Silly Old Men

Part I

This is the first installment of a story about a little walk I took sometime back. I was hoping to start taking fairly long "hikes" over the next few years to see if I thought I could get myself in good enough shape to take off across several states on a long adventure. Silly, I know, but something I've thought about for a long time. Ever read "Walk Across America"? I have, a couple of times, and there is something attractive about the idea of trekking across the country and meeting folks from little towns between here and there. Of course I would have my mandolin with me and hopefully engage in some music-making from time to time. Anyway, a while back, I took off for what I hoped would be a couple of days of hiking and camping. Following is the result of this effort.

ON MY WAY

So here I am at Woodson County State Fishing Lake. A hard-to-find pleasant surprise. The lake is as smooth as glass, only an occasional soft breath of air now. Blue skies, not a cloud. No boats or other water craft either. Peaceful indeed. I had to trek with the pack on a good bit before finding a place to set up camp. I was just looking for a flat place to put my tent but there isn't one near the dam. I walked across it twice and up and down the berms along the road. I finally tracked back past my starting point and left my pack by a water meter next to the road, seemed like an odd place for a water meter but the grass was trimmed and the area was flat. If I had to, I would put my tent up here. I walked on without the pack and came on a dumping station. A yet larger flat area. I entertained thoughts of hiking on to Toronto as I came upon a maintenance yard. It was a fenced area with a building that had two garage doors, a couple of pickups and a couple of pieces of equipment. I walked all the way around the building looking through a couple of windows as I went. I saw no one. When I found the door I opened it and said “hello”. To my surprise there was a response. From behind a door labeled “OFFICE” came a young lady who welcomed me to the lake and gave me brochures on this lake and Toronto and Fall River. As it turns out camping is free here and just a bit farther down the road was this campsite. Picnic table and all. Well, there will be more to come, but just now my Beanee Weanee's are calling.

Woopsie. I brought plenty of kitchen matches but nothing to strike them on. I was able to light a couple by striking them against the rough paint on the picnic table leg. I remember lighting matches on my jeans zipper but that didn't work either. I scraped the sulfur off of all but two matches. My plan for tomorrow is to drink a small carton of milk and eat a couple of pop tarts. Then I'll head out for Toronto. Hopefully there will be a store or marina where I can buy some matches. The coyotes are already barking tonight. I don't know what's in season but there were shots fired right about sundown. Deer I reckon.

(to be continued)

Slipping Away

: rights (as freedom from unlawful imprisonment, torture, and execution) regarded as belonging fundamentally to all persons
Still trying to work through this whole discussion of health care being a right. If a right belongs, "fundamentally to all persons", as Webster suggests, then people in third world countries are being denied their right to health care. In these countries there may not be a doctor, let alone a clinic or hospital, within hundreds of miles of any given person or village. Should we be denying aid to these countries until they "get their act together" regarding human rights? How can something be a "right" that is dependent on a country's economic activity? With no economic activity, there are no resources to train and equip doctors and nurses, nor are there people capable of developing technologies and techniques for the resolution of physical problems and disease. There is no time here to expand this discussion to include all of the pieces of the health care industry required to develop and deliver health care. Are we then left with a different list of "rights" for individuals based on the economic conditions of the country they live in? Or, as I suspect, are we left with a discussion about ethics based on a country's ability to provide for its citizens? For me to participate in an ongoing discussion such as this one, I want to be working with the right vocabulary so as to have the ability to articulate my position clearly. I don't think this dialog is about "rights". At least not if we use the standard definition. When my wife and I purchased a car from a new car dealer many years back, the first thing I did, when informed of the "value" of my trade-in was to let the salesman know that I was well aware of my car's value and he was overstating it several-fold. I suggested he tell me what the wholesaler that he was in touch with was actually going to give him for the car; then we could discuss how much they were willing to come off of their inflated price. (I didn't use the word "inflated"). That way, we were both working with what might be called full disclosure. Of the $2,500 that was coming off of the $9,999 price on the car, (after substantial negotiations) only $750 was accounted for by my trade in. He would much rather that I believed they were giving me twice what my car was worth so they could pocket a generous profit while making me feel good about the deal. Instead, we both knew what my car was worth and could then focus on the inflated price of the car my wife and I wanted to buy. If you want to continue calling health care a right, have at it, but I will sit on the side-lines waiting for the real discussion to begin. By suggesting it is a right you are necessarily calling a lot of thoughtful, compassionate people mean and hateful by default. What other kind of person would deny someone a basic human right. I'm not sure how the whole "gotta buy it" thing works into this subject of rights either, but that's another occasion waiting for my time. Speaking of time, it appears I have run out of it for this particular endeavor. Thank you and have a nice day; I mean, if you want to.

