Well, here goes. I wanted to put down some observations and impressions of this year's festival in Winfield, Kansas in case someone was curious about what I thought of the little get-together. This was the first year our camp had an official theme so we had a couple of items available for the other campers to view to help them know what we saw as our main contribution to the affair. We are now the "Winfield Think Tank" camp. Or "Brain Trust" if you prefer. Either way we expect any conversations within the camp itself to be of the thoughtful variety. Our camp is not the place for meaningless banter or comments void of substance. You can take those types of offerings elsewhere where they will not negatively affect the high standards of communication we have established. Be sure that our camp is fraught with sesquipedalians.One sign which was presented to us by a lady from Montana who is part of our camp showed two sets of feet submersed in several inches of water and had the statement above it that says, "Deep Thoughts From The Shallow End Of The Pool". Several people laughed at this which belied their lack of a sound technical background in critical thinking. Another offering for our camp came from our friends from Texas who brought a banner with them that had a likeness of the "Thinker" sitting on a toilet. Again, people with their predictably shallow thinking were laughing at this. It's so sad to see so much thoughtlessness being exhibited at the festival, but we can't expect everyone to rise to the mental acuteness that is regularly exhibited at the Winfield Think Tank.This year's lineup was a bit different though it did include Tommy Emmanuel again. He is such a great talent and performer. Also, Michael Martin Murphy was there. I always enjoy his music and his knowledge of the history of the old west. On a more serious note I have decided to make some changes for next year. Assuming I remember to do so. It's hard to get off my sizable rear end and get around to seeing people I have met in the past. We are fortunate to have some greatly talented musicians camp with us and I can almost "feel" myself improving on my instrument as I hang out and jam with them. While jamming with my camp mates will obviously continue, I will make an effort to hang out with several others who I often don't see, or only visit with rather than play music with. Maybe a little more sleep would help too. I guess I had 3 or 4 nights of 4:30 am or later and a couple of 2 - 3 am nights as well. I did hit the sack around midnight a couple of times because I wasn't feeling well. Imagine that. Guess I'm getting old.Next year I hope to get my friend Norm to come up from Texas. That would be a great thing indeed.
I wanted to say a word about growing old, while also laying claim to what I believe may became a common phrase in America going forward. I just want to have left something useful behind when I exit this dirt clod and I don't want someone else trying to steal my glory. As I was rolling along I-35 the other day headed somewhere important to do something important, my mind began pondering the effects of accumulating birthdays. I have accumulated 55 of them so far and it seems like the more I get the less I have. I'm probably more forgetful than I remember and leave a minimum of 2 rooms a day never arriving at the reason I ventured into them. A bad day is often of my own making, though I thoughtfully blame others so as not to hurt my own feelings. I leave the house 2 or 3 times every morning but still get to work without something I intended to take. I leave the house, drive around the block and pull back up in front of the house to fetch my phone only to find "someone" has locked the door. While stewing on the way to work about why my family is so paranoid that they have to lock the door when I am barely out of it, a vague memory, seemingly from the high school era of my life, haunts me for a couple of miles until I am forced to face the reality that I locked the door on my way out. Once I went out of my way to go by and take pictures of a house we were having built over a several month period of time, only to find out there was no film in the camera. It was little relief to find, also, that I was taking pictures of the wrong lot, though I could at least spread the embarrassment out over more of the story. It seems like the very embarrassing fact takes a bit of the edge off of the extremely embarrassing fact that follows it. At least I like to think so. Well, back to my drive and the usual meaningless ponderings that accompany it. A term popped into my head that I believe, more than any previous known term, defines the adverse effects of collecting birthdays. I am moving toward "Mental Insolvency"Remember, you heard it here first.
I really don't get it. Warren Buffet is one of some 300,000,000 people in this country and he is so often quoted by people who want to make our country's policy agree with his ideas. Let's listen to him, by all means, but if he wants to pay more in taxes then let him do so without reaching into my pocket at the same time. Why should he take money out of my pocket to give to the government if he already has so much? I'm not a frequent participant in risk-taking for monetary gain but have done a bit of it in the past. My wife and I bought some property for a couple thousand once and sold it three years later for near ten thousand. The capital gains tax, at the time, was 30% so we were visited by the emotional roller coaster of feeling rich one minute, to feeling sick to our stomachs the next. We took the risk while the government waited for the check to be cut and then asked for a large part of it. Just because Mr. Buffett thinks only rich people benefit from capitol gains doesn't mean it's so. It just means he is near-sighted. The capital gains tax is one of the most influential bits of our tax code. Keeping it low can be a significant factor in brining us out of this serious recession we are in right now. Raising it will further impede our ability to grow our way back to solvency as a country. Maybe if every super-rich person, who presumes to speak for all of us, would just pay their "fair share" without having to be forced to do so by the government, then everything would be fine. But no, they wait for the government to put the gun to their head before they exercise their right to be "compassionate" to the rest of our country. And another thing, everyone wants to know what Mr. Buffett is investing in so they can be rich too. While I haven't studied his life in any detail, I don't presume he became rich investing only in Gillette or Coca-Cola. Once you have a fortune, it's easier to make conservative investment decisions, and make ludicrous statements of how raising taxes will only affect him and his super-rich buddies.
