Simple Living- The Philosophy

To pick up on the theme of “simple living”. In an earlier post I discussed Simple Living- Economy, today I want to consider the philosophy of a simple lifestyle.

In my attempt to live simply, we might even say “sensibly”, I have learned that there are different ideals afloat as to what ‘simple living’ means. The spectrum runs anywhere from a primitive existence to a full-blown modern home.
I suspect that the true definition must fall into a broad range of living conditions. It is also true that what one person considers ’simple living’ would be very different from what others might consider as a simple life. There are no recognized “authorities” to define the term in such a way that becomes a ’standard’ for simple living. Each person is free to develop their own ideal of a simple life. But underlying all the different ideals is a common philosophy, that our lives need not be as complicated as they sometimes are.

If we are willing to admit a truth to ourselves, it is, that many of the complications we experience have been brought on ourselves by choices that we make or habits that we form. As a society, it would appear that we are prone to let others set the bar as to where and how we should live. This outside influence invariably has some kind of affect on our attitudes. The “American Dream”, which for too many, has now turned into a “nightmare”, may not be the best way for us to live. At one time that dream was defined by the ownership of a decent house and good car. Then came “Hollywood” and TV that showed us the lives of the ‘rich and famous’ to stir up envy in many people. Next came “easy credit”, whereby we all could access things that were impossible in a “pay as you go” economy. Now we have woke up from a dream to find ourselves in a nightmare of debt and frustration, not just in a few individuals, but nearly a whole nation is one paycheck from ‘bankrupt’.
There have been plenty of people who have resisted the “Jones movement” and a few examples have always been around to buck the tide, but we mostly never hear about them. All media sources must, by the very nature of things, promote consumerism. We don’t hear radio or TV commercials telling us we “don’t need all the things we see”. Rather the advertising business must make us think we “need” whatever item they are selling, or they won’t get paid for their advertising.

I should state once again, I am not anti-capitalism or anti-consumer. I will leave that up to some who call themselves ’environmentalists’. These people, who are down on the American capitalist system, show themselves to be hypocrites, for the most part. I do consider myself a conservationist in that I think we should show common sense when using our natural or any other resource. But some seem to think they have a monopoly on conservation by claiming we must “preserve” nature by restricting its use to a “chosen few”, which don’t include us common folk. So they set aside millions of acres for national preserves and then make access to that land so expensive that only the elite can enjoy it. That is not what conservation was in the eyes of the first Americans who promoted conserving natural resources, but I digress.

Simplicity is a state of mind

For those of us who do not want to spend the better part of our life trying to earn a lot of money to leave to the “tax man”, there is a better way of living. It must begin with our thinking process. How we look at life and the world around us. This leads to a philosophy of simple living whereby we find that the best things in life really are free. Each of our lives consist of “time” and, as I have observed before, there is 24 hours in a day, whether you are a rich person or a poor man. How we spend that time is what makes up the content of our lives.

From the time I was a youth it seemed to me a sad thing that so many people lived lives that they “hated”, simply because they did not believe there was a way to escape the ‘leg-hold trap’ that our society has laid for us. Admittedly, it is not a easy road to travel, but you won’t find much traffic on the highway of “volunteer poverty”. By that I mean, some of us are willing to live our lives at a lower than average “standard of living” if by doing so, we can escape the 40 hour a week salary trap. Of course, 40 hour weeks are rare for “salaried” workers these days. But the point is some of us want to live as self-employed persons, even if that employment does not pay as well as having what I refer to as a “real job”. Personally, I have not had such a job since the spring of 1988, that is going on 24 years. During this time I have had a lot of different kinds of income, but all of it as a self-employed person.