Music

My daughter, a friend, and I attended the Rush concert last night. What a show! The tickets were fairly expensive but worth it in my opinion. Plenty of high tech bells and whistles worked well to enhance, not detract from, the talent on stage. It was just a great evening all in all. One of the nice things about getting older is that your hearing does start to deteriorate a bit. The volume level was not offensive to me in the least. Maybe a slightly different mix for my precise position in the building would have been nice but all in all the sound was quite good. I prefer to have a little better articulation on the lyrics but in a live setting it's really hard to achieve. Still I could make out a good bit of the lyrics. This is a group that I had not been aware of at any meaningful level, during their early years. Only recently, at my daughters bidding, had I started listening to their music. She's quite the fan you know. I found their music to be interesting and engaging on a deeper level than most rock groups. They are constantly making subtle rhythm changes and are often using odd measures to bring an interesting twist to the song. The melodies are largely unpredictable but in a musical way. A good piece of music will build and release tension. There are several ways to accomplish this but they often used the rhythm changes to do it. Combined with the excessive talent available from the members the result is a great evening of music and entertainment. This is, as it may already appear, a recommendation to go see them if you have the chance. I think you'll enjoy them.

Third party humor or, do you have decaf?

All right then, listen good 'cause I need to go do the family budget for the week and I have a limited amount of time to spend on this subject. While I prefer to directly inject humour into my postings I will be looking to an external entity for it's input today. I'm not the greatest teacher so it will require a little extra effort from you to make this work. You see, my teaching method is to stand at the end of the forested path yelling, "I'm over here".

Whereas a good teacher will come meet you where you are and show you how they got there. So sue me.
The starting place today will be a statement pertaining to economics that I hope we can agree on. If not, your path to "over here" will be a different one, though still attainable. Providing a product does not result in a purchase. Seems simple enough to me, what do you think? Can we start there together? If I build 2000 gizmos that there is no demand for, my inventory will likely stay at 2000 for quite some time. Meaning, I will not need to buy parts from my vendors to build said gizmos, meaning those vendor businesses will suffer equal to the proportion of their dependence on my need for their parts. This is a very direct relationship. I don't sell gizmos, they don't make parts for me. If I am their only customer, their fate is mine and so on. Further, if there is a demand for gizmos, and there are 10 different manufacturers of these items, then the flow of money to purchase materials, make parts, assemble parts into gizmos, etc. all moves on smoothly and effectively.
Now then. Jim and Jill Fredrickson are planning a gizmo purchase in 6 months when their old gizmo will be completely worn out. At the time of their decision, there are 10 companies making gizmos. 6 months later there are 8. Is it logical to suppose that they will not purchase their new gizmo because there are now only 8 companies making them? If so, then my fiction has no valid point in reality. However, I believe, Jim and Jill will simply buy from one of the 8 companies still in business, don't you? And if there are now 8 companies building gizmos providing for the demand, there will be no fewer jobs in the material supply stage, the parts vendor stage, or the assembly stage for the gizmos to be produced. It's all driven by the demand. Whether there are 10 companies, or 2 companies, the demand is what determines the need for jobs in the companies, not the companies themselves.
So, how can Mr. Obama, claim to have saved all these jobs by bailing out GM and Chrysler? The only real difference would be that people would be buying cars from different companies, requiring these other companies to hire more workers and order more materials and parts from their vendors, who would in turn be required, to hire more workers to supply the companies with what they needed. When the dust cleared, we would be left with more efficient companies and more affordable vehicles, not to mention less debt for us, and our children to be burdened with. My argument is, any jobs that cannot support themselves, that is to say, any empoyee providing a service to their employer, that is not equalled by what that employer can then extract from the value of it's product, is an overpaid employee. Other wise the whole system comes down and the company goes bankrupt. Oh, wait a minute.

Not Sure Where This Is Headed

It's been so long since I entered anything on my blog I felt obligated to stop by. I can only imagine how disappointed the two of you have been. I don't have a strong sense of direction so let me start with something that came to mind yesterday. I had gone outside to wait for my wife to arrive so I could take her to work. She is working 2 part-time jobs in addition to her other family activities. I had her bright chartreuse, (who'd a thought that word starts with a "ch"), Turnpike shirt and some tennis shoes for her to put on while I drove her to the plaza where she was starting her shift. While standing in the front yard I saw a neighbour kid, a little girl, ridding her bike. While she did not speak to me on this occasion, in the past she has called me, "Emma's Grandpa". "Hi, Emma's Grandpa, what are you doing?" For whatever reason I began wondering about addressing my Heavenly Father as Nancy's Heavenly Father, or Tim's Heavenly Father. Of course He is mine too, but thinking in terms of His position as my fellow believer's Heavenly Father lends a sense of community to the reference. (My sister would be proud) I haven't fully explored this paradigm but I kinda like the early stages of considering it.
On a more serious note I was faced with an uncomfortable situation the other day. We were headed to church from Winfield where we had attended a retirement party for my brother-in-law, (never did like him much, lucky stiff), anyway, we passed a sign announcing an auction with some information about when and where presented on the sign. It all seemed so seamless looking back on it, the transition from a fairly mundane event to the genius that was unfolding in my head. Almost instantly the tune and words came rushing into my thoughts, totally unabated. "Come on, let me show you where the auction is, oh, baby come on, let me show you where the action is, baby come on, let me ......,well, you get the idea. So simple, so incredibly funny and yet it took 40 some years of reading signs about auctions with this song waiting in the shadows of my fertile imagination to finally be masterfully combined into this soon to be classical bit of humour.
Gosh, I'm so glad you stopped by. Let me leave you with a stolen joke. I just read this on facebook a few minutes ago. To protect myself from any copyright liabilities let me be unambiguous about the source of the joke. A friend of a friend had posted it so here goes, "It's so hot I saw a bird pulling a worm out of the ground wearing an oven mitt".

