I've about had it with President Obama. I voted for the guy because I thought he was smart enough for the job, and was pragmatic enough to be able to get things done. The one thing I didn't expect was that he would continuously roll over to the Republicans like a cowed dog.
In my mind, there are two possible explanations for his behavior. First, he may be too much like my wife, a good person who has trouble seeing the bad in people around her. The Republicans, the oil companies, the health care industry, and the bankers all screw over him (and us), and he thinks to himself; "I need to try to reach out to them, and convince them of the error of their ways. They are really good people that merely have a different opinion of things."
The other explanation for his character flaw is that he's like a woman in an abusive relationship. She gets slapped around, she feels he has nowhere else to go, it doesn't hurt as bad the next day, and she believes that her spouse's conciliatory gestures are sincere. So, instead of standing up for herself, she hangs around for the next bitch slapping.
At least, former president Clinton, in spite of his own character flaws, recognized that he was locked in mortal combat with the Republican party. Clinton, certainly not a radical left winger, was viewed as an impediment to the Republican agenda of complete and irreversible political domination of the United States. Down, but not out, he understood the power of his office and used it to good effect.
It's time for Obama to lash out. No more vapid speeches about compromise and finding common agenda. His opponents led by Mcconnell and Boehner are out to destroy him and the American middle class along with him. He has at his disposal, the power to speak out each and every day about the enemy. Yes, the enemy. We are engaged in class warfare, and the middle class is not even aware of it. The Republicans are not protecting us from creeping socialism, they are leading us down the road to serfdom.
Most of my friends consider themselves republicans, and I know they have been and will be offended by my ranting. They have been duped. I don't have a single friend in the top one percent of income earners. Yet all of my republican friends believe their party is looking out for them. They believe that as long as their modest fortunes are allowed to stagnate, but not grow, their interests are protected. They do not understand that the ultimate goal in the national monopoly game is the control of all wealth and power by an aristocratic minority. This minority already owns board walk and park place, and they are playing with loaded dice. The children and grandchildren of my friends will be the ultimate losers.
President Obama is about to compromise on the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. The Republicans are holding the Congress hostage until he gives in. I say, let the cuts expire, I'll pay my additional share, the country needs the money. But, let the American middle class know that their taxes went up because of the Republican desire to help the super rich.
Enough hand wringing about death taxes and capital gains taxes. No dead person has ever been taxed. Only the inheritors of wealth way in excess of that of my friends are taxed. If I were to win three hundred million dollars in the power ball lottery, my earnings would be taxed as income. Why should the winners of the birthright lottery be exempt from paying taxes on their winnings. If I go out and pound nails day in and day out, I will be taxed on my earnings. Why should people who merely sit back and watch their money grow not be taxed on their earnings.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Thanksgiving 2010
I'm thankful that it only comes once a year. I've said this over and over again, to the point that my friends at the coffee shop groan when I bring it up. I'm not crazy about turkey and the six or eight types of mush that goes along with the thanksgiving meal.
This year, my son and his wife could not be home for thanksgiving, and all of my close friends were engaged with their families, so, faced with the prospect of just my wife, mother, and my self consuming this huge meal, I turned to the company of strangers. Not really strangers, but neighbors that Kathy and I did not know very well, but they seemed like nice people. We invited Doug and Kay, who have lived a few blocks up the street for about twenty five years, and Wade and Dawn, who have lived in Concord only a few years, and also live just up the street. Kay's brother, Bob, who lives in Georgia was coming to town, so we also invited him. These two couples did not know each other. I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did. Let me tell you about it.
Everyone came to the house about an hour and a half before dinner, and we had a few drinks and chatted about this and that. I guess we were all a bit stiff, and on our best behavior, but polite and friendly. We sat down to dinner and continued our conversation. You can imagine most of the conversation, a brief synopsis of our life histories. Where we were from, our children, what kind of work we did. Bob was an ex Air Force pilot, and he talked about his experiences in Vietnam, and Doug, Wade, and I talked about why we were not in the service. I'm pretty gregarious, so I like this kind of stuff, just getting to know a little about each other. I had promised myself that I would not talk about politics or religion, and I did pretty well until the coffee and deserts were finished. (I can imagine a collective groan from any of my friends that happen to read this.) Some how, (perhaps I brought it up) the subject of military spending came up, specifically, the cost of the new Joint Task Force Fighters soon to be built. As you can guess, a subject near and dear to Bob, the ex fighter pilot. Things tensed up a bit. We quickly jumped from the cost of the planes, to the need for the size of our military, to justification for the war in Iraq, to intervention in the Iranian nuclear program, and ultimately to the projection of American military might all over the world. Big wars always start small. Bob seems to be a reasonable man, and I generally am as well, so the whole discussion was pretty low key, although we were in most cases on opposite sides of the issues.
The problem though, is this. Even in a reasonable conversation, most of the dialogue consists of zingers and incomplete thoughts. It's impossible to have perfectly reasoned and erudite responses to each other's remarks. It's not like an episode of "West Wing". This is why I've found that I like to write this stuff down, even if no one ever reads it. Here's what I think about America's Military.
I'm not a naive left wing fool, I think that we need a strong military to protect our country, and our interests. I don't think that our military needs to be five or ten times stronger than any potential foe. I think that we are a danger to ourselves and to the rest of the world because of the force we can bring to bear.
Just as we destroyed the Soviet Union by out spending them in the arms race, we are financially destroying our selves with the ever increasing cost of our military. I looked this up; actually, direct defense costs in real dollars have been fairly constant since the mid sixties, but increasingly we are borrowing money to pay for that defense spending, and now, the debt burden is almost as much as the actual defense cost. In addition to the cost of simply maintaining our military, we have the astronomical costs of the the wars we have gotten ourselves into. Like I said, all wars start small. Advisers in Vietnam to half a million troops and fifty thousand American solders dead. Topple Saddam Hussein and more than eight years of occupation, plus a trillion dollars spent.
The biggest problem with our huge military is the potential to use it. Yes, Iran probably has a nuclear program, North Korea certainly does. Both countries exhibit bizarre behavior, but are not crazy to the point of inviting annihilation by provoking a nuclear attack by us if they were to explode a nuclear war head over us or one of our allies. We can deal with both countries the same way we dealt with Russia and China during the cold war. We assure mutual destruction if attacked, and we wait them out. Things change, leaders are ousted, our enemies become our friends. We have dealt with North Korea for sixty five years, and an adversarial Iran for thirty. So far, our leaders have not had the stomach to deal with either one of them militarily. The danger is that our military power might embolden our future leaders to leap over the precipice.
Of course, there is the real danger of a country like North Korea providing nuclear weapons to a third party in an attempt to damage us by proxy, but we already live with that danger in Russia and Pakistan. I can't see how a massive military option can protect us from that kind of danger.
I could go on with this, but it's almost time to go to the coffee shop, so I'll stop now.
This year, my son and his wife could not be home for thanksgiving, and all of my close friends were engaged with their families, so, faced with the prospect of just my wife, mother, and my self consuming this huge meal, I turned to the company of strangers. Not really strangers, but neighbors that Kathy and I did not know very well, but they seemed like nice people. We invited Doug and Kay, who have lived a few blocks up the street for about twenty five years, and Wade and Dawn, who have lived in Concord only a few years, and also live just up the street. Kay's brother, Bob, who lives in Georgia was coming to town, so we also invited him. These two couples did not know each other. I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did. Let me tell you about it.
Everyone came to the house about an hour and a half before dinner, and we had a few drinks and chatted about this and that. I guess we were all a bit stiff, and on our best behavior, but polite and friendly. We sat down to dinner and continued our conversation. You can imagine most of the conversation, a brief synopsis of our life histories. Where we were from, our children, what kind of work we did. Bob was an ex Air Force pilot, and he talked about his experiences in Vietnam, and Doug, Wade, and I talked about why we were not in the service. I'm pretty gregarious, so I like this kind of stuff, just getting to know a little about each other. I had promised myself that I would not talk about politics or religion, and I did pretty well until the coffee and deserts were finished. (I can imagine a collective groan from any of my friends that happen to read this.) Some how, (perhaps I brought it up) the subject of military spending came up, specifically, the cost of the new Joint Task Force Fighters soon to be built. As you can guess, a subject near and dear to Bob, the ex fighter pilot. Things tensed up a bit. We quickly jumped from the cost of the planes, to the need for the size of our military, to justification for the war in Iraq, to intervention in the Iranian nuclear program, and ultimately to the projection of American military might all over the world. Big wars always start small. Bob seems to be a reasonable man, and I generally am as well, so the whole discussion was pretty low key, although we were in most cases on opposite sides of the issues.
The problem though, is this. Even in a reasonable conversation, most of the dialogue consists of zingers and incomplete thoughts. It's impossible to have perfectly reasoned and erudite responses to each other's remarks. It's not like an episode of "West Wing". This is why I've found that I like to write this stuff down, even if no one ever reads it. Here's what I think about America's Military.
I'm not a naive left wing fool, I think that we need a strong military to protect our country, and our interests. I don't think that our military needs to be five or ten times stronger than any potential foe. I think that we are a danger to ourselves and to the rest of the world because of the force we can bring to bear.
Just as we destroyed the Soviet Union by out spending them in the arms race, we are financially destroying our selves with the ever increasing cost of our military. I looked this up; actually, direct defense costs in real dollars have been fairly constant since the mid sixties, but increasingly we are borrowing money to pay for that defense spending, and now, the debt burden is almost as much as the actual defense cost. In addition to the cost of simply maintaining our military, we have the astronomical costs of the the wars we have gotten ourselves into. Like I said, all wars start small. Advisers in Vietnam to half a million troops and fifty thousand American solders dead. Topple Saddam Hussein and more than eight years of occupation, plus a trillion dollars spent.
The biggest problem with our huge military is the potential to use it. Yes, Iran probably has a nuclear program, North Korea certainly does. Both countries exhibit bizarre behavior, but are not crazy to the point of inviting annihilation by provoking a nuclear attack by us if they were to explode a nuclear war head over us or one of our allies. We can deal with both countries the same way we dealt with Russia and China during the cold war. We assure mutual destruction if attacked, and we wait them out. Things change, leaders are ousted, our enemies become our friends. We have dealt with North Korea for sixty five years, and an adversarial Iran for thirty. So far, our leaders have not had the stomach to deal with either one of them militarily. The danger is that our military power might embolden our future leaders to leap over the precipice.
Of course, there is the real danger of a country like North Korea providing nuclear weapons to a third party in an attempt to damage us by proxy, but we already live with that danger in Russia and Pakistan. I can't see how a massive military option can protect us from that kind of danger.
I could go on with this, but it's almost time to go to the coffee shop, so I'll stop now.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
The Perfect Pet
Well, it's four thirty in the morning, and I've been lying in bed awake for the last hour and a half with random semi dream state sparks of wisdom going off in my head.
Many years ago when the notion of no good deed going unpunished was not yet firmly implanted in my brain, one of my cousins and his brother in law asked me if I could give them a hand on the coming Tuesday night, and thinking they needed me to help move a refrigerator or something, I agreed to help. They picked me up, and I became highly suspicious when I realized that they both had on coats and ties. I was afraid that they were going for some kind of religious intervention, but even worse, it turned out to be an Amway meeting.
So, I go to this meeting, and during the rah-rah section where they are trying to convince everyone of the fabulous wealth they are about to obtain, they posed the question: "What would you buy if you had all the money you wanted. One by one, they let everyone in the room answer the question. Considering the unlimited nature of the question, most of the answers were fairly pedestrian, some wanted a new house, or to take a trip. One stringy haired hippy type kid said that he would love to have a new Trans-Am with a big eagle across the hood. You have to admire some one with such lofty goals. I don't remember what I said, but I was not very enthusiastic about the process, so maybe I just wished for cab fare. Anyway, this little event sometimes comes to mind when I'm lying in bed reviewing life's injustices, and this morning my stream of conscience led me to consider what I would buy if I indeed had a boat load of money.
Let's say that tomorrow, I won the Power Ball lottery (my only chance of an early and decent retirement), and the winnings were, I don't know, say 300 million. Enough to put me into the top one percent. I think I would go out and buy a new pet.
I've had a series of dogs during my life, poodles, and schnauzers and mongrels, some smart, and some dumb and stubborn. They've all been good companions, but if I were rich, I would go for a working breed, I would buy myself a congressman.
I would not want a Senator, the purebred strains suffer from too much inbreeding, and they tend to be stupid and high maintenance. Plus, they are much more expensive, and they will often turn on the hand that feeds them.
A member of the House of Representatives is a much better choice. These working class curs, while they may not have the looks or the deep throat ed bark of a pure breed, make the best pets. They are low maintenance, and easily trained. You simply give them a semiannual feeding of Purina Congressional Chow, and they roll over and display their unconditional love. To properly train them, you use positive reinforcement. You give them a treat when they show good behavior, or obediently follow your commands. A small cash incentive, or a sweet deal on a mortgage, or a trip, and they are eager to please. Negative reinforcement also works for the big infractions. A threat to withhold their semiannual feeding bring them fawning to you feet with their tail down and their head held low.
You want to pick one with a bit of a retriever mix, and schnauzer for tenacity, but be careful, too much lab makes them fat and lazy. I think it would be wise to pick a male, the females are much too sensitive when you speak sharply to them.
Congressional pets are great crowd pleasers. They have good social skills, and seldom pee on the carpet. Let them mingle at a party, and don't worry, they can be petted with no danger of a bite. Be careful with alcohol, they tend to get yippy with too much to drink, and have a tendency to hump. Also don't allow you guests to feed them from the table, the congressman may try to follow you guest home.
The best thing about a congressional pet is not his love or his cuteness, its what, as a working breed, they can do for you. If you are wealthy enough to be able to afford one, they can repay your investment many times over. If I, having won my 300 million, purchased a congressman, I would expect him to guard my money by somehow exempting me from paying taxes on it. If he could not do that, I might as well have a dog.
Many years ago when the notion of no good deed going unpunished was not yet firmly implanted in my brain, one of my cousins and his brother in law asked me if I could give them a hand on the coming Tuesday night, and thinking they needed me to help move a refrigerator or something, I agreed to help. They picked me up, and I became highly suspicious when I realized that they both had on coats and ties. I was afraid that they were going for some kind of religious intervention, but even worse, it turned out to be an Amway meeting.
