Presented without comment

 

Life is good

I got 2/3 of the spinach planted yesterday before God reminded me that I am not supposed to work on the Sabbath. He sent bolts of lightning down.

Four, 16' long rows for each variety. Not planted as blocks but A-B-C-A...

"Flamingo" and "Space" are planted. Red Tabby is in the on-deck circle.

Red for "Red Tabby", Blue for "Space" and Pink for "Flamingo"

It is raining brick-bats as I type this (4:40 AM). Portions of Barry County, the county just west of Eaton, have been blessed with 5 inches of rain according to the Raindrop app.

I opened a new jar of instant coffee today. Yes, I am one of those heathens who drinks instant coffee. Walmart Great Value brand. A fellow needs to be almost dead if he doesn't feel a lift of delight when opening a new container of almost any kind of coffee.

Unless the roads get flooded out, I will be going out to breakfast with MTV, my buddy from high school. I expect to thoroughly enjoy myself.

I know I sound like I am bragging. Some days start out grand and have the potential to keep getting better.

Who is William Lawrence?

William Lawrence is the Democratic candidate for Michigan's 7th US Representative seat. 

 William Lawrence (born 1990) is an American politician and activist who co-founded the Sunrise Movement. He is a member of the Working Families Party and a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He resigned from the Democratic Socialists in July of 2026 less than a month before the primary. Lawrence is also pro-immigration. (condensed from Wikipedia)

In many ways, William Lawrence's career trajectory is a clone of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson's. Like Wilson, Lawrence never held a job where he had a boss or worked with customers or had formally scheduled hours to work. 

Sunrise Movement

When Sunrise Movement was launched in 2017, the movement's goal was to be a more confrontational environmental movement and use civil disobedience and protest to achieve their goals.

Working Families Party

The Working Families Party supports raising the minimum wage, expanding public education, universal paid sick leave, Medicare for All, forgiving student debt and increasing the tax rate on people they consider wealthy. They also support the elimination of fossil fuels in favor of solar and wind energy. 

WFP is one of the organizations that was spawned under the ACORN legal umbrella. ACORN dissolved in 2010 after accusations of an organizational culture that encouraged illegal activities by its daughter organizations.

William Lawrence for Congress

William Lawrence won the Democratic Primary for Michigan's 7th Congressional District. Looking at the first items in William Lawrence's "Platform": 

1. Lower the cost of living. Everything is getting too expensive and Mid-Michigan families like us are feeling the crunch. We need to:

• Protect social security by taxing the wealthy
• Build affordable housing & end corporate landlord price-gouging
• Guarantee healthcare for all
• Stabilize prices & markets

Tax the wealthy

It is interesting that the first way he proposes to lower the cost-of-living is to raise taxes. Most people who were paying attention in Second Grade math class realize that if you add or increase taxes then prices go up.

Another point is that the tax-and-spend crowd have a very flexible definition of "wealthy". It is always $10,000 more dollars a year than the average guy in the crowd. As a matter of expediency and a rapacious appetite for revenue, the family consisting of an electrician and an aide at the local school (two incomes) will be labeled as "wealthy" in the final draft of any legislation and be taxed at a punishing rate. So will the retiree who is forced to liquidate part of his 401-k or IRA to make needed house repairs or pay medical bills.

Build affordable housing

Government does not "build" housing. Contractors do. 

Government almost always stop construction. They slows it down through the permitting and inspection requirements. Mandatory features make houses increasingly expensive. Petty bureaucrats make contractors play endless games of Mother-may-I as their interpretations of the laws becomes more restrictive and expensive and more focused on CYA.

Guarantee healthcare for all

Frankly, we have guaranteed healthcare. If you walk into an Emergency Room you will get care. Even if you cannot pay. Even if you cannot speak a word of English.

So I am mystified by what Lawrence means unless he is offering addicts a endless supply of prescription opioids that are paid-for by the productively employed. Oh, and maybe he intends to have the taxpayer provide free sex-change surgeries, hormones and counseling to the gender-confused. 