Home, sorta.

What a great trip our family had to South Africa. One we will not forget I'm sure. We were greeted by a very hospitable people who, by and large, seemed to be a happy lot. It seems the World Cup provided a chance for the country to take on a party atmosphere for a while. Yes, we drove by some of the slums and yes, we visited the Apartheid museum and learned more about the horrible rule of a very detailed, law based, discrimination. But the over all sense I came back with was one of appreciation for their culture and a sense of gratitude for their accepting the world with open arms. In the airport there was a collection of people, some who I believe worked there, and some who did not. Some older, some younger, but all of them smiling and laughing as the danced to a song playing on a boom box. This dance was obviously practised and the 25 or so people all moving together made a wonderful visual set against the backdrop of an airport hallway. The enthusiasm was contagious and you couldn't help but feel happy watching them enjoy the music and motion together.
At the Game Reserve where we stayed there was a visit from a group of folks who treated us to some more dancing as well. They offered some more current dance routines but then demonstrated the more traditional dancing of some of the tribes there. Again, it was a wonderful experience followed by some songs that they had prepared. One day we took a drive through the reserve to view the animals. This reserve is close to Josieburg, (Johannesburg), and did not have the larger animals on it. However, we saw several gazelle, wildebeest, zebra and baboons. At night you could hear the hiena's calling. Similar to coyotes though a bit like laughing. There were several baboons around the camp and we saw a village of 20 or 30 of them close to our camp. They would raid the trash cans in the early morning hours.
We stayed in Safari tents that had beds in them. While it's winter there, their winters are relatively mild compared to ours. Of course, while we were there they had an unusually cold night or two that got down to below freezing. With the extra blankets they provided we were fine though the first few minutes in bed were a little chilly.
They drive on the left side of the road there and of course the steering wheel is on the right. This provided many opportunities for a little comic relief for the family while travelling to our various destinations. You could always tell when I was getting ready to turn because the windshield wipers would come on. It was all so very confusing. We saw two games while we were there and Germany and the Netherlands are still in the tournament so we saw two of the better teams as well. We didn't get ahold of any tickets for the US matches but we watched the games on a big screen there at the camp. There is much more to say but I will save it for another time. My wife and granddaughter will be back tomorrow as they took a detour upon our arrival back in the states, to attend a family reunion. So we will be whole again tomorrow as a family, and we will have a great adventure in common as we move on through life.
Thank you, Lord, for South Africa and all the creative things you have done and are doing there.

Lions and Tigers and Elephants, oh my.

Golly gee, we're off for South Africa tomorrow night. Well, technically, weds. morning about 2:30 am. I'm very excited about the trip even though I know it'll be over in a flash. We are only there for a week and there will be more to do than we have time for. Soccer is what lured me originally but once the family decided to go, too, my focus was shifted a bit to a more general vision. We are staying in a Safari tent village that is located on a game reserve. These aren't your standard issue Boy Scout tents. They are really nice and will have beds in them rather than sleeping bags. Not sure about showers and such but with it being such a short trip who needs a shower? It's fun to see my granddaughters enthusiasm rise as our departure approaches. I'm not naive enough to think there won't be some "tough" times on this journey. Long waits in airports and long periods of time in a plane can be a difficult thing for a 9 year old to deal with. But I am confident this trip will be a blessed one and one that will give us all a chance to laugh together and just party down for a while. We've lived under the same roof now for 30 years, well, just 9 for my granddaughter, and some of those times were less than joyful with plenty of strife and heartache to go around. Now we celebrate a time when God has moved us to a place where my daughter is ready to take her family and move out on her own with an ever deepening faith and a more mature attitude toward life. I suppose I see this as a bit of a send off for her, though she is only moving a few miles away. She is ready to attack life with the gusto that has always been part of her personality and with her Saviour by her side. (which is, by the way, where He has always been) Look out South Africa, here we come!