So, I go to this meeting, and during the rah-rah section where they are trying to convince everyone of the fabulous wealth they are about to obtain, they posed the question: "What would you buy if you had all the money you wanted. One by one, they let everyone in the room answer the question. Considering the unlimited nature of the question, most of the answers were fairly pedestrian, some wanted a new house, or to take a trip. One stringy haired hippy type kid said that he would love to have a new Trans-Am with a big eagle across the hood. You have to admire some one with such lofty goals. I don't remember what I said, but I was not very enthusiastic about the process, so maybe I just wished for cab fare. Anyway, this little event sometimes comes to mind when I'm lying in bed reviewing life's injustices, and this morning my stream of conscience led me to consider what I would buy if I indeed had a boat load of money.
Let's say that tomorrow, I won the Power Ball lottery (my only chance of an early and decent retirement), and the winnings were, I don't know, say 300 million. Enough to put me into the top one percent. I think I would go out and buy a new pet.
I've had a series of dogs during my life, poodles, and schnauzers and mongrels, some smart, and some dumb and stubborn. They've all been good companions, but if I were rich, I would go for a working breed, I would buy myself a congressman.
I would not want a Senator, the purebred strains suffer from too much inbreeding, and they tend to be stupid and high maintenance. Plus, they are much more expensive, and they will often turn on the hand that feeds them.
A member of the House of Representatives is a much better choice. These working class curs, while they may not have the looks or the deep throat ed bark of a pure breed, make the best pets. They are low maintenance, and easily trained. You simply give them a semiannual feeding of Purina Congressional Chow, and they roll over and display their unconditional love. To properly train them, you use positive reinforcement. You give them a treat when they show good behavior, or obediently follow your commands. A small cash incentive, or a sweet deal on a mortgage, or a trip, and they are eager to please. Negative reinforcement also works for the big infractions. A threat to withhold their semiannual feeding bring them fawning to you feet with their tail down and their head held low.
You want to pick one with a bit of a retriever mix, and schnauzer for tenacity, but be careful, too much lab makes them fat and lazy. I think it would be wise to pick a male, the females are much too sensitive when you speak sharply to them.
Congressional pets are great crowd pleasers. They have good social skills, and seldom pee on the carpet. Let them mingle at a party, and don't worry, they can be petted with no danger of a bite. Be careful with alcohol, they tend to get yippy with too much to drink, and have a tendency to hump. Also don't allow you guests to feed them from the table, the congressman may try to follow you guest home.
The best thing about a congressional pet is not his love or his cuteness, its what, as a working breed, they can do for you. If you are wealthy enough to be able to afford one, they can repay your investment many times over. If I, having won my 300 million, purchased a congressman, I would expect him to guard my money by somehow exempting me from paying taxes on it. If he could not do that, I might as well have a dog.
Friday, November 5, 2010
The Rain Maker
Guard you wallet folks, the rain maker is coming to town. After hearing about the proposed purchase of the Phillip Morris property by a company called Stargate World Wide, I spent a little time on the Internet trying to get some information on the company and its founder, Terry Keeney.
When I looked at the very nebulous website, I noticed several things that brought up red flags. First of all, in the third paragraph of the home page was this sentence: "Investors seeking a 10-30% or more return are encouraged to contact Stargate World wide." This sounds like one of those too good to be true offers that isn't. In addition, the entire website is vague about it's projects, and at the same time overblown in it's opinion of itself. I encourage everyone to go to the site and carefully read the literature.
I also looked up Terry Keeney on the Internet. For a man proposing a $750,000,000 project, there is remarkably little information on the Internet about him. He has a face book account with limited personal information, he is barely mentioned on a couple of other business networking sites, and there is some buzz about this Phillip Morris venture, which is not even off the ground, and a few mentions of a racetrack he owns in Georgia. When I Googled Georgia USA Speedway, there was no information I could discern. I'm not sure if it even exists.
It would be a shame if the Phillip Morris property and Cabarrus county became in tangled in a Heritage Village type boondoggle. I hope that everyone involved in this project proceeds very cautiously.
When I looked at the very nebulous website, I noticed several things that brought up red flags. First of all, in the third paragraph of the home page was this sentence: "Investors seeking a 10-30% or more return are encouraged to contact Stargate World wide." This sounds like one of those too good to be true offers that isn't. In addition, the entire website is vague about it's projects, and at the same time overblown in it's opinion of itself. I encourage everyone to go to the site and carefully read the literature.
I also looked up Terry Keeney on the Internet. For a man proposing a $750,000,000 project, there is remarkably little information on the Internet about him. He has a face book account with limited personal information, he is barely mentioned on a couple of other business networking sites, and there is some buzz about this Phillip Morris venture, which is not even off the ground, and a few mentions of a racetrack he owns in Georgia. When I Googled Georgia USA Speedway, there was no information I could discern. I'm not sure if it even exists.
It would be a shame if the Phillip Morris property and Cabarrus county became in tangled in a Heritage Village type boondoggle. I hope that everyone involved in this project proceeds very cautiously.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Fishing Stories: The "Poor Banks"
When I was about ten, my dad found a new place to fish. A truly wild and remote place less than forty miles from Concord, this spot is as isolated today as it was fifty years ago. It is the east side of the Pee Dee river in the free flowing section below Lake Tillery, and above Blewett Falls Lake. Here, when the turbines are running at the Tillery dam, the swift water roils and boils past the steep and slippery banks. When the turbines are still, the swift water runs away, and the river becomes a patch work of pools and rocks. The spot my father discovered is about five miles below the Tillery dam, close to the confluence of Rocky river on the far shore.
Getting there was an adventure in itself. Highway 731 did not bridge the river just below the dam as it does now. We would take the Lilly bridge road to Hydro (the road to the power plant), and then, a few miles on we turned off onto an old logging road, pushing aside the brush and tree limbs that hid the entrance to the road. Once on the road, some of the foliage had been cut back by my dad and his buddies so that you could at least see the obstacles ahead. My dad had an early fifties Plymouth station wagon that had been used as a delivery car by his employer, until, when it was worn out, my dad bought it for a fishing car. The old car's clutch slipped when you showered down on the gas in high gear, but pulled fine in first and second. My dad, a mechanic, could have easily repaired the clutch, but he drove the car softly on the highway, and it never was much of an issue. The road in to the Poor Banks was a different story. There were a series of water filled elongated muddy pot holes that required a high speed running start to traverse them. My dad would pull up to one, and reconnoiter it as if he were in a canoe about to float a dangerous set of rapids. Then he would back up maybe a hundred feet or so, gun it in first gear, and with the engine whining hit the water like a stone skipping across a lake. We usually make it. On occasion, we would stop disappointingly short of our goal. Then it was jacks and poles and muddy feet. The last two hundred yards was down a steep slippery hillside to the campsite. There was no question about making it to the bottom, the ruts were so deep, he barely need to steer. The climb out was a whole nother story. The flat area that comprised our campsite became a runway for the liftoff up and over the hill. The old Plymouth's mud grip tires spewed mud and stones into a rooster tail out behind the car. It lurched and groaned as my dad sawed the steering wheel back and forth searching for the best traction. The progress became slower and slower until just as the car was about to bog down, we crested the hill. All this was usually achieved in one try, but when we failed, backing down the hill for a restart was butt puckering.
The campsite did not have the sense of permanence that my uncle Aurthur's camp at Whitney had, but it had all of the amenities. There were some benches and half picnic tables built out of lumber from a slab pile. There was a foot log over the steep banks of the small branch where it joined the river. Fifty yards up the creek which rose rapidly up the valley from the river, there was a natural rock pool where the caught cat fish swam until they were netted for dinner. The cat fish would be trapped for weeks in the little pool unless a heavy rain flooded the creek and they were reunited with the river. Just above this little pool, we obtained our water for drinking cooking and washing. It was most always clear and clean, straight off the lizzard's back as my father would say. In addition to the permanent fixtures of the camp there was the gear that was too bulky or too much trouble to take home every weekend. An axe, set hook poles, fire grate, all sorts of things were hidden up in the woods. This flat area that comprised our campsite extended downriver to a point where the creek entered the river. Here, when the turbines were spinning, the water was deep and a reverse eddy would slowly sweep my fishing rig counter clockwise from the downriver side of the creek, ark around just below my feet, and as it reached the upriver point, would be swept out into the current to repeat the process again. I could catch serious fish here, large bream and redbreast, an occasional cat fish, once or twice an eel.
The real fishing was done at night. A cane pole with a short line and medium sized hook was placed standing upright about every twenty five feet along the river for a half a mile or so. Along about dusk, my dad and his buddies would cross the foot log over the branch and follow the trail along side the river, baiting the hooks and sticking the poles out over the river side so that the baited hooks dangled in the water. Then every couple of hours through the night, they would walk the line of set hooks, and remove the caught fish. With a hundred or more poles set, by morning there would be plenty of fish to eat, take home, and to store in the pool if the fish weren't biting on a subsequent trip. Of course, there was plenty of time to drink before the poles were set and between trips to check them.
Bring too young to drink, I wasn't always brought along for these trips to the Poor Banks, so I only know about a few things that happened there.
I know that one year, my uncle Claude fell off the foot log and in climbing back up the bank, he got a case of Poison Ivy so severe that he had to be hospitalized. Another time, my dad came home with a bad cut on his neck which had been sewn up with fishing line. The snakes were bad. I never saw a rattle snake, but the copperheads were very common, and you had to watch your step when you walked the set hooks, and always watch where you put your hands or feet. We killed 13 copperheads one particularly warm Easter. Four of us walked right by a really big one beside the trail in broad daylight. My dad's little dog spotted it, jumped it, and killed it before he could be bitten. A dog will bite a snake and shake it like his life depends on it, which in this case it did.
One year my uncle John had been released from prison, and so far had been behaving himself. He camped with us on the river one week end in late summer. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time. Usually on Saturday, the turbines were spinning and the water was at full flow, but this particular Saturday the turbines were shut off and the water was low. This, by the way, was almost always the case on Sunday mornings. you could wade all the way across the river when it was low, and if the water was released through the turbines, you could actually hear it coming, and see the rising water a way up the river before it reached you. When you would first notice that the water was coming, you had five or ten minutes to get to shore before you were swept away. When the the water was low and you had not caught too many fish the night before, there was an opportunity for some discrete telephoning. With one person cranking, and a couple of people with nets, you could catch a sack full in just a little bit. There are a lot of fish in that river.
Usually the telephoning was done early on Sunday morning, on the theory that wildlife officials would not be out and about in their little plane. My uncle John, who was recklessly fearless (thus the prison time) and I (young and dumb) decided to go grabbling.
We waded out into the river with a burlap bag, and we would wade up to a big rock surrounded by water. the water was usually a foot or so deep around the rock. We would get on opposite sides of the rock, and submerged up to our chins, feel around for holes under the rock. There was almost always a hole on each side of the rock, and a water filled cavity underneath. There would usually be several catfish under each rock, ranging in size from ten inches to two feet in lenght. The trick was to move around very slowly with your hands, until you could pin the fish and get your thumb in its mouth and your fingers behind it's lateral fins and the horns on their leading edges. Then it was a simple matter to pull them out and put them in the sack. I'll admit that it wasn't like the Okie noodlers show on PBS, we didn't get up under the banks, or put our heads under the water. We never saw a snake when we were out away from the bank grabbling, but we would occasionally see a large eel with just its head under a rock. We weren't that crazy about eels, so we would by pass those rocks, there were plenty more. I don't think I could bring myself to go grabbling today. My uncle John hung around town for a while, until the rest of the family was glad to finally see him leave. He went to work on a shrimp boat down in Florida, and came home at Christmas either that year or the following. His best friend who he worked with came home with him, and they stayed at my Aunt's house for several weeks, with no madness or mayhem. A few weeks after he and his buddy went back to Florida, John was arrested for murdering this same fellow, and John served seven years for manslaughter. After he was released from prison this time, he went back to Florida to work. I don't remember him ever coming back to Concord.
My dad became very good friends with a black man who lived in Mt Gilead. He and his wife, Mayzel, and their kids would sometimes walk in from the road to fish, and would often eat with us. He lived in the country out side of town, and we rabbit hunted with him several times. My dad always referred to him as Nigger Bill, and I don't believe any offence was taken or intended. Bill named his youngest son after my dad. Things have changed.
My dad finally retired the old Plymouth, and got a newer model. This time it was a 56 Chevy panel wagon, also a cast off from where he worked. It ran fine, he had rebuilt the engine, but it had a habit of slipping out of high gear. It was just a linkage problem, that I'm sure could have been easily fixed, but he found that a forked stick wedged between the dash and the gear shift lever worked fine. By the time I was eighteen, I had his fishing car and several of my friends to camp at the Poor Banks, and I'm sure they still remember the place. I haven't tried to get there in years, in fact, I think that the access road has been gated and posted. I have canoed the river between the two dams several times over the years, and its a beautiful trip. You can see Ospreys and Bald Eagles along the river, and in late summer the water is usually very clear. You have to be very careful in a canoe on the river, there are some small rapids and submerged rocks and fallen partially submerged tree trunks. The water is so swift that even in fairly shallow spots, you would not be able stand up if you capsized, and the banks are so steep and rough you would play hell getting out.
When I canoe the river, I always look for our campsite, but its rough and overgrown, and I can't find it from the boat.
Getting there was an adventure in itself. Highway 731 did not bridge the river just below the dam as it does now. We would take the Lilly bridge road to Hydro (the road to the power plant), and then, a few miles on we turned off onto an old logging road, pushing aside the brush and tree limbs that hid the entrance to the road. Once on the road, some of the foliage had been cut back by my dad and his buddies so that you could at least see the obstacles ahead. My dad had an early fifties Plymouth station wagon that had been used as a delivery car by his employer, until, when it was worn out, my dad bought it for a fishing car. The old car's clutch slipped when you showered down on the gas in high gear, but pulled fine in first and second. My dad, a mechanic, could have easily repaired the clutch, but he drove the car softly on the highway, and it never was much of an issue. The road in to the Poor Banks was a different story. There were a series of water filled elongated muddy pot holes that required a high speed running start to traverse them. My dad would pull up to one, and reconnoiter it as if he were in a canoe about to float a dangerous set of rapids. Then he would back up maybe a hundred feet or so, gun it in first gear, and with the engine whining hit the water like a stone skipping across a lake. We usually make it. On occasion, we would stop disappointingly short of our goal. Then it was jacks and poles and muddy feet. The last two hundred yards was down a steep slippery hillside to the campsite. There was no question about making it to the bottom, the ruts were so deep, he barely need to steer. The climb out was a whole nother story. The flat area that comprised our campsite became a runway for the liftoff up and over the hill. The old Plymouth's mud grip tires spewed mud and stones into a rooster tail out behind the car. It lurched and groaned as my dad sawed the steering wheel back and forth searching for the best traction. The progress became slower and slower until just as the car was about to bog down, we crested the hill. All this was usually achieved in one try, but when we failed, backing down the hill for a restart was butt puckering.