Another part of our societal thinking is that for one to be “self-employed” they must start a business that will eventually have employees. It is only reasonable to assume this is necessary if one wants to become ’wealthy’ or have what is called a “good business”. However, it was not my intention to trade an ‘employer’ for ‘employees’. For a person who wants some “freedom”, employees are not your best ‘investment’. Invariability the owner of such a “business” is more entrapped in his “job” than he was as an employee. It is a rare business man who can leave his place of business in the hands of someone else and continue to be successful. I see nothing “simple” about the lives of most small business people. I know too many of them to be deceived into thinking that this was my answer to a “simple life”.

If I had to define “one element” of our lifestyle that has made this life possible it would have to be “money management”. Most of the time, there was not that much money to manage! However, the key to maintaining our independent condition was in the fact that, very early in the experiment of living without a regular paycheck, we realized we had to save all the money we could for the “lean times” in my self-employment. By avoiding debt as much as possible and not spending all our money as it came in, we actually learned that we did not need to have as much money as we thought. The formula gets simple very quickly, when you don’t know when your next paycheck might come, you form a habit of holding onto some reserves instead of spending everything you earn. It is not a hard habit to form when you don’t know ‘when’ you will have free-lance work, which is what my self-employment consisted of. But on the other hand, people who feel “trapped” in a job that pays a regular wage, feel free to buy more on credit because they are confident they can make their payments. It becomes a vicious cycle of always reaching to have more and better things. It is understandable that hard working people feel they ’deserve’ to have the things they work so hard for, and they do, but until the cycle of debt and payments gets broken, there can be no real progress toward simplifying our lives. That is, if a simple life involves giving up a regular paycheck in order to spend our time at other pursuits than a “job”.

This modern “leg-hold trap” is hard to extract oneself from. It does become easier if you don’t have a very good estimate of what you will earn next month. A “budget” under those circumstances gets to be very basic. As in keeping track to the bills that you have to pay, like house and car payments, phone and things that are fairly predictable. I found out early on that it was vital to keep enough money in reserve to pay these necessary bills, whether I had income or not. In that situation it also became easier to save money. The motivation gets pretty high when you decide you would rather be independent than have the “latest” model of automobile, or any of the other items that we are told by society that we need.

Many types of self-employment jobs are affected by the seasons of the year, especially if it involves outdoor work. My particular work was as a Hardwood Lumber Inspector. My work activity was to inspect lumber for any number of different small sawmill operations. (I use the past tense, even though I still inspect lumber, but much less than in the past.) In MN most of the logging is done in the winter when the ground is frozen and timber is more accessible. Of course there is some logging that takes place year around, but generally speaking winter will see a much greater harvest of logs than any other time of the year. It was a tradition in times past for farmers to go logging in the winter, after their summer crop work was done. This is how the great “logging camps” operated in the hay-day of American expansion, roughly up until the 1^st Great Depression. (We have not admitted the fact of the 2^nd one yet, the government is better at ‘cooking the books‘ now.) They cut the logs in the winter and piled them up on the frozen ice. When spring breakup came, the logs would be floated downstream to the mills, where they would then be sawed into lumber.
Those logging camps are history, but a certain part of the tradition is still in practice, purely from the fact that timber is easier to get over frozen ground than any other time. Every year, at least for the last 25, come spring there is a rush of logs from the winter landings to the sawmills. Consequently there is a rush for the mills to get the logs sawed into lumber, inspected and sold before warm weather damages the fresh lumber. The inspection part is where my work comes in. Thus, from around January up until about April my work would be very steady, often in the early years when I was after all the work I could possibly make time for, I would find myself working 6 and, at times, 7 days a week. By late May things would start to slow down and often in June I was out of work entirely.

It only took a couple yearly cycles to see how this worked out in my particular line of work. Once I understood how things worked, it was rather a pleasure to see the first of June come. Because I learned to save some money from lots of work in the winter, I was able to enjoy the slow season, which just so happened to be the best time of year for fishing, which was one of my passions in years past.

Since I don’t intent to write a ‘biography’ here, I must find some way to close this post! So here is my take: Simple living is really a state of mind that everyone must define in their own terms. But if you find that you are constantly stressed, over worked or just plain discontented, maybe you should consider ways in which you can “simplify, simplify, simplify”!