Stabilize prices and markets

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Setting prices increases demand while simultaneously destroying supply. Rent control is a prime example.

Since the relationship between price control and supply-destruction has been documented hundreds of times, then Lawrence is either very stupid or he is not interested in helping people but is actually very interested in control.

Via price controls, entire industries can be smashed and favored competitors made to flourish. Fully Electric Vehicles, anybody? Hey, let's save the planet by destroying farmers who raise beef.

You cannot say this is a strawman argument because these are exactly the things that The New Green Deal pushed. 

Family Reunion After-Action-Report

I survived the family reunion

I hung-out with the mature guys on the shady side of the house for the first part of the reunion. 

Ordered by age, it was Howard, Mike, Mike, Joe and Phil. They gave me permission to use their actual names in "that internet thing that I do".

Conversation wandered and was interspersed by thoughtful silences. That was a sharp contrast with the conversation on the other side of the house. From what we could hear of it, those conversations sounded like a bee-hive that had been bumped by a lawnmower, not that our hearing is all that good.

We talked about collectibles like baseball cards. How the price had been low and then spiked. And then it tanked. And now it is climbing back to the sky. We talked about the age of the collectors. The interest in cards seems to have jumped over the kids who were born in the 80s and 90s.

Phil, who was sitting next to me, went with the flow. I know from prior conversations that he has a keen interest in business cycles and it is his belief that speculative excesses are symptoms of old, played-out economic expansions. All of that "money" from the timid investors (or smart ones) has to go somewhere and it floods into tiny, illiquid markets as players cash out of stocks, bonds and real-estate.

It is similar to all of the passengers on a cruise ship trying to pile into too-few life-boats. The bulk of the investors see the outrageous run-up in prices and pile into collectables running from zero-income and chasing the momentum.

Another thread of conversation involved charity work. Howard was mowing the lawn of the 90 year-old Italian widow next door. Then the house on the other side of his was inherited by a family of alcoholics. Howard started mowing their grass too (because they let it grow waist-high). Finally, seeing the light, he gave them one of his older but still serviceable mowers so they could cut their own. The immediately sold it and bought a couple bottles of vodka with the proceeds. Howard no longer mows their grass.

One of the Mikes volunteered at an organized charity. They received a call from a needy family and visited a house. Several of the children were sleeping on the floor. The charity bought the family two mattresses and had them delivered. The next week, another family in the same block called the charity. They had kids sleeping on the floor. Then two more houses called the next week. Then it was three a week calling the charity. The game stopped when an unmarried, cohabitating couple called and ordered a new mattress. The faith-based charity decided that they were not going to subsidize sex outside of matrimony by purchasing mattresses for unwed couples. In fact, they decided that they were not going to buy any more mattresses, ever.

Another riff involved renting nice places on a lake to vacation. The speaker marveled at the size and cost of the houses. According to Zillow, they started at $1.8M. He also marveled that most of them were vacant even during the prime summer vacation time slot. He said the fishing on the lake was spectacular. He said that even though every house had a dock and every dock had multiple boats moored, nobody was on the lake. Nobody else was fishing.

I spent the last part of the reunion sitting with the "Karens". 

I was not the center of attention. I was not a ball of fire. I was still sore from lifting the day before.

I ate too much. I had two glasses of wine over the six hours we were there. I did not water ski or swim or go out on a boat. I didn't talk with the out-of-state relatives but I will get reports from Mrs ERJ.

This may be a weird thing to have noticed but I saw a huge range of maternal instinct in the women. Several were drawn to the infants-through-seven year-olds like moths to a flame. Others were actively repulsed by them...they could not control their facial expressions.

Four of the married ladies were pregnant and one had given birth two weeks ago: K, Kr, L, B & H so there will be no shortage of screaming kids for the next ten years or so.