The campsite did not have the sense of permanence that my uncle Aurthur's camp at Whitney had, but it had all of the amenities. There were some benches and half picnic tables built out of lumber from a slab pile. There was a foot log over the steep banks of the small branch where it joined the river. Fifty yards up the creek which rose rapidly up the valley from the river, there was a natural rock pool where the caught cat fish swam until they were netted for dinner. The cat fish would be trapped for weeks in the little pool unless a heavy rain flooded the creek and they were reunited with the river. Just above this little pool, we obtained our water for drinking cooking and washing. It was most always clear and clean, straight off the lizzard's back as my father would say. In addition to the permanent fixtures of the camp there was the gear that was too bulky or too much trouble to take home every weekend. An axe, set hook poles, fire grate, all sorts of things were hidden up in the woods. This flat area that comprised our campsite extended downriver to a point where the creek entered the river. Here, when the turbines were spinning, the water was deep and a reverse eddy would slowly sweep my fishing rig counter clockwise from the downriver side of the creek, ark around just below my feet, and as it reached the upriver point, would be swept out into the current to repeat the process again. I could catch serious fish here, large bream and redbreast, an occasional cat fish, once or twice an eel.
The real fishing was done at night. A cane pole with a short line and medium sized hook was placed standing upright about every twenty five feet along the river for a half a mile or so. Along about dusk, my dad and his buddies would cross the foot log over the branch and follow the trail along side the river, baiting the hooks and sticking the poles out over the river side so that the baited hooks dangled in the water. Then every couple of hours through the night, they would walk the line of set hooks, and remove the caught fish. With a hundred or more poles set, by morning there would be plenty of fish to eat, take home, and to store in the pool if the fish weren't biting on a subsequent trip. Of course, there was plenty of time to drink before the poles were set and between trips to check them.
Bring too young to drink, I wasn't always brought along for these trips to the Poor Banks, so I only know about a few things that happened there.
I know that one year, my uncle Claude fell off the foot log and in climbing back up the bank, he got a case of Poison Ivy so severe that he had to be hospitalized. Another time, my dad came home with a bad cut on his neck which had been sewn up with fishing line. The snakes were bad. I never saw a rattle snake, but the copperheads were very common, and you had to watch your step when you walked the set hooks, and always watch where you put your hands or feet. We killed 13 copperheads one particularly warm Easter. Four of us walked right by a really big one beside the trail in broad daylight. My dad's little dog spotted it, jumped it, and killed it before he could be bitten. A dog will bite a snake and shake it like his life depends on it, which in this case it did.
One year my uncle John had been released from prison, and so far had been behaving himself. He camped with us on the river one week end in late summer. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time. Usually on Saturday, the turbines were spinning and the water was at full flow, but this particular Saturday the turbines were shut off and the water was low. This, by the way, was almost always the case on Sunday mornings. you could wade all the way across the river when it was low, and if the water was released through the turbines, you could actually hear it coming, and see the rising water a way up the river before it reached you. When you would first notice that the water was coming, you had five or ten minutes to get to shore before you were swept away. When the the water was low and you had not caught too many fish the night before, there was an opportunity for some discrete telephoning. With one person cranking, and a couple of people with nets, you could catch a sack full in just a little bit. There are a lot of fish in that river.
Usually the telephoning was done early on Sunday morning, on the theory that wildlife officials would not be out and about in their little plane. My uncle John, who was recklessly fearless (thus the prison time) and I (young and dumb) decided to go grabbling.
We waded out into the river with a burlap bag, and we would wade up to a big rock surrounded by water. the water was usually a foot or so deep around the rock. We would get on opposite sides of the rock, and submerged up to our chins, feel around for holes under the rock. There was almost always a hole on each side of the rock, and a water filled cavity underneath. There would usually be several catfish under each rock, ranging in size from ten inches to two feet in lenght. The trick was to move around very slowly with your hands, until you could pin the fish and get your thumb in its mouth and your fingers behind it's lateral fins and the horns on their leading edges. Then it was a simple matter to pull them out and put them in the sack. I'll admit that it wasn't like the Okie noodlers show on PBS, we didn't get up under the banks, or put our heads under the water. We never saw a snake when we were out away from the bank grabbling, but we would occasionally see a large eel with just its head under a rock. We weren't that crazy about eels, so we would by pass those rocks, there were plenty more. I don't think I could bring myself to go grabbling today. My uncle John hung around town for a while, until the rest of the family was glad to finally see him leave. He went to work on a shrimp boat down in Florida, and came home at Christmas either that year or the following. His best friend who he worked with came home with him, and they stayed at my Aunt's house for several weeks, with no madness or mayhem. A few weeks after he and his buddy went back to Florida, John was arrested for murdering this same fellow, and John served seven years for manslaughter. After he was released from prison this time, he went back to Florida to work. I don't remember him ever coming back to Concord.
My dad became very good friends with a black man who lived in Mt Gilead. He and his wife, Mayzel, and their kids would sometimes walk in from the road to fish, and would often eat with us. He lived in the country out side of town, and we rabbit hunted with him several times. My dad always referred to him as Nigger Bill, and I don't believe any offence was taken or intended. Bill named his youngest son after my dad. Things have changed.
My dad finally retired the old Plymouth, and got a newer model. This time it was a 56 Chevy panel wagon, also a cast off from where he worked. It ran fine, he had rebuilt the engine, but it had a habit of slipping out of high gear. It was just a linkage problem, that I'm sure could have been easily fixed, but he found that a forked stick wedged between the dash and the gear shift lever worked fine. By the time I was eighteen, I had his fishing car and several of my friends to camp at the Poor Banks, and I'm sure they still remember the place. I haven't tried to get there in years, in fact, I think that the access road has been gated and posted. I have canoed the river between the two dams several times over the years, and its a beautiful trip. You can see Ospreys and Bald Eagles along the river, and in late summer the water is usually very clear. You have to be very careful in a canoe on the river, there are some small rapids and submerged rocks and fallen partially submerged tree trunks. The water is so swift that even in fairly shallow spots, you would not be able stand up if you capsized, and the banks are so steep and rough you would play hell getting out.
When I canoe the river, I always look for our campsite, but its rough and overgrown, and I can't find it from the boat.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Fishing Stories, The "River"
My dad and my uncles loved to fish, drink, and hunt. For obvious reasons, they would not drink while they hunted, but no one ever got shot while fishing, so drinking while fishing was not only accepted, but expected as well. Fishing had the added bonus of being an excuse to be gone from home for the entire week end, as opposed to hunting which could only be done legally on Saturday.
They learned to hunt and fish from their father, an old time sportsman of the type that nearly depleted America of all fish and fowl. My grand father once told me how they would hunt Quail from astride mules with nets. The dogs would point, and the mules would walk to either side of the dog with the riders stretching a net between them. The mules, for what ever reason did not spook the quail. When the net was in place, the dog would be allowed to flush the quail, and they would become entrapped in the net. My dad told me how, as kids, on early spring nights, they would go into the cane breaks along Cold Water Creek with sticks, and beat the roosting Robins out of the canes. Its a wonder there is a Robin left in the whole world. I have personally never eaten a Robin, but would be willing, were they not protected songbirds. Another favorite past time handed down to my father was telephoning. For you PETF people, let me explain. Catfish have very sensitive whiskers that are used to help them locate food. These whiskers are in turn very sensitive to an electrical current. The trick here is to induce an electrical current strong enough to disorient the fish but not strong enough to disorient the men wading around in the water with nets, waiting to scoop up the electrified fish. May be the reader might remember the old time crank telephones that you might have seen on an early Andy Griffith show. These phones were not in use when I was young, but they were still plentiful. That crank that the caller would turn was attached to a powerful generator inside the box. These old telephones were robbed of their generators and cranks which were then mounted in their own little boxes with wires attached to them which were thrown out into the water. Thus: Telephoning. This activity had to be done very discretely, as, even in those days, it was illegal.
I didn't get to fish much with my dad and his buddies, I guess because I was too young to drink, and too much trouble for a drunken fisherman to keep an eye on. I did get to go on occasion, and here are a few things I remember. When I was around six or seven the fishing spot of choice was at Lilly Bridge on the Pee Dee river. The fishing trips were always referred to as going to the "river", not to Badin, or Tillery, or the Pee Dee, just the "river". This ambiguity helped protect my father and friends from bothersome emergencies like a death in the family or say, my mother going into labor. But I digress. I first learned to fish with a cane pole. It had a lenght of line about equal to the lenght of the pole, a tiny little gold plated hook, a small sinker, or "split shot", and one of those elongated red and white bobbers. I always fished with worms. I don't remember ever catching anything but bream about the size of my, at the time, very small hand. Later I graduated to a rod and reel, which was a big leap for me and a big sacrifice for my dad. Back then, there were no spinning reels, only baitcasters, that is, the kind of reel that has a spool mounted perpendicular to the lenght of the rod. When you cast this type of rod and reel, the trick is to keep your thumb lightly on the spool as the sinker and line flies through the air. Failure to maintain the proper pressure on the spool results in the spool spinning out of control and creating a tangle of line known as a backlash. I'll bet that at lot of younger people don't even realize that this is the origin of that word. Anyway, significant and frequent backlashes kept my dad busy, and resulted in the backlash of not being frequently invited back until I mastered the skill. A little side light. I remember there was a little store at Lilly Bridge. The building was small maybe twenty feet square, and it stocked the basics, crackers, sardines, pork and beans, bait, etc. The one thing that always stuck in my mind. They sold Vienna Sausage. I guess most people are still familiar with these things. They are the type of byproduct food that Upton Sinclair wrote about in "The Jungle". But these Vienna Sausage were special, the label read artificial Vienna Sausage. I wonder what they were made of.
We also fished at Whitney. This is at the upper end of Badin lake, just below the Tuckertown dam. To get there we would go North on 49 to east on 52, take a left at New London, and then a left onto the dirt road to Whitney. Its about a thirty mile trip from home. The reason I've given the directions, is not that I hope you go there, but to point out that when my dad was a child, his dad would load up the boys in the model T and go to Whitney to fish. At that time highway 49 had not been built, so they would go to Millingpoint on highway 73 which was paved, but then from Millingpoint on to Whitney, the roads were dirt, and, according to my uncle, they would have to stop several times each way to repair flat tires. They loved to fish.
There are several things I remember about Whitney. There were always about a dozen wooden rowboats chained to the trees along the river bank. They were flat bottomed, usually full of water, and must have weighed a ton. I never saw anyone go out in one. The banks were beaten bare to the red clay along them by fisherman walking along the shore, and camping on the river banks. One summer, I remember, there was a big cicada hatch, and there were thousands of round holes in the clay where the the cicada larva had metamorphosed and flown away.
I also remember that my dad's friend, Pete Dick(previously mentioned) and my uncle Arthur, and some other reprobates set up an extended stay camp along side one of the ponds impounded by the railroad tracks between the ponds and the river. They were living large. They had a couple of big old surplus army tents, some mattresses, a little dugout place in the branch to store excess fish they caught, and lots of whiskey. I think they ate fish every meal, small little catfish fried crispy so that you could crunch and eat the small bones. I think that the sheriff was finally forced to take action. I don't really know why, Whitney was so far back in the sticks in those days, I can't imagine who they might have offended.
Whitney and Lilly Bridge are just preludes to the main event, the "river" otherwise known as the "Poor Banks".
They learned to hunt and fish from their father, an old time sportsman of the type that nearly depleted America of all fish and fowl. My grand father once told me how they would hunt Quail from astride mules with nets. The dogs would point, and the mules would walk to either side of the dog with the riders stretching a net between them. The mules, for what ever reason did not spook the quail. When the net was in place, the dog would be allowed to flush the quail, and they would become entrapped in the net. My dad told me how, as kids, on early spring nights, they would go into the cane breaks along Cold Water Creek with sticks, and beat the roosting Robins out of the canes. Its a wonder there is a Robin left in the whole world. I have personally never eaten a Robin, but would be willing, were they not protected songbirds. Another favorite past time handed down to my father was telephoning. For you PETF people, let me explain. Catfish have very sensitive whiskers that are used to help them locate food. These whiskers are in turn very sensitive to an electrical current. The trick here is to induce an electrical current strong enough to disorient the fish but not strong enough to disorient the men wading around in the water with nets, waiting to scoop up the electrified fish. May be the reader might remember the old time crank telephones that you might have seen on an early Andy Griffith show. These phones were not in use when I was young, but they were still plentiful. That crank that the caller would turn was attached to a powerful generator inside the box. These old telephones were robbed of their generators and cranks which were then mounted in their own little boxes with wires attached to them which were thrown out into the water. Thus: Telephoning. This activity had to be done very discretely, as, even in those days, it was illegal.
I didn't get to fish much with my dad and his buddies, I guess because I was too young to drink, and too much trouble for a drunken fisherman to keep an eye on. I did get to go on occasion, and here are a few things I remember. When I was around six or seven the fishing spot of choice was at Lilly Bridge on the Pee Dee river. The fishing trips were always referred to as going to the "river", not to Badin, or Tillery, or the Pee Dee, just the "river". This ambiguity helped protect my father and friends from bothersome emergencies like a death in the family or say, my mother going into labor. But I digress. I first learned to fish with a cane pole. It had a lenght of line about equal to the lenght of the pole, a tiny little gold plated hook, a small sinker, or "split shot", and one of those elongated red and white bobbers. I always fished with worms. I don't remember ever catching anything but bream about the size of my, at the time, very small hand. Later I graduated to a rod and reel, which was a big leap for me and a big sacrifice for my dad. Back then, there were no spinning reels, only baitcasters, that is, the kind of reel that has a spool mounted perpendicular to the lenght of the rod. When you cast this type of rod and reel, the trick is to keep your thumb lightly on the spool as the sinker and line flies through the air. Failure to maintain the proper pressure on the spool results in the spool spinning out of control and creating a tangle of line known as a backlash. I'll bet that at lot of younger people don't even realize that this is the origin of that word. Anyway, significant and frequent backlashes kept my dad busy, and resulted in the backlash of not being frequently invited back until I mastered the skill. A little side light. I remember there was a little store at Lilly Bridge. The building was small maybe twenty feet square, and it stocked the basics, crackers, sardines, pork and beans, bait, etc. The one thing that always stuck in my mind. They sold Vienna Sausage. I guess most people are still familiar with these things. They are the type of byproduct food that Upton Sinclair wrote about in "The Jungle". But these Vienna Sausage were special, the label read artificial Vienna Sausage. I wonder what they were made of.