In future posts I will discuss what I consider as necessary or helpful “Skills” to simple living.
　wherein we attempt to live in such a way and within the means we can reasonably and honorable obtain, without destroying the rights of others to pursue their own dreams of what life should be. There are many people who are very good at creating wealth and who enjoy spending that wealth on a lifestyle that is far different than what most of us aspire to. I don’t fault them in the least, they are the people who have raised our standard of living by inventing all kinds of goods and services that makes living in the USA the envy of the world. What I resent, is the ideal that money is the end-all to a happy life. If that were the case, most of us would be out of luck, for it is not possible that everyone can be “equal” in a free society, as far as ‘wealth‘ is concerned. We should be equal in the ‘right’ to work toward whatever life we want, but the reality has always been that it is only a few, among the masses, that attain the upper levels of the wealth train. Our nation has, in its history of capitalistic freedom, produced more wealthy people than any nation in history, I would believe. In most cases, people become wealthy by a combination of hard work, exceptional skills, ambition and a desire to improve the state of their financial worth. I speak in terms of common people who create wealth by their own business or vision. I am not speaking of those who were born into wealth, nor of those who become wealthy by immoral activities. I say “immoral activities” rather than “legal activities”, because there are many “legal” methods of becoming wealthy that are by no means “moral”.

Mosquitoes in Winter

Minnesota is a state well known for lots of mosquitoes in the summertime, that is to be expected with all the water we have. Although they are not as bad here on our farm as they were when we lived on the river, unless we step into the woods! There, from June to early September they will generally carry you off to eat you.

But here is my complaint against ‘mother nature’. How is it that we get blessed with a species of those critters that will live all winter in our house? We have seen them when it is 20 below zero. I have often commented that it just did not seem “fair” to have one of those flying vermin buzz my ear, when I could barely keep my blood warm! This is something that we have always noticed, but since we use wood for heat we always assumed the larva came in on the wood and the varmints hatched in the woodpile. This year we have more than normal and thought it was because of the extremely mild weather we are having this fall.

But my lovely wife has learned that this is not the case at all. There really is a specie of mosquito that survives through the winter outside the larva stage, but inside houses. A MN DNR publication calls them “house mosquitoes”, the Latin name is (Culex pipiens), which I am not going to look up. I know this fellow well enough without checking out his genealogy, history or places he likes to live. They are rather large and live in their adult stage over winter wherever they can find a warm place to stay. Thus explains a 24 year mystery.

This reminds me of the ‘snow flea’, but that will be for another time.
　

Monday Morning Courage

One thing we find in the USA is that Americans are on the move at all times. Most people cherish the weekends, but live in dread of Monday morning, yet when their alarm clock  goes off, they are up on moving. Most people have to get into a vehicle, (the most dangerous thing around) and drive themselves to their workplace, braving all kinds of weather, road hazards and other tired, distracted commuters.

Once their they have to forget their "life" and get their mind on the job at hand. No matter what the occupation is, Americans get it done. We have a lot of loud voices criticizing our way of life, but on the same hand, we have thousands of people from all over the world, breaking into our country because they know we are still the place where opportunity exists to better their lives.

These days it is seldom that I am on the road early Monday morning, since most of my labor is done at home. Yet, whenever I am, it never fails to strike a cord of pride in my heart, that Americans are no afraid to work! In fact, most want to work in order to improve their circumstances in life. Sure, we have plenty of "bums", so will not life a hand to feed themselves, but they are another one of those small, but "loud" minorities that seem to get lots of attention by the media. I guess since they won't work, they have time to seek the attention of media types, that appear to be attracted to whiners, as if that makes a worthwhile story. But then, what kind of story would it make, if we saw on CNN that John, Joe etc. all were on their job early Monday morning?

