the people'), while Stakhanov lived to the age of 71. Nous' point about the 'soldier of Christ' aspect of Wessel and Kirk has me wonder why these conservative types are so damn violent. You can't really imagine their role models dying while helping out others, or living to an old age. This plugs in to my idée fixe, which is that the problem with Western society is the hard nougat filling of individuality.
On “An experimental first post”
Interesting article. The narrative of how the Supreme Court came to be so weaponized is good, and the role that Originalism played in it is plausible. I'd like a much more solid set of grounds laid out for that, but that would likely push the length of the article beyond what a popular venue like The Atlantic would support - more of an academic press book argument than a middlebrow magazine argument.
The part I found weakest, though, was the connection implied between Originalism and the abandonment of constitutional amendment as a path to change. It seems to me that the procedures for amendment codified in the Constitution themselves account for why that process has been abandoned. The threshold of support required for amending the Constitution is excessive.
https://www.californialawreview.org/print/the-worlds-most-difficult-constitution-to-amend
The only times it has ever worked, it did so because of either war or an extension of franchise to a broader group of Americans that created the potential for new cross-cutting alliances which could overcome those difficulties. I don't see that Originalism has altered anything with regard to amendment. What it has done is given conservative legal activists a recognizable brand on which to build a legal sophistry that can provide cover for a judiciary coup.
The Constitution is deeply flawed and limiting. It probably should have failed in 1860 or in 1929, and only extraordinary extra-Constitutional means preserved the nation in both instances, but the flaws remain. We would probably be better off with a new governing document, but there is no way that the nation would ever go back together as a 50-state union if the document went away. We've lost our sense of a common good.
On “We are all Usain Bolt now”
I have had to admit that I will be the slowest person on the trail from now on, because the people I used to pass have all got e-bikes. I’m old-fashioned, I guess — the goal is to conquer the uphill bits on your own, not to pass the job over to some batteries.
I hear you on the e-bike thing despite riding one myself most of the time. Paradoxically, I too want the uphills to be a challenge, and chose my e-bike because it promised *less* than the other e-bikes. I wanted minimal added weight and the ability to be able to set the pedal assist low enough to keep the rides challenging and natural feeling, with just enough of an electric tailwind to make the steepest parts of the trails rideable, rather than forcing me to hike-a-bike. It's not quite as challenging as riding full-acoustic, but it reduces the effort by a third, while doubling the time I spend riding, so it's a net gain for my fitness.
Alas, the rest of the e-bike knuckleheads I encounter seem to be addicted to the thrill and illusion provided by the boost, or are wanting the motor to shuttle them up the hills so that they can bypass the struggle and just get the downhill rush. And the social riders among them are hopeless on this front. The most competitive among them always rush to be first up and are in a hurry to get to the gnarly bits, and they haze everyone else into conforming and upping their boost just to keep from being dropped. Most of the group would be happier with less boost, but the biggest man-child always seems to drive the consensus.
I am in the process of turning my older, non-electric, hardtail mtb into a more gravel-and-excursion oriented bike for when weather limits me to the mixed-use bike paths. Those hills are much more manageable than the local wilderness trails.
My latest tests show my cholesterol getting out of hand despite having a healthy diet and getting the recommended exercise. Not a surprise, given the family history. Will probably end up on statins soon enough. Diet and exercise have held off genetics for a decade-and-a-half longer than most of my line, but there's only so much to be done with that.
"
For someone soon to turn 72, I seem to have remarkably few aches and pains. My sister is younger, and I have quit comparing notes with her because I feel guilty. Given our two histories, I'm the one you would expect to have painful worn-out joints*. All of mine seem to be cranking along fine. She's replaced both knees, one hip, one shoulder, and had an ankle rebuilt.
For the record, last time out on the bicycle I did 20 miles. I have had to admit that I will be the slowest person on the trail from now on, because the people I used to pass have all got e-bikes. I'm old-fashioned, I guess -- the goal is to conquer the uphill bits on your own, not to pass the job over to some batteries.
* Bicycling since I was six with the inevitable falls, plus off-and-on golf, racquet sports, soccer, basketball, softball, hiking/climbing, fencing, lugging around children (and now grandchildren). A variety of joints occasionally sprained, with only amateur stretching and PT routines during recovery. Tossed down the side of a mountain by a horse once.
On “Guestpost from Wonkie”
In the hope that I am done going into moderation, and further to wonkie's point about Goebbels, this is from the NYT in 1939, under the headline Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime:
https://www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/archives/goebbels-ends-careers-of-five-aryan-actors-who-made-witticisms.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nE8.IExY.Y2cofB8EzqsL&smid=url-share
On “Precursors”
I don't think that the MAGA movement has an ideology or philosophy. I think they are they kind of people who are susceptible to manipulation by leaders who present as strong defenders and appeal to their need to invest faith in a savior. It doesn't matter that the savior is saving them from an imaginary threat. in this case fear that nonwhite people might participate in American life on the same basis as the MAGAs.
On “Notes about commenting”
And, amazingly, that did not go into moderation! lj must have performed some magic...
"
I normally disable what cookies I can when on any new site. I do not recall being asked about this when I first logged on here. Apparently, I have "Third Party Cookies" enabled, for what that's worth.
On “Precursors”
It would be that very sense of realism that would make him persona non grata in the current GOP.
Imo that also killed the reelection of the elder Bush (pragmatists don't get canonized, in particular if they blaspheme against the party saint).
"
real St.Ronnie (as vile as many of his policies were) would be hunted out of the party these days as a RINO
Or, given half a chance, purge most of the "Christian nationalists" (and pretty much all of the Trumpys) from the party. The left has demonized Reagan so long** that it's easy to lose track of the fact that he actually cared about this country. And not just some delusional image of what it actually never was. Also, when some piece of ideology turned out to work in the real world, he would accept that reality and change. Something the current Republican Party is either unwilling or flat unable to do.
** Mind, I had little use for him. Not as President. Not when he was Governor here.
On “Notes about commenting”
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*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.