We also fished at Whitney. This is at the upper end of Badin lake, just below the Tuckertown dam. To get there we would go North on 49 to east on 52, take a left at New London, and then a left onto the dirt road to Whitney. Its about a thirty mile trip from home. The reason I've given the directions, is not that I hope you go there, but to point out that when my dad was a child, his dad would load up the boys in the model T and go to Whitney to fish. At that time highway 49 had not been built, so they would go to Millingpoint on highway 73 which was paved, but then from Millingpoint on to Whitney, the roads were dirt, and, according to my uncle, they would have to stop several times each way to repair flat tires. They loved to fish.
There are several things I remember about Whitney. There were always about a dozen wooden rowboats chained to the trees along the river bank. They were flat bottomed, usually full of water, and must have weighed a ton. I never saw anyone go out in one. The banks were beaten bare to the red clay along them by fisherman walking along the shore, and camping on the river banks. One summer, I remember, there was a big cicada hatch, and there were thousands of round holes in the clay where the the cicada larva had metamorphosed and flown away.
I also remember that my dad's friend, Pete Dick(previously mentioned) and my uncle Arthur, and some other reprobates set up an extended stay camp along side one of the ponds impounded by the railroad tracks between the ponds and the river. They were living large. They had a couple of big old surplus army tents, some mattresses, a little dugout place in the branch to store excess fish they caught, and lots of whiskey. I think they ate fish every meal, small little catfish fried crispy so that you could crunch and eat the small bones. I think that the sheriff was finally forced to take action. I don't really know why, Whitney was so far back in the sticks in those days, I can't imagine who they might have offended.
Whitney and Lilly Bridge are just preludes to the main event, the "river" otherwise known as the "Poor Banks".
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Lead Paint
Here's a serious topic that I hope everyone who owns a house built before 1978 or does any work on a house built before 1978 will read. In April of 2010, North Carolina adopted the new rules created by the EPA concerning renovations and painting of houses containing leap based paint.
If you want to read up on all the rules on this new requirement, just Google something like North Carolina Lead paint. You will find lots of sites discussing this subject, including the EPA and the North Carolina government site regulating this requirement.
Here are the basic requirements: Anyone responsible for renovations or painting on a house built before 1978 and disturbs an area of more than 6 square feet, or replaces a door or window, shall be certified and licensed by the state as a lead renovator. This includes general contractors, repairmen, painters, plumbers, electricians, heating and air companies, and landlords.
About 24% of houses built between 1960 and 1978 contain lead paint. It may be possible to test these houses in the areas being renovated, and determine that they do not contain lead, but this can only be done by the certified renovator. 69% of houses built between 1940 and 1960 contain lead, and 87% of homes built before 1940 contain lead. Essentially, you can assume that any renovation in a house built before 1960 will disturb lead paint and the renovations will need to be carried out in accordance with EPA regulations. The renovator is required to present the home owner with a pamphlet Entitled "Renovate Right" Which outlines the hazards of lead dust, and requires a sign off by the home owner.
The EPA estimates that the additional average repair cost will increase by about $45.00. This is insanely wrong. As a general contractor, I have performed many renovations in older homes that with these new regulations would have added thousands of dollars to the cost of the project.
The requirements require that lead paint be handled with about the same amount of caution as asbestos. The areas being renovated are to be completely isolated from the other parts of the home. An extensive cleanup is to be performed at the end of each day, with a wipe down test to be done only by the licensed individual, and if it fails, the cleanup is to be repeated. All debris is to be bagged and sealed. All dust shall be collected with hepa vacuums. These rules also involve OSHA in that complete worker protection must be provided. (Suits, masks, etc.)
The fines for noncompliance can be staggering. The EPA looks at sins of omission versus sins of co mission. If a renovator performs work and ignores the rules, or if the homeowner chooses to knowingly hire someone that is not licensed, the fines can be up to $32,500.00 per day. If a licensed renovator performs the work in good faith, but fails to meet all the requirements, the fines might be less. In addition, the homeowner might be subject to lawsuit by his neighbors for failing to properly protect them.
The EPA is right now relying on other homeowners and licensed renovators to rat out the violators. Consider what might happen if you get a price from three renovators and you award the job to the least expensive one and he does not carry out the proper requirements. Would you be surprised if one of the other renovators or painters with the proper license turned you in?
I am both a general contractor and an owner of a home built in 1922. I do over half my work in homes built before 1978. I've taken the course, and have been certified, but I have not yet applied for my license. I'm not sure that I will apply. I'm a sole proprietor, at the very least, I will need to incorporate to protect my assets from fines or lawsuits. I only have one employee, and the two of us would be hard put to get any actual work done, and perform the proper set up and clean up required each day. In addition, I, without question, will be competing against unlicensed renovators. Will I turn them in to protect my share of the business? Right now, after six months of the requirements implementation, and over a year of notification, there are less than ten licensed renovators in the county.
On the other side of the coin, what will happen to the value of my house, where most of my assets lie, after these regulations have been in effect for five or ten years, and people have become aware of the increased cost of owning an older home, and potential homeowners have been scared by the supposed dangers of lead in there homes.
I don't even believe that the regulations will protect the children they were designed for. Houses, and especially rental properties, will be allowed to deteriorate because of the increased cost to renovate. The paint will chip, and the kids will eat it.
I can only hope that home owners and renovators will become incensed over these rules, and demand repeal. I hope you all will read this and tell your friends and neighbors about it. Most people that I talk to about these regulations, both homeowners and renovators, seem unconcerned, but believe me, this is a disaster in the making.
If you want to read up on all the rules on this new requirement, just Google something like North Carolina Lead paint. You will find lots of sites discussing this subject, including the EPA and the North Carolina government site regulating this requirement.
Here are the basic requirements: Anyone responsible for renovations or painting on a house built before 1978 and disturbs an area of more than 6 square feet, or replaces a door or window, shall be certified and licensed by the state as a lead renovator. This includes general contractors, repairmen, painters, plumbers, electricians, heating and air companies, and landlords.
About 24% of houses built between 1960 and 1978 contain lead paint. It may be possible to test these houses in the areas being renovated, and determine that they do not contain lead, but this can only be done by the certified renovator. 69% of houses built between 1940 and 1960 contain lead, and 87% of homes built before 1940 contain lead. Essentially, you can assume that any renovation in a house built before 1960 will disturb lead paint and the renovations will need to be carried out in accordance with EPA regulations. The renovator is required to present the home owner with a pamphlet Entitled "Renovate Right" Which outlines the hazards of lead dust, and requires a sign off by the home owner.
The EPA estimates that the additional average repair cost will increase by about $45.00. This is insanely wrong. As a general contractor, I have performed many renovations in older homes that with these new regulations would have added thousands of dollars to the cost of the project.
The requirements require that lead paint be handled with about the same amount of caution as asbestos. The areas being renovated are to be completely isolated from the other parts of the home. An extensive cleanup is to be performed at the end of each day, with a wipe down test to be done only by the licensed individual, and if it fails, the cleanup is to be repeated. All debris is to be bagged and sealed. All dust shall be collected with hepa vacuums. These rules also involve OSHA in that complete worker protection must be provided. (Suits, masks, etc.)
The fines for noncompliance can be staggering. The EPA looks at sins of omission versus sins of co mission. If a renovator performs work and ignores the rules, or if the homeowner chooses to knowingly hire someone that is not licensed, the fines can be up to $32,500.00 per day. If a licensed renovator performs the work in good faith, but fails to meet all the requirements, the fines might be less. In addition, the homeowner might be subject to lawsuit by his neighbors for failing to properly protect them.
The EPA is right now relying on other homeowners and licensed renovators to rat out the violators. Consider what might happen if you get a price from three renovators and you award the job to the least expensive one and he does not carry out the proper requirements. Would you be surprised if one of the other renovators or painters with the proper license turned you in?
I am both a general contractor and an owner of a home built in 1922. I do over half my work in homes built before 1978. I've taken the course, and have been certified, but I have not yet applied for my license. I'm not sure that I will apply. I'm a sole proprietor, at the very least, I will need to incorporate to protect my assets from fines or lawsuits. I only have one employee, and the two of us would be hard put to get any actual work done, and perform the proper set up and clean up required each day. In addition, I, without question, will be competing against unlicensed renovators. Will I turn them in to protect my share of the business? Right now, after six months of the requirements implementation, and over a year of notification, there are less than ten licensed renovators in the county.
On the other side of the coin, what will happen to the value of my house, where most of my assets lie, after these regulations have been in effect for five or ten years, and people have become aware of the increased cost of owning an older home, and potential homeowners have been scared by the supposed dangers of lead in there homes.
I don't even believe that the regulations will protect the children they were designed for. Houses, and especially rental properties, will be allowed to deteriorate because of the increased cost to renovate. The paint will chip, and the kids will eat it.
I can only hope that home owners and renovators will become incensed over these rules, and demand repeal. I hope you all will read this and tell your friends and neighbors about it. Most people that I talk to about these regulations, both homeowners and renovators, seem unconcerned, but believe me, this is a disaster in the making.
Black Rock
It had been twenty years since I last hiked to my favorite place in the smokies. With surprisingly little cajoling, I got my wife up at five o'clock yesterday morning, and we headed to the mountains.
Blackrock is as spot that is infrequently visited, but is often observed by travelers to Sylva, North Carolina. As you drive into Sylva from Waynesville, a ridge towers over the town to your right. This ridge is known as the Plott Balsams, and at nearly the highest point as you walk down the ridge starting at Water Rock Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway, you come to Black Rock. It is a rock formation as big as a small house that sits atop of the mountain. You make way the last 50 yards through a Laural hell, and then step up onto the top of the world.
Below and to your right, you see the town of Sylva, and in the distance, Webster and Cullowhee. Turn 180 degrees, and you see the deep wooded valley that drops down to Cherokee. As you scan the horizon, first looking back from your starting point, you can see many of the most well known peaks in the smokies. To the east, away in the distance you see the steep peak of Mt Pisgah with its tower on top. Scanning from there you see Richland Balsam, the highest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Then, farther to the south, Whitesides and Scaly Mountain, and to the west, Standing Indian. To the North You see Clingmans Dome, the chiseled sides of Mt Leconte, then Mt Guyot, and the high pastures of Cattaloochee.
My first trip to Black Rock was a real adventure. There was no trail guide available, in fact, there was no real trail. My friend Mickey and I arrived at Water Rock Knob late on a fall afternoon in the early seventies. I had a topo map and a compass, and a vague idea of which way to go. Following a wooded ridge seems like no brain er from the perspective of a map, but not so simple in reality. We crossed the parkway and stepped into the woods, following a faint trail up the hill. When we came out onto the brushy side of Yellow Face, trouble and twilight began. It was early in the fall, and frost had not killed and beat down brambles. They were head high and obscured any sign of a trail. We camped on a slope so steep that we had to push upright sticks into the ground to keep from sliding down into the fire in our sleeping bags.
We awoke the next morning stiff, but determined to continue our trek. Let me point out that the distance from Water Rock Knob to Black Rock is only about two and one half miles as the crow flies, and we had already spent several hours wandering around on what would be a forty five minute walk up Union Street. After a good deal of fumbling around with the map and compass, we got our bearings and headed on out the ridge line. We only got seriously lost one more time. This time we came to a wide heavily wooded gap were the slope we were facing was covered in blow downs which obscured the trail, and made walking difficult. We bushwhacked our way up the slope, and finally came out on the knife edged ridge that leads the rest of the way to Black Rock.
This ridge is truly spectacular. Huge boulders are stacked and balanced along the ridge top as if placed by some gigantic hand. We made our way up, over, and around these obstacles until we came to the Laural slick that leads up to the main attraction. This slick was so thick, that you could not stand upright, but instead, we crouched and crawled, following a path created by a small man or some four legged animal.
We came out into the bright sunshine atop of the rock. A golden day, the maples, poplars, and oaks below reflected the sunlight. Just below us the scattered blueberry bushes were bright red among the waxy green Laural bushes. A raven soared just above us, and a hawk glided along below. We spent the remainder of the day perched on top of that rock, and, even though there was not a level spot on the entire rock, we rolled out our sleeping bags and spent the night there as well. A beautiful but hard bed, the stars above, and the distant lights of Sylva made up for the discomfort. The next morning we woke on a sunny island in the middle of a sea of fog. Below us the valleys of Scotts Creek, and the Tuskaseegee river were immersed in fog, probably as a result of the smokestacks of the Meade Paper plant at Sylva. Back then, Meade Paper made Sylva a dismal and smelly town, as evidenced from the backstreet scene in the movie Deliverance, but at least on this day, Meade redeemed itself by creating the view that we witnessed.
I made a lot of trips to Black Rock during the seventies and eighties, with friends and wives, and my son. All of the trips are memorable, though not always as beautiful. Three friends and myself hiked in from Fisher Creek one January, in snow that became so deep that we could not make it all the way to the summit. We camped on a logging road below the peak in at least thirty inches of snow and temperatures that dipped close to zero. A wild and windy, fearful night. The next morning we put on our frozen boots and , thankfully, got the hell out of there.
I was camped on the rock late one afternoon when the Hennessee Lumber Mill caught on fire way below us down in the valley. We watched the fire trucks make their futile way up Scotts Creek from Sylva. The smoke rose up thick from the fire below, and we paranoidly wondered if the whole mountain would catch fire.
I learned to camp just below the next rock down the ridge where there was a level spot on the ground. After a grueling search for water on the slopes below, we found a spring that we had passed in a little switch back of the trail less than a hundred yards below the ridge. Next trip, and there after, I carried an eighteen inch lenght of plastic pipe to insert into the spring and create a drip of fresh water we could catch in our canteens.
I took my new wife to Black Rock with promises of bright stars and beautiful vistas, and we hiked in drizzle, and woke up in fog and freezing rain.
This trip was better, we did not camp. My years, and my knees don't let me carry a forty pound pack up and down the mountains. If I had proposed a camping trip, it would have been a solo trek, my wife and friends have become leery of "Eudy Adventures". The hike was tough enough with just a small day pack and a stick. The trail has been somewhat cleared, and marked, but it's a lot more strenuous than I remembered. That short two and one half mile walk took two hours in and two and one half out. The sun was bright and warm. Although the leaves were slightly past their peak, it was a beautiful day. We met several other hikers on the trip in, and there were about ten people on the rock when we got there. There was plenty of room for all of us, and I'm actually glad to see that more people are aware of this unique place.
We set on the rock, ate some cheese and salami, and drank some wine. (Traditional fare for a trip to Black rock.) After an hour or so we started out hike out, and arrived at the car, worn slap out. We took the Park Way back to Asheville, ate dinner at the Pisgah inn on the way, and made it home by about ten last night. A long day, but one of the best.