The cost of eating-out, Peaches and Reunions

Mrs ERJ and I splurged this past week. One day we joined another person and ate at a fast-food establishment. One of us ordered fish. I ordered a fried pork patty. The other person ordered a burger. The bill came to $39.

Another day this past week, we took a small carry-out pizza topped with green peppers and onions and and order of bread-sticks. We dined-in at another person's house. That bill came to $24.

I remember the tab from my first date with Mrs ERJ. Her half of the tab came to $1.47.

No matter how much money you might have saved up, inflation can make that not-enough.

Peaches

One of the amazing success stories in the Upper Orchard are the five, unassuming peach seedlings that a friend in Arizona sent me. He had collected the fruit from a tree and grown them out for a year. I planted them in Michigan, not expecting much in terms of winter-hardiness since their home city is classified as USDA Zone 8b.

They handled our one night of -25F last winter and took-off like gang-busters this spring.

My friend told me that the tree that he collected the pits from had excellent fruit. Peaches, in general, tend to produce fruit that is kind-of close to their parents in terms of quality due to the degree of in-breeding and self-pollination.

I decided to hedge my bets and I budded three of them to Contender peach, just in case. I only put a bud on one vertical leader. I want to see what kind of fruit the seedlings produce and I also want to have a back-up plan. Putting one bud on one major shoot provides me with that back-up plan.

Budding trees that are actively growing make the grafter look like a genius. Trying to bud on trees that are shutting down due to low soil moisture make the grafter look like a smuck. An inch of rain is predicted for Monday. I might get lucky. 

Family reunions

Our family reunion is this weekend. Some people will show up. Others will not.

My "generation" range in age from 55 to mid-70s. One family has three deceased members, two have a single deceased sibling. The fourth family still has all members who are alive.

Traveling has become increasingly difficult for some of us. Some are still working crazy hours, crazy shifts. Some people are stressed by other people in the family and will opt to stay home. The cast of characters changes year-to-year. 

Fortunately, each branch of the family has one member who LIKES to travel. They show up at the reunion, collect news on the various family shoots and take it back-home to share.

That probably means I need to dust-off my 15 second, elevator sale-pitch.

Something like:

"Not running. Still walking. Still lifting weights. No animals except ducks. Dog died. No health issues. My wife still likes me. Great to be a grandparent. Garden needs weeding. Orchards are shaping-up nicely. Yes, I am going deer hunting." 

On the positive side, a large percentage of the "kids" in my children's generation are in-the-family-way right now. Their children are heavily tilted toward girls...girls who take great joy in shrieking. 

What a difference a few days make!

I felt like an exhibitionist wearing these socks...like the morbidly obese guy in South-Florida wearing a skimpy Speedo swim-suit.

I went to the gym this morning to lift. I wore hospital socks as suggested by some readers.

I felt strong. The weight jumped off of the platform. I went through my maintenance routine with no issues:

6 x 135 pounds (45 pound bar plus a 45 pound plate on each side).

6 x 185 pounds (same as above + a 25 pound plate on each side). 

Four sets of 6 x 205 (same as above + a 10 pound plate on each side), with straps.

The reason I consider 205 to be my maintenance goal because that is what I weigh. It seems like a natural place to stop even though I SHOULD only weigh about 175 pounds but am carrying a little extra fat on me.

I had 5 minute recovery between sets. I lifted slow. Each set was about sixty seconds from the weight first lifting off the floor until I set it back down at the end of the set.

After the last set I still had some gas-in-the-tank. I decided "Why not?"

I added a 10 pound plate to each side of the bar to bring it to 225 pounds and did a set of six after my mandatory five minute recovery.

Three days ago, it was all I could do to lift 220 pounds a single time.

I have no clue what changed. Maybe I had a virus that didn't manifest obvious symptoms. Maybe I needed a rest. Regardless of the reason, I am pretty happy with today's outcome. 

Random photo

Kerr applecrab with a heavy fruit load