It would seem to me that our over-reaching government may be about to reach critical mass. As the government grows, its influence on people's voting decisions grows as well. If the government's enterprise is one of protecting us from foreign enemies, protecting our borders and enhancing interstate relations as in providing roads and other infrastructure for transportation of goods and such, then when we go into a voting booth, the scope of our interest is limited to those activities which the federal government is about. Our personal fortunes are not directly tied to such a vote but rather our collective fortunes, if you will. However, if the government is in the business of taking money from one citizen and giving it to another as it sees fit, then those who are receiving the money will likely vote for the person who promises to take more from others and give it to them. Once the government is controlling the banking system, automobile production, college loans, health care, and the majority of the commerce in the country by way of the EPA and its alleged concern for the well-being of the citizen, then we are locked into a socialist form of government which will eventually collapse under its own weight. Votes will flow to keep the money coming which will forever empower our bloated and mis-directed government. If the voting booth is a way to get someone else's money into our pocket then it has become what so many in history have warned about. Our country will continue sliding down the road to fewer and fewer personal freedoms and more and more government involvement in our lives. Kind of like the new owners of a well-respected company exploiting the reputation of the company. You simply start building less quality into your products while continuing to put the well known and well respected brand name on them. Though eventually people figure out that the name has become meaningless you have in the meantime, made a handsome profit based on the deception. We can call ourselves free while giving up more and more of our freedoms to the government, but at some point "freedom" will look a lot like slavery and we will be giving incentive to people to follow the path of least resistance and just let the government take care of them. Of course the brevity of a blog would allow you to see me as a cold-hearted person lacking in compassion. However, I am not. I simply believe compassion can only be applied by individuals giving of their time or treasure and acting under the influence of their conscience. If your conscience moves you to take resources from someone else to give to one you would like to help, then you need to find a word other than compassion. We've already had enough words stolen from our rather fragile language.
It is taking a while to digest all that is going on in this country right now. Slowly, I would say, the picture is beginning to clear up a bit. Transitioning from a mostly agricultural economy to one based on manufacturing was a difficult but economically prosperous endeavor for the last 60 or 70 years. Still, looking around our country in the midst of an economic crisis, I see plenty of evidence of a comparatively rich society. None in history has accomplished what we have and I would suggest it was, at its heart, due to our Constitutional freedoms. Having said that, our current predicament, (jeepers, I took 3 shots at that spelling and missed all three times), would seem to be a result of our freedom to be greedy. Let me explain a bit. What if there is a challenge to our company's position from another company offering a similar product at a lower cost thereby impacting our company's bottom line. We are fine with a tariff, or new regulation which will put our company, and our personal fortunes, back in front. In other words, we are ok with the million people who buy our widget paying more for it as long as I don't lose my job. Never mind the inherent unfairness of the situation, or the ultimate dis-incentive provided by such action to future businesses. We kept our job and that's what's important. Do we really believe that bailing out GM was a wise move? There are no more cars being built today than if GM had been allowed to fail. The only difference is that the people buying the cars now have the added financial burden of propping up a proven failure, GM. I suppose we will also end up paying all of their health care and retirement costs as well. Where does it stop? The company I worked for for 23 years went through quite a transition over its life. Originally it needed experienced electronics troubleshooters to repair the avionics equipment that they serviced. As time went on, the prevailing method of repair was to replace whole circuit boards which had become fairly cheap with all the advances in circuit board design and manufacture. The company was now in a predicament with a highly skilled, well-paid workforce that was competing with younger companies who could hire less skilled workers for less money and provide a similar level of service to its customers. While this is unfortunate, it is, in fact, capitalism. Bailing out such a company only artificially sustains a segment of the workforce, while burdening the rest of it. It is not, at all, an example of a "Free Market" but rather an example of an artificially skewed market. That is what we have here in the United States now as government has become more and more involved in business. We are destroying the most remarkable system ever encountered in this world and we are inhibiting its ability to adjust and respond to challenges. We are loading its backpack up with more and more rocks as it tries to compete on a global scale. We are prolonging an unsustainable illusion while destroying our ability to excel in the future. We are, in fact, guaranteeing a mediocre future, rather than offering ourselves the chance to continue with our truly exceptional economic system.