Blackrock is as spot that is infrequently visited, but is often observed by travelers to Sylva, North Carolina. As you drive into Sylva from Waynesville, a ridge towers over the town to your right. This ridge is known as the Plott Balsams, and at nearly the highest point as you walk down the ridge starting at Water Rock Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway, you come to Black Rock. It is a rock formation as big as a small house that sits atop of the mountain. You make way the last 50 yards through a Laural hell, and then step up onto the top of the world.
Below and to your right, you see the town of Sylva, and in the distance, Webster and Cullowhee. Turn 180 degrees, and you see the deep wooded valley that drops down to Cherokee. As you scan the horizon, first looking back from your starting point, you can see many of the most well known peaks in the smokies. To the east, away in the distance you see the steep peak of Mt Pisgah with its tower on top. Scanning from there you see Richland Balsam, the highest point on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Then, farther to the south, Whitesides and Scaly Mountain, and to the west, Standing Indian. To the North You see Clingmans Dome, the chiseled sides of Mt Leconte, then Mt Guyot, and the high pastures of Cattaloochee.
My first trip to Black Rock was a real adventure. There was no trail guide available, in fact, there was no real trail. My friend Mickey and I arrived at Water Rock Knob late on a fall afternoon in the early seventies. I had a topo map and a compass, and a vague idea of which way to go. Following a wooded ridge seems like no brain er from the perspective of a map, but not so simple in reality. We crossed the parkway and stepped into the woods, following a faint trail up the hill. When we came out onto the brushy side of Yellow Face, trouble and twilight began. It was early in the fall, and frost had not killed and beat down brambles. They were head high and obscured any sign of a trail. We camped on a slope so steep that we had to push upright sticks into the ground to keep from sliding down into the fire in our sleeping bags.
We awoke the next morning stiff, but determined to continue our trek. Let me point out that the distance from Water Rock Knob to Black Rock is only about two and one half miles as the crow flies, and we had already spent several hours wandering around on what would be a forty five minute walk up Union Street. After a good deal of fumbling around with the map and compass, we got our bearings and headed on out the ridge line. We only got seriously lost one more time. This time we came to a wide heavily wooded gap were the slope we were facing was covered in blow downs which obscured the trail, and made walking difficult. We bushwhacked our way up the slope, and finally came out on the knife edged ridge that leads the rest of the way to Black Rock.
This ridge is truly spectacular. Huge boulders are stacked and balanced along the ridge top as if placed by some gigantic hand. We made our way up, over, and around these obstacles until we came to the Laural slick that leads up to the main attraction. This slick was so thick, that you could not stand upright, but instead, we crouched and crawled, following a path created by a small man or some four legged animal.
We came out into the bright sunshine atop of the rock. A golden day, the maples, poplars, and oaks below reflected the sunlight. Just below us the scattered blueberry bushes were bright red among the waxy green Laural bushes. A raven soared just above us, and a hawk glided along below. We spent the remainder of the day perched on top of that rock, and, even though there was not a level spot on the entire rock, we rolled out our sleeping bags and spent the night there as well. A beautiful but hard bed, the stars above, and the distant lights of Sylva made up for the discomfort. The next morning we woke on a sunny island in the middle of a sea of fog. Below us the valleys of Scotts Creek, and the Tuskaseegee river were immersed in fog, probably as a result of the smokestacks of the Meade Paper plant at Sylva. Back then, Meade Paper made Sylva a dismal and smelly town, as evidenced from the backstreet scene in the movie Deliverance, but at least on this day, Meade redeemed itself by creating the view that we witnessed.
I made a lot of trips to Black Rock during the seventies and eighties, with friends and wives, and my son. All of the trips are memorable, though not always as beautiful. Three friends and myself hiked in from Fisher Creek one January, in snow that became so deep that we could not make it all the way to the summit. We camped on a logging road below the peak in at least thirty inches of snow and temperatures that dipped close to zero. A wild and windy, fearful night. The next morning we put on our frozen boots and , thankfully, got the hell out of there.
I was camped on the rock late one afternoon when the Hennessee Lumber Mill caught on fire way below us down in the valley. We watched the fire trucks make their futile way up Scotts Creek from Sylva. The smoke rose up thick from the fire below, and we paranoidly wondered if the whole mountain would catch fire.
I learned to camp just below the next rock down the ridge where there was a level spot on the ground. After a grueling search for water on the slopes below, we found a spring that we had passed in a little switch back of the trail less than a hundred yards below the ridge. Next trip, and there after, I carried an eighteen inch lenght of plastic pipe to insert into the spring and create a drip of fresh water we could catch in our canteens.
I took my new wife to Black Rock with promises of bright stars and beautiful vistas, and we hiked in drizzle, and woke up in fog and freezing rain.
This trip was better, we did not camp. My years, and my knees don't let me carry a forty pound pack up and down the mountains. If I had proposed a camping trip, it would have been a solo trek, my wife and friends have become leery of "Eudy Adventures". The hike was tough enough with just a small day pack and a stick. The trail has been somewhat cleared, and marked, but it's a lot more strenuous than I remembered. That short two and one half mile walk took two hours in and two and one half out. The sun was bright and warm. Although the leaves were slightly past their peak, it was a beautiful day. We met several other hikers on the trip in, and there were about ten people on the rock when we got there. There was plenty of room for all of us, and I'm actually glad to see that more people are aware of this unique place.
We set on the rock, ate some cheese and salami, and drank some wine. (Traditional fare for a trip to Black rock.) After an hour or so we started out hike out, and arrived at the car, worn slap out. We took the Park Way back to Asheville, ate dinner at the Pisgah inn on the way, and made it home by about ten last night. A long day, but one of the best.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Fishing Stories - Pete
My dad had a fishing buddy named Pete Dick. His name was not nearly as unfortunate as that of Pete's brother, Green. I don't know what nick names people gave to their penises back when Pete was born, but I suspect that dick was not one of them. Or maybe Green's parents enjoyed cruel irony. I looked in the phone book to see how many Dicks I would insult by this story, and I found that there were only a few left in the area, although their were a good many sons of Dick. But this story is not about names or dicks, it is about Pete.
What Pete was, was a drunk. Not a garden variety steady drinking, hard to tell when drunk, drunk like my dad; Pete was a spectacular binge drinker. He would stay completely sober for any where from three months to a year, then fall off the wagon, and stay dead drunk for two or three weeks. During the drunken episodes, he did not work, and if he ate, it was very little. He would emerge from his drunken state, thin and haggard, with a three week growth of beard, clean himself up, go back to Lock mill, and resume work. Apparently Lock Mill had a very lenient absentee policy.
Pete would also emerge from drunkenness completely broke. In my earliest memories of Pete, he lived at Lock Hall. This was a big, three story boarding house that stood right across Church Street from the Lock Mill office, on the property where Danny's is located now. Once, after Lock Hall closed down, I went into the building through an unlocked window. Up on the third floor, I found the fire escape. It consisted of a window and a big thick rope that you could throw out of the window. I guess, in case of fire, it was more effective than tying bed sheets together, but not by much. I cut loose the rope and took it home; It made a great swing. Later, after Lock Hall closed down, he moved down the street to another house where he rented a room. Sometimes when he was on a drunk, he would become an inhabitant of "Tick City". This was the wooded area east of Church Street where McCachern Blvd. is now. Tick City was off limits to normal people and children like myself, so I never actually visited it. Back then, Concord was dry, and some times the drunks would resort to drinking a high alcohol aftershave called Polly Peach. My dad said the ground was littered with thousands of the little bottles about the size and shape of a Texas Pete bottle. I suspect that you could perform a little archeological dig in the woods along the greenway and still find some of these little bottles. I guess Polly Peach went well with a Sundrop chaser. Speaking of chasers, I don't remember anyone of my dad's generation ever mixing any kind of alcohoic drink, they drank it straight with a "chaser". The equivalent of a shot and a beer.
Because of his unfortunate drinking habit, Pete didn't have anything. He didn't drive or have a car, a wife, or house. He had one rod and reel, and one double barreled shot gun. I guess he had a variety of clothing, but his clothes were unremarkable, at least to me. When my dad would pick Pete up to go hunting, he would come out the door with his shot gun, and if dad picked him up to go fishing, he would come out with his rod and reel, nothing else, regardless of the number of days they might be gone.
Pete was a good bit older than my dad, so the drinking had its ultimate effect on Pete before it did my dad. I think the binge drinking was the equivalent of being hit in the head with a sledge hammer four times a year as opposed to a light tap on the scull with a claw hammer every Saturday night. Pete finally got to the DT's stage, and was thrown out of his boarding house for starting a camp fire in the middle of his bedroom floor. His sister in Albemarle volunteered to take Pete in. There were two unfortunate results of this charity. His drinking hobby was completely curtailed, and according to my dad, when Pete died, his worst nightmare was implemented. Pete had a morbid fear of having his body donated to science and hung in some lab suspended by tongs in his ears.
What Pete was, was a drunk. Not a garden variety steady drinking, hard to tell when drunk, drunk like my dad; Pete was a spectacular binge drinker. He would stay completely sober for any where from three months to a year, then fall off the wagon, and stay dead drunk for two or three weeks. During the drunken episodes, he did not work, and if he ate, it was very little. He would emerge from his drunken state, thin and haggard, with a three week growth of beard, clean himself up, go back to Lock mill, and resume work. Apparently Lock Mill had a very lenient absentee policy.
Pete would also emerge from drunkenness completely broke. In my earliest memories of Pete, he lived at Lock Hall. This was a big, three story boarding house that stood right across Church Street from the Lock Mill office, on the property where Danny's is located now. Once, after Lock Hall closed down, I went into the building through an unlocked window. Up on the third floor, I found the fire escape. It consisted of a window and a big thick rope that you could throw out of the window. I guess, in case of fire, it was more effective than tying bed sheets together, but not by much. I cut loose the rope and took it home; It made a great swing. Later, after Lock Hall closed down, he moved down the street to another house where he rented a room. Sometimes when he was on a drunk, he would become an inhabitant of "Tick City". This was the wooded area east of Church Street where McCachern Blvd. is now. Tick City was off limits to normal people and children like myself, so I never actually visited it. Back then, Concord was dry, and some times the drunks would resort to drinking a high alcohol aftershave called Polly Peach. My dad said the ground was littered with thousands of the little bottles about the size and shape of a Texas Pete bottle. I suspect that you could perform a little archeological dig in the woods along the greenway and still find some of these little bottles. I guess Polly Peach went well with a Sundrop chaser. Speaking of chasers, I don't remember anyone of my dad's generation ever mixing any kind of alcohoic drink, they drank it straight with a "chaser". The equivalent of a shot and a beer.
Because of his unfortunate drinking habit, Pete didn't have anything. He didn't drive or have a car, a wife, or house. He had one rod and reel, and one double barreled shot gun. I guess he had a variety of clothing, but his clothes were unremarkable, at least to me. When my dad would pick Pete up to go hunting, he would come out the door with his shot gun, and if dad picked him up to go fishing, he would come out with his rod and reel, nothing else, regardless of the number of days they might be gone.
Pete was a good bit older than my dad, so the drinking had its ultimate effect on Pete before it did my dad. I think the binge drinking was the equivalent of being hit in the head with a sledge hammer four times a year as opposed to a light tap on the scull with a claw hammer every Saturday night. Pete finally got to the DT's stage, and was thrown out of his boarding house for starting a camp fire in the middle of his bedroom floor. His sister in Albemarle volunteered to take Pete in. There were two unfortunate results of this charity. His drinking hobby was completely curtailed, and according to my dad, when Pete died, his worst nightmare was implemented. Pete had a morbid fear of having his body donated to science and hung in some lab suspended by tongs in his ears.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Immigration
I'm going to surprise all of you who think I am the worlds biggest liberal. I just finished a book called "Little Bee" (A nice couple of hours after "Infinite Jest"), about a young Nigerian girl who stows away on a freighter to Great Britain to escape political strife. It's a sad, heart warming and ultimately heart rendering story about this girl's quest for freedom, and Great Britain's draconian immigration policies. The book reminds me of "Tortilla Curtain", another book with similar overtones, about a poor Mexican family trying to make it as illegals in Los Angeles.
I can't blame anyone for trying to escape the tyranny or poverty of their respective countries, they are only doing what anyone with a sense of self-preservation would try to do. If I lived in some third world hell hole, I hope I would try to escape myself. I do blame the corrupt and greedy governments that do very little, if anything, to improve the conditions of the citizens in most of these countries. And I blame countries with progressive governments, for self serving actions that have allowed these conditions to exist. And, yes I include the United States in that last statement. Anti communism, United Fruit, the Panama Canal, drug wars, Batista, Castro, Allende, Haiti, you name the place or cause, we've meddled. And a lot of that meddling has been solely for our national interests, regardless of the impact on the common people who live in these places.
I am pragmatic enough to understand that countries do have national interests. It is in Mexico's national interest to use the United states as a safety valve for it's poor, underclass population. Migration to the United States brings hard currency to Mexico, while removing a segment of the population that might foment unrest or even revolution in their home country. No matter how sympathetic we are towards these poor and oppressed immigrants, it is not in our nation's best interest to allow this to continue. There are over one half of a billion people in Latin and South America, and over one hundred million people in Mexico alone. The United States cannot possibly absorb even a small portion of the vast numbers of these people looking for a better life.
There are already between thirteen and sixteen million illegal immigrants from Latin and South America in the USA. They cannot be allowed to stay here. If we allow them to assimilate into the United States, and become citizens, their political influence will assure that the floodgates of Hispanic immigration will open. Here's something that strikes me about this whole Hispanic Immigration issue. The Hispanic immigrants in the United States only have one Grand Falloon in common, That is, their common language, Spanish. By encouraging bilingualism in the United States, we have reinforced the united front that Hispanic People put forth to block reasonable immigration control. Here are a few of my arguments for controlling our borders.
I would say that any Mexican with any sense of history believes (and rightfully so), that the entire US southwest and California was stolen from Mexico, and that in an ideal world, this territory should be reunited with Mexico. With the incredible increases of Hispanic population in these areas, how long will it be until there is a movement to reunite these states with Mexico. I know this sounds far fetched, and I risk losing credibility by saying it, but long term, if there is a serious tear in our national fabric, this is one of the fault lines upon which our nation would divide.
The illegal immigrant labor force is stealing American jobs. Don't tell me they are taking jobs that Americans don't want. That is a lie perpetuated by greedy Americans that don't want to pay other Americans a living wage. I'm in the construction business, and I've seen how it works. An American contractor hires a few Spanish speaking employees, soon he finds one who can speak English well enough to take instructions, and then before long, potential English speaking American employees are passed over for other Hispanic workers. Blacks should be rioting in the streets over this practice. From what I have seen, it is nearly impossible for a young black under educated man to get a decent job in this country. Blacks have been stereotyped as lazy, undependable, and dishonest, while Hispanics are considered hardworking trouble free employees. Of course one of the big reasons the Hispanics are hardworking and trouble free, is that if they are illegal, they are really at the mercy of their employers. If illegals were not here, Blacks and whites would be sought out to fill these jobs. They might not be quite as pliable as the illegal immigrants, but employers would make do.