For something to make "news", it must be 'different' or 'controversial'. They will cover a "work stoppage" as in "strikes", for then they can get some 'airhead' to make outlandish statements, that they can use for their Monday morning broadcast. They don't consider that a man or woman who has showed up at their workplace daily for many years, on time and ready for work, newsworthy. This is because it is commonplace, and that is not sensational enough to attract the attention of media minds.

On this Monday  morning after the Thanksgiving holiday, millions of Americans are back on the job with courage and determination to "produce" something worthwhile to their employer.

Though I am moving later than most Monday morning workers, I too must muster the courage and ambition to "get on the job" and now.

May God Bless American workers on this Monday!

Camping

How is it that we humans have the tendency to think of the things we want to do “next summer”, before the fall is over and before winter even sets in? Knowing full well that we have nearly 6 months to wait for any sign of summer weather, at least in MN we do.
I find it to be the case that every year, around the 1^st of December, I begin to make my camping plans for the following year, with much more anticipation than “camping” merits, I might add. When I speak of camping, we are talking about the “old fashion” kind, a tent. Having had the joy of a modern 5^th wheel camper, which was used for a 5 week vacation to Florida one winter, I do know the difference in “camping” the modern way and camping in a traditional manner. The cost and time to maintain a modern camper that is only used a few times a year just did not seem worth it, so I sold the thing and used the proceeds to transform our barn’s hayloft to a woodshop, which I spend far more time in than I would the camper. So now all my camping is back to a tent of some kind.

Remembering back to the first time I went “camping” as a child is a real treat. My children have camped from the time they were a few months old, so they will never have the same kind of memories as I dig up from the cobwebs of my mind, nearly 43 years ago. As is often the case in the things we remember, the “memory” is much more agreeable than the actual experience, for the simple reason that I woke up on the ground under a homemade quilt with my head chewed nearly off from mosquito bites. Other than that, I decided I liked “camping”.

I feel certain it was the summer of 68’ or 69’. My father gather up the whole family, which at that time included 5 children, to take us camping on a little farm pond that belonged to a man he was working for. Camping, most of the time, requires a body of water for the atmosphere to be proper, unless it happens to be a hunting trip, in which case the only water you need is for drinking and cleaning up. The tendency to camp near water also insures the company of many biting insects, and, as a general rule, insects really enjoy human companionship.

This pond was not very big, but I being a young fisherman, was in no way discouraged that my fishing prospects were somewhat limited. I don’t recall that we caught any fish. My clearest memory is of rolling up in my quilt by a campfire, with my father, mother and siblings doing likewise. There was a lot of grumbling from the female corner about the mosquitoes, but I was content enough in that I was “camping”. We did not have a tent in those days. By mornings light I remember my mother and maybe some sisters were found to have fled to the car seats to sleep, with the windows up tight!

My camping methods have advanced, somewhat, since that long ago night in southern Ohio. Now we use either a modern nylon tent, or a white canvas wall tent that even has a chimney hole, so that we can use a woodstove if it is cold. When backpacking and canoeing into the backcountry, a nylon tent is about the only good option, considering the weight and bulk of a canvas tent. For pure comfort, a canvas wall tent is hard to beat. They are roomy enough to set up cots to sleep on, plus they breath enough to have a heat source. Any heat in a nylon tent will soon give you a shower from the condensation that drops from the ceiling, besides if you try to use a woodstove in a nylon tent, it is nearly certain, that you will end up with a pile of melted nylon in short order!

My last noteworthy camping was this past spring (2011). It was a trip into the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) of northeast MN. For those not familiar with the BWCA, it consists of a million acres of wilderness area laying on the Canadian border. It is a “controlled wilderness”, meaning that the “powers that be” will only permit a certain number of travelers to enter the wilderness on any given day. That has its own merits and criticisms, but it does reduce congestion along the travel routes, which are from lake to lake over portages that have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years by traveling people in that area of the world. I have had the privilege of camping in the BWCA off and on since 1986, it is one of the unique places in our state where one can leave all modern modes of transportation or communication and lose themselves in a wilderness environment. There are no motors of any kind permitted beyond the outlying parts of the wilderness, so all travel will be by canoe or foot. Cell phones don’t work, at least in the areas that I have been to of late. All I can say about that is, I would not take one even if they did work, the experience could not possibly be the same if one had constant communication with the hectic outside world, which we are trying to escape from to begin with.

