Actual History vs History Books

 The Flow of HISTORY
 

 

A little East of Paris: A Cask of Armadillos*

Gwain sat in his swivel chair and studied the young woman who had copied her entire paper. It was clear that she had been crying. Gwain was unmoved by the tears. He knew that some people could turn them on-and-off. Some people burst out crying for no reason at all. Gwain wanted to know WHY. Why had she cheated? Why was she crying now?

Olivia Benavidez was the first in her family to go to college. She was the oldest of five children. Her father was a pipe-fitter in an oil refinery in Corpus (Gwain would have to look that up). Her mother was a seamstress and did alterations for weddings and prom dresses.

Gwain cut to the chase. “Why did you cheat? You knew it was wrong.”

Tears started leaking out of Olivia’s eyes. “Because I can’t write!” she wailed.

“What do you mean “You can’t write”?” Gwain asked, bordering on being dismissive.

“I got a “D” in my first writing class” Olivia said. “The harder I tried, the worse the professor graded me. If I do bad in this class, I will be on academic probation, and I don’t know how I will be able to tell my father.”

Gwain got the sense that Olivia was a “daddy’s girl” and her loathing the thought of telling him was not out of fear of punishment, but out of fear of disappointing him.

Gwain hear some minor scraping and squeaking outside his office. He had the door shut to provide (minimal) privacy. He assumed somebody was using an office chair as an ad hoc cart to move something from one office to another.

“Everybody can write” Gwain assured her. “It is something that you will get better at your entire life...but it requires practice and critical appraisal. That means turning in your own work.”

Then Gwain heard some tapping at his door.

“I am in a conference; a PRIVATE conference. Come back in fifteen minutes” Gwain said.

The person who had been tapping at the door did not respond and Gwain assumed they had gone away.

“Let me look up some of your papers from last term” Gwain suggested. “Maybe I can give you some guidance.”

All of the papers were indexed and Gwain had no problems finding her work. Her best grade was a C and he sped-read the first couple of paragraphs. Then he picked a paper from the string of “F”s she had turned in at the end of the term.

“Oh!” Gwain verbalized without knowing it.

“What do you think good writing looks like?” Gwain asked Miss Benavidez.

“I DON”T KNOW!” Olivia wailed in anguish.

“What I see from your prior work is that your last professor was marking you down early in the term because of mechanics. You could have pulled up those papers by at least a grade if you had used MZ Wozzard’s grammar and spell check” Gwain told her.

“Your later papers are almost unreadable” Gwain said, as gently as he knew how. “Your sentences are run-on...maybe the worst I have ever seen. And you use lots of big words that you are clearly not familiar with.”

"I think you were guilty of trying much too hard” Gwain said.

Before Olivia could respond, Gwain heard Cole Byrd’s distinctive voice “Play with the bull, get the horns!”

Cole was the tall, arrogant student who Gwain was expecting to “test” his resolve in regards to students who plagurized work.

Gwain swiftly stood up and strode across the tiny office to confront his unruly student...and he could not open the door.

“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” he was met with a gale of derisive laughter as Gwain rattled the doorknob. And then he heard the sound of running feet.

“Well, that is a fine kettle of fish” Gwain commented as he sat down.

Looking over at Olivia, he intuitively deduced that she was going into a panic attack.

“Oh dear!” Gwain managed to get out. “You are claustrophobic!”

“No” Olivia lied.

Gwain pretended to believe her lie. “Lots of people get stressed when they feel like they don’t have any options.”

“This is what we are going to do. You are going to start journalling RIGHT NOW” Gwain told her, his voice brooking no objection.

He slid a yellow legal pad across his desk toward her. Then he gave her two sharpened HB pencils.

“Who, what, how, where, when, why. Those are the basics” Gwain barked out.

“Write down your name. Write down the time. Write down where we are” he continued.

Olivia, appreciating the distraction, started writing.

“When you are done with those, start writing down how you feel. While you are doing that, I have to make a few phone-calls to get us out of this pickle” Gwain told her.

“Hello, Violet? I seem to have found myself in a bit of a predicament” Gwain told the Department Secretary. “Some students decided this would be a good day to pull a prank and I fear they may have wedged my door shut. Do you suppose you can call maintenance and have them get it unstuck?”

Five minutes later, Gwain and Olivia heard the heavy trudge of work boots.

“Dang! I never seen this before” the masculine voice on the other side of the door stated.

“What haven’t you ever seen before?” Gwain asked.

“It looks like whoever did this to your door planned on keeping you in there for a while. They used a half-dozen shims and it looks like they super-glued them into place. And where they don't have shims they filled with expanding foam. I am not sure how we are going to get you out.”

Gwain heard a pencil snap. He looked over at Olivia and her face was as white as a ghost.

(C) 2025 Eaton Rapids Joe, All Rights Reserved 

*Apologies to Edgar Allen Poe

Trump's tariffs and timing the bounce

One of my internet buddies is horrified that Trump followed through with his threats to levy tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China.

"Doesn't he know that tariffs generate tariffs in return and destroy the economies of both countries?"

My parroting of the old bromide that the first rule of training a mule is to get its attention was not appreciated.