I don't believe that we need illegal immigrants to do our work for us. They don't do the necessary labor, they perform the luxury labor. Here's what I mean. The industries that employ illegals include the following: Agriculture, Construction, meat processing (poultry, beef, pork, chicken.), and service(restaurant, hotel, landscaping etc.). There are others, but you will see where I'm headed with this.
In agriculture, farmers have taken the luxury of using illegal laborers to pick their crops instead of investing in capital improvements and innovations that would have allowed the use of less manpower. They have widely used illegal labor, even though there are workers available through the H2B visa program. I've read that only about fifty thousand workers are employed through the H2B system. Farmers have discovered that it is cheaper, their is less red tape, and they do not have to provide adequate facilities if illegals are used.
In construction, the average size of a new home has doubled since the nineteen seventies, aided to a great extent by the use of illegal workers.
Today, we have the luxury of eating almost twice the amount of meat we consumed in the nineteen fifties. I've read that is takes about nine pounds of grain to produce one pound of poultry, so, our increase in meat consumption indirectly causes an increase in grain consumption. The availability if cheap foreign labor has kept meat and poultry cost low so that we eat much more than is good for us or our environment.
And then there is the luxury of service. How many of our families had landscaping services in the fifties and sixties? How often did we eat out, or travel or have our houses cleaned.
All of these things I've mentioned are luxuries that we could cut back on or do without if we did not have illegal labor keeping the cost low.
Even though the direct labor costs are lower by using illegal labor, the indirect costs, which we all pay, but do not see, are squeezing us dry. Just look at our costs for providing services for the illegals. Health care, schools, social programs, crime, these are all costs that we as individual taxpayers are paying, while the employers are getting off scot free. And there is the cost to provide these same services to American workers who are displaced by the illegals.
We don't need to build fences or increase border patrols to stop illegals from crossing our borders, what we have to implement is attrition by enforcement. We as a country have to make it nearly impossible for employers and individuals to hire illegals. Here's what we need to do.
Employers must be required to check the national registry for proper documentation immediately upon hiring any employee. Right now, the immediate check of employees is voluntary. None of this business of filling out and sending in a form, which comes back six months later, from some government bureaucrat, saying that Jose's social security number does not match his name. "Please check and resubmit the proper documentation". Enforce the laws that define a subcontractor versus an employee, so that the employer cannot mail out a 1099 form to some bogus address, and then wash his hands of the matter. Strictly enforce laws prohibiting individuals from hiring labor under the table. Make employers and individuals subject to fines and or imprisonment so steep that no company or individual would dare take the chance of hiring an illegal. Without jobs, most illegals would have to go home. If these laws were enforced, no company would have a labor cost advantage over any other company. As things stand now, companies that want to hire American workers are at a competitive disadvantage, and are often forced to break the laws to compete.
Okay, there is my shockingly right wing stance on immigration. My apologies to all of the perfectly fine Hispanic illegals out there who just had the bad luck to be born poor in a third world country. As Bill Clinton characterized Bush's compassionate conservatism: "I'd really like to help, but I just can't, I just can't."
I can't blame anyone for trying to escape the tyranny or poverty of their respective countries, they are only doing what anyone with a sense of self-preservation would try to do. If I lived in some third world hell hole, I hope I would try to escape myself. I do blame the corrupt and greedy governments that do very little, if anything, to improve the conditions of the citizens in most of these countries. And I blame countries with progressive governments, for self serving actions that have allowed these conditions to exist. And, yes I include the United States in that last statement. Anti communism, United Fruit, the Panama Canal, drug wars, Batista, Castro, Allende, Haiti, you name the place or cause, we've meddled. And a lot of that meddling has been solely for our national interests, regardless of the impact on the common people who live in these places.
I am pragmatic enough to understand that countries do have national interests. It is in Mexico's national interest to use the United states as a safety valve for it's poor, underclass population. Migration to the United States brings hard currency to Mexico, while removing a segment of the population that might foment unrest or even revolution in their home country. No matter how sympathetic we are towards these poor and oppressed immigrants, it is not in our nation's best interest to allow this to continue. There are over one half of a billion people in Latin and South America, and over one hundred million people in Mexico alone. The United States cannot possibly absorb even a small portion of the vast numbers of these people looking for a better life.
There are already between thirteen and sixteen million illegal immigrants from Latin and South America in the USA. They cannot be allowed to stay here. If we allow them to assimilate into the United States, and become citizens, their political influence will assure that the floodgates of Hispanic immigration will open. Here's something that strikes me about this whole Hispanic Immigration issue. The Hispanic immigrants in the United States only have one Grand Falloon in common, That is, their common language, Spanish. By encouraging bilingualism in the United States, we have reinforced the united front that Hispanic People put forth to block reasonable immigration control. Here are a few of my arguments for controlling our borders.
I would say that any Mexican with any sense of history believes (and rightfully so), that the entire US southwest and California was stolen from Mexico, and that in an ideal world, this territory should be reunited with Mexico. With the incredible increases of Hispanic population in these areas, how long will it be until there is a movement to reunite these states with Mexico. I know this sounds far fetched, and I risk losing credibility by saying it, but long term, if there is a serious tear in our national fabric, this is one of the fault lines upon which our nation would divide.
The illegal immigrant labor force is stealing American jobs. Don't tell me they are taking jobs that Americans don't want. That is a lie perpetuated by greedy Americans that don't want to pay other Americans a living wage. I'm in the construction business, and I've seen how it works. An American contractor hires a few Spanish speaking employees, soon he finds one who can speak English well enough to take instructions, and then before long, potential English speaking American employees are passed over for other Hispanic workers. Blacks should be rioting in the streets over this practice. From what I have seen, it is nearly impossible for a young black under educated man to get a decent job in this country. Blacks have been stereotyped as lazy, undependable, and dishonest, while Hispanics are considered hardworking trouble free employees. Of course one of the big reasons the Hispanics are hardworking and trouble free, is that if they are illegal, they are really at the mercy of their employers. If illegals were not here, Blacks and whites would be sought out to fill these jobs. They might not be quite as pliable as the illegal immigrants, but employers would make do.
I don't believe that we need illegal immigrants to do our work for us. They don't do the necessary labor, they perform the luxury labor. Here's what I mean. The industries that employ illegals include the following: Agriculture, Construction, meat processing (poultry, beef, pork, chicken.), and service(restaurant, hotel, landscaping etc.). There are others, but you will see where I'm headed with this.
In agriculture, farmers have taken the luxury of using illegal laborers to pick their crops instead of investing in capital improvements and innovations that would have allowed the use of less manpower. They have widely used illegal labor, even though there are workers available through the H2B visa program. I've read that only about fifty thousand workers are employed through the H2B system. Farmers have discovered that it is cheaper, their is less red tape, and they do not have to provide adequate facilities if illegals are used.
In construction, the average size of a new home has doubled since the nineteen seventies, aided to a great extent by the use of illegal workers.
Today, we have the luxury of eating almost twice the amount of meat we consumed in the nineteen fifties. I've read that is takes about nine pounds of grain to produce one pound of poultry, so, our increase in meat consumption indirectly causes an increase in grain consumption. The availability if cheap foreign labor has kept meat and poultry cost low so that we eat much more than is good for us or our environment.
And then there is the luxury of service. How many of our families had landscaping services in the fifties and sixties? How often did we eat out, or travel or have our houses cleaned.
All of these things I've mentioned are luxuries that we could cut back on or do without if we did not have illegal labor keeping the cost low.
Even though the direct labor costs are lower by using illegal labor, the indirect costs, which we all pay, but do not see, are squeezing us dry. Just look at our costs for providing services for the illegals. Health care, schools, social programs, crime, these are all costs that we as individual taxpayers are paying, while the employers are getting off scot free. And there is the cost to provide these same services to American workers who are displaced by the illegals.
We don't need to build fences or increase border patrols to stop illegals from crossing our borders, what we have to implement is attrition by enforcement. We as a country have to make it nearly impossible for employers and individuals to hire illegals. Here's what we need to do.
Employers must be required to check the national registry for proper documentation immediately upon hiring any employee. Right now, the immediate check of employees is voluntary. None of this business of filling out and sending in a form, which comes back six months later, from some government bureaucrat, saying that Jose's social security number does not match his name. "Please check and resubmit the proper documentation". Enforce the laws that define a subcontractor versus an employee, so that the employer cannot mail out a 1099 form to some bogus address, and then wash his hands of the matter. Strictly enforce laws prohibiting individuals from hiring labor under the table. Make employers and individuals subject to fines and or imprisonment so steep that no company or individual would dare take the chance of hiring an illegal. Without jobs, most illegals would have to go home. If these laws were enforced, no company would have a labor cost advantage over any other company. As things stand now, companies that want to hire American workers are at a competitive disadvantage, and are often forced to break the laws to compete.
Okay, there is my shockingly right wing stance on immigration. My apologies to all of the perfectly fine Hispanic illegals out there who just had the bad luck to be born poor in a third world country. As Bill Clinton characterized Bush's compassionate conservatism: "I'd really like to help, but I just can't, I just can't."
Health Care
The health care bill passed the house less than twenty four hours ago, and already I'm seeing a whole new wave of people who have lost their ability to think. Yes, government health care is a form of socialism, so what! So is Social Security, Medicare, public schools, libraries, the post office, our highway system, our sewer and water systems, you name it, the government is involved in all types of social programs for the common good of all its citizens. It is naive to think that our modern society can exist with out these programs. And it is naive to think that we as a nation can continue on our current path with regards to health care without government intervention.
Here's the bottom line. In the United States the total cost of health care for every man, woman and child is currently over $13,000.00 each per year. The rest of the modern industrialized world spends less than half of that amount on health care, and the savings are achieved through government run or regulated universal health care. In these countries, every one is covered, there are no medical bankruptcies, and people do not go to emergency rooms because there is no other care available to them. Yes, they sometimes have to wait for elective surgery, but so do we. Depending on the country and the circumstances, there may be some triage based upon your age and condition, but in this country we have the cruelest triage of all; You can get any surgery you want if you can pay for it. For all the money we spend, we are not any healthier for it, our infant mortality rates and our longevity lags well behind countries with universal health care. And, all of this wonderful health care we are so proud of is costing each us an extra six thousand dollars a year. Stop and think what that six thousand represents. That is money that could be spent on roads, schools, libraries, and things that would improve our individual lives.
Of course, most of us never see the thirteen thousand a year come out of our own wallets, and that is the big problem. Our employers, or the government picks up most of the tab. Even if we are self insured, the insurance Ponzi scheme hides the true cost of our health care until we are old or sick enough that they jack up our premiums and try to drive us out of the system, and let the government pay for our care, or in so many cases, we have to do without.
Here's what will happen if we don't take steps toward universal government run health care. Health care costs will continue to rise, Insurance premiums will rise in response. More and more people will drop their insurance, and more and more employers will drop employee coverage, or increase the employee share of the burden. As people and employers drop out of insurance coverage, the premium pool for the insurance companies will become smaller, and they will raise rates for the rest of us who are trying to hold on to our insurance. Sick people without insurance will crowd the hospital emergency rooms, lose there savings, jobs, and homes, or stick the government with more costs, which the taxpayers will bear. This will continue until the entire system collapses, and then where will the world's greatest health care system be? If you don't believe this, take a look at California, where rates for individuals who buy their on health insurance coverage have seen their rates increase by 29% in the last year as younger people and unemployed or underemployed people have dropped their insurance, leaving a smaller and sicker pool to pay the premiums.
There are really four types of people who are against government run health care, and three of the four have one thing in common. They all currently have health insurance coverage and they believe that any change to the system will adversely affect them. They are the people on medicare (a social program), people who are insured by their employers (don't bet on that continuing), and people who are wealthy enough to believe they can afford private insurance coverage no matter what happens (don't bet on that either). There's a forth group also, and it includes most of the people in the first three groups. These are the people that would rather spout some worn out cliche about socialism, or liberals, or President Obama, than stop and do some serious thinking.
Here's the bottom line. In the United States the total cost of health care for every man, woman and child is currently over $13,000.00 each per year. The rest of the modern industrialized world spends less than half of that amount on health care, and the savings are achieved through government run or regulated universal health care. In these countries, every one is covered, there are no medical bankruptcies, and people do not go to emergency rooms because there is no other care available to them. Yes, they sometimes have to wait for elective surgery, but so do we. Depending on the country and the circumstances, there may be some triage based upon your age and condition, but in this country we have the cruelest triage of all; You can get any surgery you want if you can pay for it. For all the money we spend, we are not any healthier for it, our infant mortality rates and our longevity lags well behind countries with universal health care. And, all of this wonderful health care we are so proud of is costing each us an extra six thousand dollars a year. Stop and think what that six thousand represents. That is money that could be spent on roads, schools, libraries, and things that would improve our individual lives.
Of course, most of us never see the thirteen thousand a year come out of our own wallets, and that is the big problem. Our employers, or the government picks up most of the tab. Even if we are self insured, the insurance Ponzi scheme hides the true cost of our health care until we are old or sick enough that they jack up our premiums and try to drive us out of the system, and let the government pay for our care, or in so many cases, we have to do without.
Here's what will happen if we don't take steps toward universal government run health care. Health care costs will continue to rise, Insurance premiums will rise in response. More and more people will drop their insurance, and more and more employers will drop employee coverage, or increase the employee share of the burden. As people and employers drop out of insurance coverage, the premium pool for the insurance companies will become smaller, and they will raise rates for the rest of us who are trying to hold on to our insurance. Sick people without insurance will crowd the hospital emergency rooms, lose there savings, jobs, and homes, or stick the government with more costs, which the taxpayers will bear. This will continue until the entire system collapses, and then where will the world's greatest health care system be? If you don't believe this, take a look at California, where rates for individuals who buy their on health insurance coverage have seen their rates increase by 29% in the last year as younger people and unemployed or underemployed people have dropped their insurance, leaving a smaller and sicker pool to pay the premiums.
