Yeah, about that rebounding economy...

I was informed today by a credible source that one of the small towns in my area-of-operation has three (3) separate homeless camps. The camps are tents pitched  out-of-sight of the roads. The town has a population of approximately 10,000 people.

Cold rain every few days is in the forecast for the next half-month.

The Plan

In the beginning, there was a plan,
And then came the assumptions,
And the assumptions were without form,
And the plan without substance,

And the darkness was upon the faces of the tax-donkeys,
And they spoke among themselves saying,
"It is a crock of shit and it stinks."

And the tax-donkeys went unto their Mayors and and said,
"It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."

And the Mayors went unto their Party Officials saying,
"It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong,
Such that none may abide by it."

And the Party Officials went unto their Representatives saying,
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."

And the Representatives spoke among themselves saying to one another,
"It contains that which aids growth, and it is very strong."

And the Representatives went to the Senators saying unto them,
"It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."

And the Senators went to the President, saying unto him,
"This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor
Of the Country With very powerful effects."

And the President looked upon the Plan
And was pleased, 

And then the President held a press conference and told the mainstream media that his plan was good and that everything was working according to his plan.

And the mainstream media trumpeted into every home that life was better than it had ever been before and that those who disagree are enemies of the state and shall be divested of their rights and property.

A rare moment of rancor, cynicism and disgust

Indulge me for a moment.

I happened to have helped campaign for one of our local politicians in his first campaign for office. I have the distinction of being kicked out of a subdivision along with him and his campaign manager because the HOA decided we were violating their No Soliciting standards by leaving literature.

Flash forward a bunch of years. He is standing for another election at a different level. I got the email address of his campaign manager and asked how I could help.

He said "Write letters to the Editor" and send them to the local fish-wrappers.

I prepared a draft and sent it to him.

He returned it and suggested that it was not suitable.

He was looking for the "Smedley F. Wussenfuldley* is a great guy" tone.

I responded "Letters to the Editor that do not state concrete issues are like a fart in a windstorm. Nobody will remember them five minutes after they read them."

Then I included a list of concrete issues that I thought were valid and would gain traction in swing-segments that Smedley could steal from the opposition.

Silence......

Which leaves me wondering

It leaves me wondering many things. I presume his campaign manager graduated with a degree in Political Science from a public university in the last seven years.

That means he was soaking in a leftist environment where every perspective was implicitly biased to favor leftist view-points. In actual fact, there is a 50% chance where he is a leftist and this is just a job where he goes through the motions to get on to "the next thing'.

Winston Churchill, with whom which Donald Trump has much in common, was attributed with saying something like "When you have the advantage on some issue, give it a great whacking blow with your biggest hammer. Then hit it again. Show no mercy. Marshal all of your forces and give it a third, great, whacking blow."

Leftists win on soft-focus, fuzzy, feel-good, quick-shuffle montages. Not shaped-charge explosives being detonated at optimum stand-offs. Leftists cannot win on the basis of the outcomes of their policies.

Maybe this kid got a 3.9/4.0 GPA at Luke-warm State University while getting his Masters in Political Science. I don't care. What he was taught tainted his ability to improvise, adapt and overcome. He is pre-programmed to lose when he works for conservative candidates.

Unless my buddy starts playing for keepsies, he is going to lose.

*Not his real name

Agriculture in Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan

As reported earlier, the ERJ family went to Isadore in the Leelanau Peninsula to celebrate Thanksgiving.

One of the conversations I had with our host involved the state of the local agriculture. Leelanau Peninsula is one of Michigan's premier fruit-growing regions due to the moderating effect of Lake Michigan and Grand Traverse Bay.

Tom, my host, said that local farmers were getting squeezed by labor shortages. The new fruit-growers are planting wine-grapes and it is more of an exercise in prestige than an attempt to turn a profit. They outbid the cherry, plum and apple orchards for wages.

Secondarily, grape-growers and people building vacation homes are making new land extremely expensive. The things that make the peninsula desirable for growing fruit (slope, good drainage, proximity to the big lakes) makes them very desirable for vacation or retirement homes.

When a farm goes into estate, heirs often opt to cash-out rather than to keep farming due to the eye-popping prices for land.

Another way that farmers are getting squeezed is also related to the availability of labor and that is contracts with processors.

Suppose your name is Jim and you already grow fruit and want to diversify into grapes. You are smart enough to go to the local processors and ask "What varieties are you buying and can you give me a contract?"

Most folks are not as smart as Jim. They read the academic literature (maybe) and plant something they expect will produce heavy yields.

The processors tell Jim, "We will buy as much Johannisberg Reisling or the New York clone of Chardonnay or Cabernet Franc as you can grow."

Then Jim runs the numbers and decides that he cannot afford to grow those grapes due to the amount of spraying, the labor to pick and the losses due to fruit-rots during the fall rains.