Part of me understands where my friend is coming from. The Smoot-Hawley Tariffs act of 1930 is credited with increasing the intensity of the Great Depression, increasing its duration and "exporting" the economic downturn to places like Germany (and indirectly) setting the stage for Hitler and the NAZI party.

Theoretically, Trump's tariffs are almost identical to the Nuclear Weapons policy of Mutually Assured Destruction.

If the way for Mexico and Canada to avoid mutually assured economic destruction is to stop enabling economic immigrants who want to violate US laws from passing through their countries, why is that a problem?

Somebody is profiting from the vast subversion of US law. Otherwise it would have been a minor issue that would have been dealt with before midnight of January 20th.

OK, I can see that some will say that Mexico and Canada are not compelled to follow US laws. But do they really want to go down the road of testing Trump's resolve?

On a different note

One can make a compelling case that if the events of 2020 had happened in 2017, the first year of Trump's first term, then he would have handily won reelection.

Few people remember that Ronald Reagan first term was marred by a brutal recession. I graduated in Engineering from Michigan State in 1981 and only 17% of the people in my major got jobs in Michigan. Fortunately for Reagan, it was very early in his first term and the economy was coming roaring back by 1984. The economy was doing OK and the momentum was in the right direction. The United States electorate cheerfully sent Reagan back for a second term.

From a strategic standpoint, it would not hurt Trump if he had a very sharp recession of short duration NOW. In fact, it would probably help his legacy because it would make MAGA very strong for 2028. I don't see the threat of his tariffs triggering such a recession to be a bug...it is more like a feature from the standpoint of timing the bounce.

You can say lots of negative things about Trump and his MAGA brain-trust but even their critics must admit that their organization is very effective at LEARNING and IMPLIMENTING those lessons.

Side-story about recessions

It is like a young man I know who owned a diesel, 4WD truck.  He could not afford to keep it running. It absorbed all of his discretionary money and it was still not reliable transportation. He was trapped by that truck.

His life was on-hold until he confronted the reality of the truck. It was a money-pit that would never offer him a positive return on his dollar invested. Shit happened and he was FORCED to sell his truck.

He dumped the truck and took his loss. He bought a beater, gas-powered car that got 30 mph mpg and never looked back.

Sometimes you just have to let go.

Gazing into my crystal-ball, the S&P 500 could drop by 40% and it would only unwind the stock market back to October of 2022. That is NOT the end of the world, even if it dents some politicians' stock portfolios.

Happy Ground Hog Day

 

Happy Ground Hog Day!

Lifting notes: 6 reps of 135, raw to warm up. 5 reps at 225, felt weak. Dropped down to 185. 4 sets of 6 reps. Finished with another 5 reps at 225. Total weight 7750.

Fired 1858 over the chrony. 25 grains by volume/23 by weight of Triple Seven FFFG gave 749.6 fps five feet from the screens.

Northern Pecans: Expectations

 

According to Dr Bill Reid, a pecan expert who worked (and grows pecans) in Kansas, the limiting factor in growing pecans in the mid-West is not-enough-heat.

The trees can grow as far north as Wisconsin but there will rarely be enough heat to properly ripen the nuts.

It is a reasonable expectation that you will have enough heat to ripen selected varieties of pecans in the regions that are YELLOW, enough heat to ripen many/most pecan varieties in the regions that are ORANGE and to have plenty of heat to ripen all pecan varieties in the areas that are DARK RED.

The areas that are AQUA and BLUE can ripen some pecans, some years but the pecans will be just one-step-up from wild seedlings in terms of size and ease-of-shelling. Frankly, most growers in those areas will be better served by planting Shellbark Hickories and/or named varieties of Black Walnuts

I thought it was fake news

 

Link to article

This is a real article published by a British-owned, mainstream newspaper.

Bevis and Butthead were not pictured in the actual article, but they came close.

AND

Pecan varieties for the home-orchard or for shade trees

Pecan varieties recommended by the University of Georgia for home-gardens. LINK

"Pecan trees are everywhere in the South, and many years they provide a bountiful crop. This gives the impression that pecan trees are carefree yard trees. Unfortunately, this is not the case. It can be very difficult to get a good crop of pecans without spraying your trees, and this is especially true if you plant commercial cultivars which lack disease and insect resistance.

Probably the biggest mistake a home orchardist can make is to go down to the local hardware store and pick up a 'Desirable' pecan tree" 

 

"Below is a list of our favorite cultivars for yard trees, and some information on how to take care of your new tree."

 

Recommended by the University of Georgia (listed in alphabetic order)

• Amling - My favorite home cultivar, high quality medium sized nut.
• Elliot - A proven scab resistant cultivar, a top choice.
• Excel - Good pest resistance, large nut with thick shell.
• McMillan - Nice vigorous tree, good overall pest resistance, medium sized nut.
• Kanza - Similar to Elliot but cold hardy, good choice for north Georgia.
• Sumner - Moderate scab resistance, black aphids will be a problem, easier to find.

Pecan Nursery List - Where to get pecan trees

 

ERJ notes that disease pressure is higher as you move south and east. For example, disease pressure is higher on the Coastal Plains of Mississippi and Alabama than it is on the Texas Cross Timbers or Blackland Prairie regions. Consequently, most growers in those regions of Texas have more flexibility in their choices of varieties.