There are really four types of people who are against government run health care, and three of the four have one thing in common. They all currently have health insurance coverage and they believe that any change to the system will adversely affect them. They are the people on medicare (a social program), people who are insured by their employers (don't bet on that continuing), and people who are wealthy enough to believe they can afford private insurance coverage no matter what happens (don't bet on that either). There's a forth group also, and it includes most of the people in the first three groups. These are the people that would rather spout some worn out cliche about socialism, or liberals, or President Obama, than stop and do some serious thinking.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
"Infinite Jest"
I haven't written a post in over two weeks, I've been on a mission. In my December 28th post, I commented on my new Christmas toys, one of which was a new Kindle Reader. At that time, I had just started the book, "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace. I'm proud, and somewhat relieved to say that I finished it today. One thousand and fifty nine pages of the toughest reading I've ever encountered. I'm only somewhat relieved to be finished, because I wish he had invested another three years and one thousand pages and finished the damned thing. It just ends, no plot resolution, characters in limbo, loose strings untied. No sequel, the author committed suicide in 2008. Still, it's one of the best books I've ever read. The author wrote the most insightful and descriptive passages that you will ever find in modern literature. Here is a very brief synopsis.
The book (published in 1996) describes a slightly futuristic America in which the United States, Canada, and Mexico have formed a loose coalition called O.N.A.N., with the USA as the dominant partner. The plot centers around a tennis academy founded by an eccentric scientist and film maker, and around a recovering addict halfway house just down the hill from the academy in Boston Mass. The main characters include the three sons of the academy founder; One a tennis prodigy and student at the academy, one a professional football player, and the third, a mildly retarded and handicapped idiot savant. There is Don Gatley, the recovering substance abuser and murderer, and Madam Psychosis, the formally beautiful woman who is a member of a group of hideously and improbably deformed people who have sworn to always wear a veil in public. There is a group of wheelchair bound Quebecois separatist terrorists, who are pursuing a sinister plot to kill Americans through the use of a film , which, if watched, removes the will of the viewer to do anything but watch the film. A cross dressing spy, a sadist dog killer, and at least a hundred minor characters that get major play. Of course they are all integral to the plot. I guess you would classify the book as a dark science fiction comedy, although large portions of the book are neither dark nor comedic, and the book feels more prescient than science fiction.
I think that I am going to read fifty or so works of popular fiction, and then read "Infinite Jest" once again.
The book (published in 1996) describes a slightly futuristic America in which the United States, Canada, and Mexico have formed a loose coalition called O.N.A.N., with the USA as the dominant partner. The plot centers around a tennis academy founded by an eccentric scientist and film maker, and around a recovering addict halfway house just down the hill from the academy in Boston Mass. The main characters include the three sons of the academy founder; One a tennis prodigy and student at the academy, one a professional football player, and the third, a mildly retarded and handicapped idiot savant. There is Don Gatley, the recovering substance abuser and murderer, and Madam Psychosis, the formally beautiful woman who is a member of a group of hideously and improbably deformed people who have sworn to always wear a veil in public. There is a group of wheelchair bound Quebecois separatist terrorists, who are pursuing a sinister plot to kill Americans through the use of a film , which, if watched, removes the will of the viewer to do anything but watch the film. A cross dressing spy, a sadist dog killer, and at least a hundred minor characters that get major play. Of course they are all integral to the plot. I guess you would classify the book as a dark science fiction comedy, although large portions of the book are neither dark nor comedic, and the book feels more prescient than science fiction.
I think that I am going to read fifty or so works of popular fiction, and then read "Infinite Jest" once again.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Ah Spring
Spring officially starts this weekend, at least for me. Daylight savings time kicks in on Sunday, and its not a day too soon. We've had a little Spring teaser the last couple of days with mid-sixties days and cool nights. I know there's more cold weather coming, after all, the average last spring frost is not until around the sixteenth of April, but I can tell that old man winter's back is broken. I got a good bike ride in today, and also yesterday. Maybe I won't have to go to spinning sessions but a few more times before I can start hitting the road every day. I've always like to ride a bike, but I got pretty serious about it about twenty five years ago, when my knees got so bad that I could no longer run. It's always tough in the Spring to get started again. I get out of shape over the winter, and the first month or so of riding is brutal.
The worst part is that I'm a year older every spring. If it weren't for mirrors and bicycles, I would swear that I'm still in my thirties. You know the old line; "Look in the mirror and see your father's face". Holy crap! When did that happen. The thing that really scares me is that I remember seeing my dad's butt and thighs when he was in his late seventies. Or should I say, what was left of his butt and thighs. My dad was a big guy like me, and I remember he had big powerful forearms like a baseball player or a lumberjack. Unfortunately, he was a truly professional drunk, while I still maintain my amateur status. The bike though, is the true measure of my age. There's this fitness formula, two twenty minus your age, that determines your maximum heart rate. A thirty year old, according to this formula has a maximum heart rate of 190, while sixty two year old (me) has a maximum of 158. This is like the laws of physics, like trying to defy gravity. No matter how hard you work out, you are tethered to your maximum heart rate. It means that you can't climb as long and hard as you did when you were thirty, you can't sprint as far or as fast, you just don't f-----g have it. (Honest to God, tears came to my eyes as I wrote this.) Over all, I'm pretty fit..........
Time out for an important news flash, channel nine will be over head at any minute. My wife just informed me that there is a whole cadre of fire trucks and equipment outside our house. After an in depth investigation, I have determined the following: My next door neighbor was having some plumbing work done at his house, and the plumber broke some kind of old device that was mounted in the basement. It was filled with Mercury, which spilled out into a big puddle on the floor. The neighbors did a little Internet investigation, and ended up calling the EPA. The EPA informed them that they should call the local fire department, and after they did so, the fire department showed up with the complete Hazmat unit, which includes two tractor trailers full of equipment, a fire truck, ambulance, and miscellaneous fireman, policemen and officials. They have been over there for at least an hour. So, back to my post.
Over all, I'm pretty fit, although who knows what might be waiting to bite me in the ass at any moment. I do physical work for a living, and I'm still pretty strong. I have not yet developed man boobs, although, when I put my heart monitor on this afternoon, I noticed that the strap did enhance my cleavage a little. I've always been very competitive, although not by any means a great athlete, and it hurts me more than you can imagine that I can't keep up with the young guys, but occasionally, I foolishly try.
Another distraction, as I'm writing this post, I'm also watching my favorite show; "Chuck". The show is stupid and banal, but I like it, particularly, I like Yvonne Strahovski, the hottest girl on TV. She had me after the episode where she put both hands on a counter top, and with out taking her hands off of the counter top, she leaped onto it. It's the equivalent of a man jumping into the air and putting his pants on. Did I mention that she's very attractive? Yes, I'm old, but not dead. Where was I?
Spring. It's just around the corner. Another day older and deeper in oxygen dept. In about three weeks I'll start sailboat racing. At least I don't have to depend on my heart rate for a victory. Unfortunately, sailing and biking compete for the same time slots. The story of my life, so many hobbies and so little time.
The worst part is that I'm a year older every spring. If it weren't for mirrors and bicycles, I would swear that I'm still in my thirties. You know the old line; "Look in the mirror and see your father's face". Holy crap! When did that happen. The thing that really scares me is that I remember seeing my dad's butt and thighs when he was in his late seventies. Or should I say, what was left of his butt and thighs. My dad was a big guy like me, and I remember he had big powerful forearms like a baseball player or a lumberjack. Unfortunately, he was a truly professional drunk, while I still maintain my amateur status. The bike though, is the true measure of my age. There's this fitness formula, two twenty minus your age, that determines your maximum heart rate. A thirty year old, according to this formula has a maximum heart rate of 190, while sixty two year old (me) has a maximum of 158. This is like the laws of physics, like trying to defy gravity. No matter how hard you work out, you are tethered to your maximum heart rate. It means that you can't climb as long and hard as you did when you were thirty, you can't sprint as far or as fast, you just don't f-----g have it. (Honest to God, tears came to my eyes as I wrote this.) Over all, I'm pretty fit..........
Time out for an important news flash, channel nine will be over head at any minute. My wife just informed me that there is a whole cadre of fire trucks and equipment outside our house. After an in depth investigation, I have determined the following: My next door neighbor was having some plumbing work done at his house, and the plumber broke some kind of old device that was mounted in the basement. It was filled with Mercury, which spilled out into a big puddle on the floor. The neighbors did a little Internet investigation, and ended up calling the EPA. The EPA informed them that they should call the local fire department, and after they did so, the fire department showed up with the complete Hazmat unit, which includes two tractor trailers full of equipment, a fire truck, ambulance, and miscellaneous fireman, policemen and officials. They have been over there for at least an hour. So, back to my post.
Over all, I'm pretty fit, although who knows what might be waiting to bite me in the ass at any moment. I do physical work for a living, and I'm still pretty strong. I have not yet developed man boobs, although, when I put my heart monitor on this afternoon, I noticed that the strap did enhance my cleavage a little. I've always been very competitive, although not by any means a great athlete, and it hurts me more than you can imagine that I can't keep up with the young guys, but occasionally, I foolishly try.
Another distraction, as I'm writing this post, I'm also watching my favorite show; "Chuck". The show is stupid and banal, but I like it, particularly, I like Yvonne Strahovski, the hottest girl on TV. She had me after the episode where she put both hands on a counter top, and with out taking her hands off of the counter top, she leaped onto it. It's the equivalent of a man jumping into the air and putting his pants on. Did I mention that she's very attractive? Yes, I'm old, but not dead. Where was I?
Spring. It's just around the corner. Another day older and deeper in oxygen dept. In about three weeks I'll start sailboat racing. At least I don't have to depend on my heart rate for a victory. Unfortunately, sailing and biking compete for the same time slots. The story of my life, so many hobbies and so little time.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A November Disaster
Sadly for the Democrats in America and for the Country itself, ignorant Republicans vote and ignorant Democrats don't. I'm not saying that there are not a lot of smart and well informed voters on both sides, I'm just saying that the Republicans have done a better job of convincing their constituents to vote against their best interests. If you look at some of the poorest states and districts in the country, you have to wonder, why did so many of these poor people vote Republican, or not vote at all. Mississippi, probably the poorest state in the country has a Republican Governor, two Republican Senators and one out of the four districts has a Republican Congressman.
Race plays a part in the over all equation. In 2008, blacks voted at about the same rates as whites, around 68% of the population. Hispanic and Asian voting also increased, although not at quite as high of a percentage. In 2006 however, all three minority populations lagged behind whites in percentage of voters by race. The white population voted at about 49 percent, while the combined black, Asian, and Hispanic voters only turned out at about 35%. These 2006 numbers bode ill for the democrats in the 2010 midterms.
The other reason that the republicans did so well during the Bush years, is the Karl Rove tactic of convincing mostly white voters to vote because of various wedge issues. You know the ones I'm talking about: Gay marriage, gays in the military, abortion, and gun control. A friend of mine characterized the Republican strategy with this analogy. He used the example of Cherokee County North Carolina, a white Republican stronghold, which includes Murphy, Andrews, and Robbinsville (Which I've been told had a billboard up in the sixties that said "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in Robbinsville). The essence of the strategy was to convince voters that they needed to keep their guns so that they could kill niggers, queers, and abortionists in the name of the Lord. Now, to their credit, most of the people in Cherokee County would probably not do any of those things, but this proposition was put forth in such a push come to shove manner, that the citizens decided that these things were more important than economic security or health care. Couple these ideas with the current strategy of blaming the democrats for running up the deficit, and the collapse of the economy, and you can see what's going to happen in November.
Race plays a part in the over all equation. In 2008, blacks voted at about the same rates as whites, around 68% of the population. Hispanic and Asian voting also increased, although not at quite as high of a percentage. In 2006 however, all three minority populations lagged behind whites in percentage of voters by race. The white population voted at about 49 percent, while the combined black, Asian, and Hispanic voters only turned out at about 35%. These 2006 numbers bode ill for the democrats in the 2010 midterms.
The other reason that the republicans did so well during the Bush years, is the Karl Rove tactic of convincing mostly white voters to vote because of various wedge issues. You know the ones I'm talking about: Gay marriage, gays in the military, abortion, and gun control. A friend of mine characterized the Republican strategy with this analogy. He used the example of Cherokee County North Carolina, a white Republican stronghold, which includes Murphy, Andrews, and Robbinsville (Which I've been told had a billboard up in the sixties that said "Nigger, don't let the sun set on you in Robbinsville). The essence of the strategy was to convince voters that they needed to keep their guns so that they could kill niggers, queers, and abortionists in the name of the Lord. Now, to their credit, most of the people in Cherokee County would probably not do any of those things, but this proposition was put forth in such a push come to shove manner, that the citizens decided that these things were more important than economic security or health care. Couple these ideas with the current strategy of blaming the democrats for running up the deficit, and the collapse of the economy, and you can see what's going to happen in November.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
My Room
When I bought my house, a little over thirty years ago, we were looking the place over with the broker, and I noticed a small window that opened from the crawl space. I got down on my knees and, with my face right against the glass, I could see a small dug out space with a green rocking chair setting in it. Back then, it wasn't expected that the homeowners make themselves scarce when there was a showing to potential buyers, so I asked the old lady who owned the house if it had a basement. She explained to me that, no, there was not a basement, it was just a place her son , Yen, dug out, where he liked to spend his time sitting in the green chair under the house.
I knew the old lady's grandsons, they were about my age, and I had met Yen before. I think that Yen had suffered from PTSD (called shell shock back then), and he was far from normal. He could drive, and once he took me and his two nephews swimming a nearby creek. I remember, he got in the water about neck deep, and just stood there for at least an hour, with out moving or talking. Yen came to a bad end, he was killed by a self inflicted gunshot wound in what appeared to be a hunting accident in the woods behind McAllister School. Yen's parents, being well on in years, had decided to move to Virginia to live with their daughter. One of the prerequisites to selling the house was that they realized enough money from the sell to dig Yen up and take him with them.
I don't particularly care to sit in a chair under the house, and not having been to war, I don't suffer from PTSD, but I do appreciate Yen's preference for solitude in a confined space. I'm writing this post from my little fortress of solitude, upstairs across from the bed room. It's the place where I spend most of my spare time when I'm awake, and a good bit of time when I'm not.
It's a tiny little room, only seven feet wide, and thirteen feet long. It's a lot more crowded and cluttered than Andy Rooney's office. I sit at an old wooden desk in a chair with a high back, so that my head is supported when I doze off. It looks out through two floor to ceiling windows to my back yard. Right now the blinds are open so that, this afternoon, I could watch the snow that fell, but right now all I can see is the black of night. My wife's desk is also in the room. It is one of those big wooden office desks with a lower side section at right angles to the main desk. It takes up one entire end of the room and I can rest my feet on the end of it if I want to. In addition to the two desks, there are two computers, two printers, a little table with phone and answering machine, two guitars, a file cabinet, two desk lamps and a pole lamp, a paper shredder, a book case that takes up the entire other end of the room, a TV, two chairs, my Kindle, and me. It gets a little crowded when Kathy is in the room, but fortunately, this room is not where she prefers to spend her time. No reflection on me I hope. There are no pictures on what little wall space there is, but when my laptop is not in use, it slide shows the pictures I have filed on it. Facebook is generally running, and I check it from time to time. I have to go all the way downstairs to get a fresh beer, but there's no place to put a refrigerator without moving my wife's desk out, and I haven't even bothered to ask. I don't drink that much any way. My desk has one of those pull out boards for extra space beside the chair. It serves as a nice footrest, with my laptop laptopped, or when I'm reading or watching TV. Right now I can actually see part of the top of my desk, but when I set my computer down on it, it will be completely obscured.