It hit me this morning, as I was giving a little brain time to the upcoming political season, that the corruption of the ruling class in this country is a reflection of those who put them in their positions. I hang around some pretty "good" folks at work, at church, etc. And yet I can tell you that many of them, as many in our society, have cheated on their taxes, defrauded insurance companies and have been unfaithful to their spouses all while showing no remorse or signs of guilt. Those insurance companies take advantage of us all the time so it's ok, right? The federal government is bloated and inefficient, so it's ok to cheat on our taxes. And our spouse, well, they aren't too bad, but it's obvious we are wired to have lots of sex so as long as I can keep it from public view it's pretty much expected. Why do we expect our politicians to be driven by principle, when we are driven by selfish ambition? Why do we want politicians who exhibit integrity, when we are following gravel trucks to their place of business so we can get a free windshield even though the crack has been there for several days? Ever keep your mouth shut about damage to a roof or car that was pre-existing when talking to the adjuster? Just wondering. And, by the way, insurance companies, like the company you work for, must make a profit, or go out of business, so when one person takes them for a ride, the fare is ultimately paid by other clients. A little like taxing those nasty corporations. The fact is, corporations don't pay taxes, they just collect them. When their expenses go up, (like their taxes), the price they charge for their product or service goes up to compensate. Either that or they start laying off people and reducing research and development which hurts everybody directly or indirectly. Please don't read this as a defense of "big business", it is, in fact, a condemnation of our culture at large that is so comfortable with lying, cheating, stealing etc. As long as the ultimate goal of self-gratification is reached, there are no hard and fast rules. I would like to encourage each of us to take a good long look in the mirror and make a commitment to become the kind of person we wish our representatives were. Then, when we've reached that goal, run for office.Tune in next week when I'll share my favorite guacamole recipe.
Just returned from a glorious 3 mile walk. Well the walk itself was the usual one foot in front of the other sort of thing, but I was visited by some thoughts that I will hopefully convey to you effectively. Due to the magic of modern electronics you will be completely unaware of the several hour gap of time between this blog's beginning and its ending. I wanted to get a bit down before I play some music with my daughter to help me remember the "gist" of the thoughts that accompanied my walk.
Firstly, my heel did not hurt much at all. According to medical experts, (my wife), I likely have Plantar Fasciitis. Don't know what that means other than it makes your heel hurt. It seems the pain can be adjusted to, only to have a lingering effect later on. This morning, little to no pain. Of course this resulted in the predictable gratefulness of my general good health throughout my life so far. And an admonition to others, (that would be all 4 of you), to get out and take some walks if you have the ability to do so. This was a wonderful, cool, puffy cumulus cloud sort of morning and a time to thank God for the incredible engineering feat that our bodies are.
I had the thought, again, of how fortunate I am to live here in Kansas. We don't get cheated out of any one of the 4 seasons. Those poor suckers over in Hawaii, as well as those who live in, let's say, Florida, or Southern California, don't have the advantage of experiencing all 4 seasons. Go ahead and voice your comments about how, if you want snow, you can drive to it, or whatever, but living through all the seasons allows you to truly experience all that creation has to offer. I mean, come on. Living in Florida is like celebrating only the resurrection over and over without coming to grips with the suffering and anguish of the cross. (I know this analogy is sounding a little sacreligious, but you're the one who stopped to read this thing). Like Easter Sunday, without Maundy Thursday. Stick with me here. How can playing in a soccer game here in Kansas come to announce to me that spring has really come, without living through a couple of months of cold and snow where outdoor activities are limited to "necessity only" items? (of course sledding notwithstanding) I actually like winter, and snow, but I'm always ready for the color green to reestablish itself here in Kansas, and that first soccer game in the spring gave me a chance to celebrate with the rest of the world that life is coming out of hibernation and bright colors will once again join us. Then, in late summer, after a couple of weeks of 100 degree days, that first significant cold front moves through to bring its energizing effects to my aging and tired body. Like a drink of cool water after spending the day on a roof nailing down shingles. I would argue that the refreshment is shallow if you haven't lived through the hot and humid summer days first. Sure, driving from a boring, continually warm climate to the mountains is refreshing, but offers only a shadow of the refreshment that a late August cool front brings to us Kansans. Today's walk was great partly because we have already hit 100 this year and I could absorb the coolness, knowing it will soon be swallowed by the advent of summer.