The point being, Jim cannot make a profit if he is a distressed seller of a product that is in over-supply nor can he make a profit if he cannot harvest sufficient tonnage per-acre to cover his costs. There are very good reasons why wineries cannot get enough J-berg Reisling, Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc. They are very difficult to grow in the mid-West.

My take on the situation

The small, not-commercially focused family-farm is vertically integrated and does not have Jim's problem. The advantage of eating what you produce is that you are never on the losing-end of the eternal wrestling match between every link of the value-chain for profits.

The downside is that you will only get to eat premium steaks for some of the year and have to "settle" for burger or stew-meat or soup for most of the rest of the year.

If you calculate the time invested as wages you are paying yourself then they will be less than minimum wages and you will feel cheated. If you calculate the time invested as an education then it will be much, much cheaper than you can get at a University and will be far more useful in your life.

Old-school Problem Resolution Skills

Images of topless women follow. Proceed at your own risk.

Back-scratchers, slippers and ERJ pretends to be a paper-wasp

Quicksilver enjoys having her back scratched.

She is usually dressed in a "onesie" so it is hard to reach down from the top and scratch her back properly and it is impossible to reach from the bottom.

So, I bent a back-scratcher from a slender "split" from one of our pieces of ash firewood. The procedure was to split several and pick a couple of good ones. Heat up water in a 1 pint mason jar in the microwave until it was boiling. Soak one end of a split in the hot water for a few minutes. Put soaked end in a vice and SLOWLY bend it, then weight down the unbent end and let the split cool/dry over night.

Slipper update

I ended up purchasing an inexpensive pair of "Dearfoam" slippers at Walmart on the advice of some of my readers.

I tried on a bunch of slippers and liked the elastic sides (circled in red) of the Dearfoams which made for easy slipping into AND a fair degree of retention.

I wasn't sure I was going to be a "slipper" guy but these have been working well for my intended use.

Exotic engineering materials

We have some foam insulation panels over some windows. The panels are on the outside where they will not cause condensate to collect and then run down the insides of the window.

Insects will sometimes get between the foam panel and the window. Woodpeckers can hear them and have no problem whacking holes in the foam to get at them.

Mrs ERJ wondered what exotic material I was going to use to repair the holes before winter clamped down.

That is when I told her of my grade-school bathroom where miscreants would take toilet paper and wet it and then throw it at the ceiling. The clump of wood-fibers would stick long enough to dry-in-place. Years' accumulation created an interesting 3-D texture to the ceiling.

So, I told her that I was going to repair the holes with toilet paper...wet, macerated wood-fibers if I wanted to sound pretentious.

After fiddling with it a little bit and learning on-the-job, the best technique is to look at the hole to estimate its size and then to put several wraps of the paper around my hand. Then dunk the squarish, multi-ply patch into water and roughly shape into something resembling a badminton birdie. Wedge the birdie into the hole and fold the "Tail" into the center to ensure it is semi-rivet like in shape.

i did some with the toilet paper and some with fiberglass batting peeled from a scrap piece of insulation. The fiberglass was much faster but I understand that some people's skin reacts to the fiberglass.

I changed the oil in the truck

166k miles. I am recording it so I can get a handle on how many miles a year I am driving. My records show that I bought the vehicle just before the economy was shut down for Covid and it had about 133k miles on it. So that is 33k miles in 44 months or about 750 miles a month which is far fewer than when I was a working guy.

The world keeps changing

 

We purchased a small toilet seat that can be placed over the adult seat so Quicksilver can start getting used to the idea of being a big girl.

Some assembly required.

The plastic Chicago Screws were sized-and-slotted such that a person could use a coin to turn them. And the parts bag included a plastic tiddly-wink.

My guess is that many of their target audience (new parents in the late 20s) do not have a single coin in their home.

That means all of their money is electronic which presumably means it could be snatched or frozen by a hacker by the guberment.

I feel old.

Dog update

Zeus our 10 year-old German Shepherd perked up. He is still a little wobbly in the hind-quarters, so his recent travails were probably due to his slipping on some ice.

I am VERY happy that it was not something more serious.

Santos is out

Loose cannon, George Santos was expelled from Congress with 100 Republicans voting to send him on his way.

Some Republicans are aghast because it erodes the razor-thin majority they have over the Democrats.

I, for my part, think that doing the right-thing might be expensive in the short term but is least expensive option in the long-term.

Consider the Boy Scouts of America. Better they should have dealt with the leaders who were predators in spite of the fall-out.

Ditto for the Catholic Church and the never-ending revelations of pedophile clergy who took advantage of their positions of authority.

I don't have any special information. I am willing to let the "experts" do their job.

As we enter the Christmas Party season...

 

I may have offended my bosses when I told them I did not want the traditional retirement party. I had been to too many of them where attendees got very drunk and then somehow drove themselves home.

Five minute run-time. A compilation of adds from Australia's anti drinking-and-driving campaign. 

With ride-calling services like Uber and Lyft, there is no excuse to drive yourself home when smashed OR to give your keys to a fellow drinker who is equally trashed. You might avoid a ticket but you cannot avoid physics.