Spring will be here soon, and maybe I'll come out of my hole. When it gets warm enough, I might go for a swim.
I knew the old lady's grandsons, they were about my age, and I had met Yen before. I think that Yen had suffered from PTSD (called shell shock back then), and he was far from normal. He could drive, and once he took me and his two nephews swimming a nearby creek. I remember, he got in the water about neck deep, and just stood there for at least an hour, with out moving or talking. Yen came to a bad end, he was killed by a self inflicted gunshot wound in what appeared to be a hunting accident in the woods behind McAllister School. Yen's parents, being well on in years, had decided to move to Virginia to live with their daughter. One of the prerequisites to selling the house was that they realized enough money from the sell to dig Yen up and take him with them.
I don't particularly care to sit in a chair under the house, and not having been to war, I don't suffer from PTSD, but I do appreciate Yen's preference for solitude in a confined space. I'm writing this post from my little fortress of solitude, upstairs across from the bed room. It's the place where I spend most of my spare time when I'm awake, and a good bit of time when I'm not.
It's a tiny little room, only seven feet wide, and thirteen feet long. It's a lot more crowded and cluttered than Andy Rooney's office. I sit at an old wooden desk in a chair with a high back, so that my head is supported when I doze off. It looks out through two floor to ceiling windows to my back yard. Right now the blinds are open so that, this afternoon, I could watch the snow that fell, but right now all I can see is the black of night. My wife's desk is also in the room. It is one of those big wooden office desks with a lower side section at right angles to the main desk. It takes up one entire end of the room and I can rest my feet on the end of it if I want to. In addition to the two desks, there are two computers, two printers, a little table with phone and answering machine, two guitars, a file cabinet, two desk lamps and a pole lamp, a paper shredder, a book case that takes up the entire other end of the room, a TV, two chairs, my Kindle, and me. It gets a little crowded when Kathy is in the room, but fortunately, this room is not where she prefers to spend her time. No reflection on me I hope. There are no pictures on what little wall space there is, but when my laptop is not in use, it slide shows the pictures I have filed on it. Facebook is generally running, and I check it from time to time. I have to go all the way downstairs to get a fresh beer, but there's no place to put a refrigerator without moving my wife's desk out, and I haven't even bothered to ask. I don't drink that much any way. My desk has one of those pull out boards for extra space beside the chair. It serves as a nice footrest, with my laptop laptopped, or when I'm reading or watching TV. Right now I can actually see part of the top of my desk, but when I set my computer down on it, it will be completely obscured.
Spring will be here soon, and maybe I'll come out of my hole. When it gets warm enough, I might go for a swim.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Gods May Not Be Crazy
The Gods May Not Be Crazy
A recent sophomoric prank at Davidson College has given me a new religious perspective. It seems that a small group of fraternity brothers, with time on their hands between keggers, decided, on a dare, that it would be a good idea to go to the local pond and kill a goose with a golf club. In the ranks of frat boy hijinks, this is pretty small potatoes, even though these guys got into relatively big trouble. After all, they did kill a member of a federally protected species. Apparently, geese need more protection than hungry children, or the sick, aged, or homeless. But that’s an issue that I can elevate my blood pressure over some other time.
I am admittedly a bit of a cynical agnostic. I have tended to believe that if there is a God at all, he is as Mark Twain envisioned him in The Mysterious Stranger: Detached and aloof, taking an interest in us only in an often maliciously whimsical way. But now I see that I was wrong. It seems that the Greeks and Romans had is right. There is not one God, but instead, a big old celestial frat house full of fun loving elitist snob Gods. Picture this, what pleasure would a single God get out of stirring the stick of misery into the human anthill if he didn’t have other gods to share in the mirth. It must be true that we are all made in God’s image, because the basic human pleasures of humor and laughter are based on cruelty to others. If you don’t believe this, try to think of a single joke that doesn’t fit these criteria.
Okay, so here we’ve got this frat house full of fun loving all-powerful beings, bent on having a good time at our expense. I guess it’s like interactive TV. Picture this; A group of Gods are sitting around in the rec room, maybe drinking beer and eating Doritos. One God is flipping stations from one human scenario to another. “Watch this,” he says, as he fiddles with the remote, and a bus full of children plunges off a cliff. (Big laugh from the others.) In the spirit of one-upmanship, another God grabs the remote and causes a drought over Africa, which kills thousands. Remember, being immortal, these Gods have lots of time on there hands.
I suspect that it is also possible to achieve God status. As you might expect, the college fraternity provides a good template for how this might happen. Every year, the Gods invite a few worthy humans to join their pledge class. Potential pledges go through a rigorous selection process. No mere psychopath need apply. They would be chosen based on their earthly achievements in areas such as war, genocide, oppression, etc., but mostly for their potential for the continuing entertainment of their fellow Gods, at the expense of the human race. Some pledges don’t make the cut; Men Like Hitler, Stalin, or Dick Cheney are just too mean to become Gods. Their potential to destroy the whole world is just too great.
The pledges are carefully groomed, here on earth, in the ways of Godliness, but the hapless freshman pledges are subject to a lot of hazing by the upper class Gods. They get sent out on celestial Snipe hunts like George W Bush’s mission to invade Iraq. Imagine their laughter when he announced “Mission accomplished” all dressed in his aviator jacket aboard the USS Lincoln. They must have been rolling on the floor when they put him in front of those elementary children with his goofy deer in the headlights expression, while the men in charge decided what to do in response to 9/11.
There may even be some benevolent Gods. How they get by the vetting process, I don’t know. Maybe they are in something like the service fraternities. These Gods, considered nerd and dork Gods by the Other Gods, although well intentioned, achieve little good because they are not well connected like the frat Gods. After all, there’s no humor in good deeds.
I know this idea will seem crazy, and even blasphemous to most people, but it makes about as much sense as any other organized religion.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
What to do about the homeless
What to do about the homeless? I ride through town about ten times a day, and I always notice the homeless people that congregate around the library, on the curb in front of Central Methodist, on just hanging around downtown. I think they need some place that they can go during the day.
I know that I’m putting myself out there among my conservative friends who think that I’m a bleeding heart liberal at best, or a commie pinko Marxist at worst, but that’s okay, I’m used to it.
It’s very comfortable for my right wing friends to think that the homeless are just a bunch of deadbeats, or drunks, or drug addicts, and certainly there are some out there that have one or more of those qualities. Classifying all of the homeless as such, makes it very easy to dismiss any moral obligation to help them. There are a lot of reasons for being homeless; here are the most common reasons.
1 Poverty: This is the big reason pure and simple. It can, however, take a lot of different forms. There are the working poor, who cannot make enough to pay for housing, food, and clothing. There are people who have lost their jobs, and in turn, have lost their housing. Increasingly, there are people who are no longer eligible for welfare or unemployment benefits. There are victims of marital abuse, or divorce. There are people whose medical conditions have lead them to become bankrupt.
2 Mental illness: It’s commonly estimated that 20 to 25% of homeless people are suffering from some form of mental illness. Our country has a shameful history of not properly caring for it’s mentally ill, but that’s another story.
3 Drug or Alcohol dependency: This is the tough one, and it tends to queer the deal for all of the other reasons I have mentioned. We tend to consider drunkenness and drug addictions as character flaws instead of diseases, even though almost all of us have seen evidence to the contrary. I challenge you to name one person who as a child aspired to become a drunk. I also challenge you to name one person who walked away from his addiction without help.
The one thing that all of the homeless categories I mentioned above often have in common, is a lack of friend or family support. Consider yourself transported to any city in America, put out on the street, broke and friendless, and try to imagine what you would do if you were a victim of life’s circumstances. I hope I have put you in a more compassionate frame of mind, and now you will appreciate my idea for them.
The Salvation Army runs a night shelter for the homeless in town, and I think it’s a great service to the community. The problem is that the homeless have to be out of the shelter early in the morning, and can’t return until late in the afternoon. Surly our town can provide them with a place to go during the day. A place where they can come in out of the cold, have telephone access, Internet access, a place to sit and talk, and have a cup of coffee. I suspect that before this recession is over, there may even be a need for soup kitchens in town, so I’ll include that in my wish list as well.
I’m proposing that the homeless can be given something that they can take advantage of, not proposing that we be taken advantage of. I don’t want our town to be a homeless haven, known far and wide for its’ munificence. I think that every town in America should be more considerate of its’ homeless population.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Prodigy
Below is my first and probably only attempt at a short story. I admit that the plot is stolen from a short story my class was required to read in sophomore English. I don’t remember the author, name of the story, or any of the dialogue. I’ve cast about for years trying to find a copy of the story. I’ve even asked if English teachers of that generation, and classmates of mine remember the story, but no one does. If anyone remembers the story, I would like to know its name and author. I apologize to the author for my crude attempt to re-create it.
The Prodigy
Mary tried to wait for Tom to get home, but the news was too good. Finally she called him at the office. “Tom, Jimmy got his ninth grade PE test scores today. I couldn’t wait any longer to tell you.” “So, how did we do?” Tom asked. Mary could hardly contain her excitement. “An overall 97th percentile, with a 95th percentile on the IQ, and a 98th percentile on the ambition quotient. His persuasive and manipulative skills were at the very top.”
“This calls for a celebration, I’ll be home about six, we can try the new Italian restaurant, I’ve heard they have veal. Put a frozen pizza in the oven for Jimmy, and make sure he has enough schoolwork to keep him busy. If he gets finished, he can watch that motivational DVD again. We’ve got to stay on top of the situation.”
“Tom, do you think we can stop by the Best Buy and look at a new HDTV for the bedroom?”“I don’t see why not, Jimmy’s scores will automatically up our card limit. Maybe on Saturday we can go to Bass Pro Shop, and look at a new fishing boat.” “I don’t know about that, Tom, You know I want to remodel our kitchen, and there is a PE cap that doesn’t change until his senior year.” “I know, but with his scores, I’m sure the bank will give us a bridge loan until then.” “Okay, we’ll talk about it tonight.”
While Jimmy’s mom dressed and primped for her night out, she thought about the implications of their good fortune. Tom made a good living as a design engineer, but she had chosen not to work. They had no trouble supporting themselves, but had tended to live beyond their means, and their debt burden had gotten out of hand. They were in the same boat as millions of American couples, their credit cards nearly maxed out, and their spending spree nearly over. The big three credit card companies, facing flat growth, and increasing defaults, had come up with a novel solution to the credit crunch. They combined their considerable lobbying force with that of the US Chamber of Commerce, and convinced congress to pass a bill labeled CPECA. The Child Potential Earnings Credit Act empowered parents to enter into a credit card agreement in which the Child, upon achieving adulthood, would become responsible for the debts and interest accrued by his parents for purchases placed on the CPECA credit card. To protect the issuing companies from parents that charged more on the cards, than the child, as an adult, could reasonably repay, a series of tests were mandated by the Department of Education, to measure the child’s adult income potential. The first battery of tests were performed when the child entered the seventh grade, and based upon the scores, a credit card was issued with a credit limit which reflected the child’s earning potential, and the actuarial potential of the child to live long enough to repay the debts. Because of the unpredictable vectors of a thirteen year olds’ future, the credit limit was initially low. Subsequent good test results in the ninth and twelfth grades increased the credit limit available to the parent. A high score in the twelfth grade also indicated that the child would go on to complete college, and although the parents could not continue to charge new purchases on the card after the child reached the age of eighteen, the college costs could be added to the total amount, and the initial payments by the child were deferred until completion of college, although interest was accrued on the balance.
Now, with Jimmy’s excellent ninth grade scores, they could afford some of the luxuries they had been wishing for. But she had some doubts. Mary thought to herself: “Is it really fair to Jimmy to run up all these debts that he will be responsible for? Will he be able to afford a wife and family, a house, car? Will he grow to hate us? But, all the sacrifices we’ve made for him, food, clothing, a home, why, most of the things we’ve bought, were for his benefit as well as ours. We’ve spent more on him than we will ever borrow on his credit line. Besides, his PE is so good; he won’t even miss the money we’ve spent. I’ll look for a new video game for Jimmy at Best Buy. He can play it in his spare time.”
By the time Tom came through the front door, she was in a much better frame of mind. Jimmy’s pizza was in the oven, a second glass of wine was on the table, and she was looking forward to a fine dinner, and perhaps a new TV. Tom poured himself bourbon, she sipped her wine, and they called Jimmy to the kitchen.
“Jimmy, Tom and I are going out for dinner. After you finish your pizza, you need to finish your homework, and if you have time, there’s the motivational DVD you can watch. By the way, congratulations on you PE scores, we are very pleased with you.”“Mom, since I’m doing so well in school, and my PE scores were so good, do you think I could have an increase in my allowance?”“Jimmy, we’ve sacrificed so that your mother would not have to work, money is tight, I don’t think we can afford to increase your allowance.”“Why don’t you just borrow the money from the CPECA account, you know I’m good for it.” Jimmy said in a surprisingly sarcastic tone.
Jimmy’s mom jumped up from the table and roughly slapped him. “You ungrateful little shit, I dare you to speak to your father like that. Go to your room and hit those books before I slap you again. Tom, lets go, we will be late for dinner.”
Mary and Tom came home from dinner very pleased with themselves. The dinner was excellent, and the 42-inch HDTV was on sale. Mary had convinced Tom that a new kitchen was more important than a new boat, and she had looked at new appliances while at Best Buy. Tomorrow she would call a cabinetmaker, and look at granite counter top samples. The house was quiet. She went upstairs to check on Jimmy. The light was off, but she could see his silhouette under the blanket. As she turned to leave the room, she noticed a faint metallic smell. Curious, she flipped on the light and turned around. The blood had oozed through the blanket, and stained the edges of the note of four words. No future money spent.
The End
The original story was written over forty years ago. To me, it is a prescient view of my generation’s squandering of our children’s and their children’s future. Our greed and short sightedness has saddled them with a tremendous national debt, wasted our natural resources, and arguably bequeathed to them an environment that may become inhospitable to human existence.
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