This last trip was also my most unforgettable trip into the BWCA. Due to unfavorable weather conditions. Even though it was in late May, a time when MN normally can expect the black flies and mosquitoes not to be out in force, they were on the first day. After that, they could not fly, being grounded by gale force winds! Now strong winds and canoe travel do not mix, but nature does not take into account the desires of travelers.

Part of the allure of wilderness camping is the ability, for a few days, to be transported, as a time machine, to the days before modern travel. I have found that for the average person, canoeing is one of the few ways to get into the wilderness and still enjoy some solitude. Backpacking is a natural alternative for those hardy enough to participate in that sport. But long before my ‘carcass’ began to fall apart, I decided that travel by canoe was ideal for my temperament. For starters I like to fish, that requires lots of water. Second, backpacking demands a minimal amount of gear, that requires a lot of sacrifice of comfort while encamped, to my opinion. Third, I get bored just “walking”, unless there is a better hiking environment than what I find in our great state. MN is full of great places, but hiking trails are not among our top attractions. After all, how many miles of “tundra” do you care to see? J But lakes! We have them by the thousands, according to our license plates, we are the land of ten thousand lakes, but the DNR assures us that this is a “low count” and there are many more than 10,000 lakes in our state. I would like to fish every one of them! Still working on that.

If you wonder what it is like to be in a canoe with white caps around a foot high, I can tell you it is “exciting”. It calls of a steady hand and careful navigation. You don’t let yourself get crossways to the waves, not unless you are wanting to go swimming. You must go with the waves or straight into them. As our good luck had it, on the day we really needed to travel the wind was to our back, so we rode the waves at a speed seldom seen before the steam engine. If we had been facing into that gale, more than likely we would have went into “camp” and waited for a calm. Travel speed into the wind is about as slow as a turtle on a greased road, there is a lot of energy put into the paddle, but very little forward progress.

Camping is not for everyone, especially ‘backwoods’ camping. But there are not many sports that can be done at such low cost in money as camping. Most of the equipment, if purchased wisely, will last a lifetime. No matter how the trip turns out, the memories are there to be dug out of the archive of our minds anytime we want them. Some of my most cherished memories are around a campfire somewhere beyond the roads, while the sun sets over a lake that has not seen a motor in 50 years. The moose and bear make it their home, the busy beaver is always at work, building dams or storing food for the long winter and the ‘haunting cry of the loon’ echoes across the water like a sound from another age in history.

Yep, I am going to make another trip into the BWCA next spring, but I am not going to carry enough food for a month! That is another story better left alone.
　

Black Friday

Once again our suffering economy has 'pushed the clock' to get the public to shop early for the Christmas season. That the retailers are successful is only because we consumers are cooperative. Not all of us, naturally, but enough to make it seem worth the while of big stores to open at all kinds of odd hours, all determined to get the cream of the spending glut that inflicts the nation at this time of year. Anyone who knows me will already know that I will not be part of the shopping mob. Just out of principle if for no other reason. I just don't like hustle & bustle crowds, a personal taste that obviously is consider "strange" by a lot of folks, judging from what I hear on the news.

The facts are this. The largest, most competitive retail stores are desperate to sale a lot of products today, not next week, but today! How have they gotten themselves into such a state, that this one day greatly determines whether or not they will make a profit this calender year? Is something to be amazed at. We might even say "alarmed" about. What kind of economy have we created that depends on "over consumption", to the point that if Americans do not spend more money than they have, our whole economic system will go down the drain? Something, besides home mortgages, is upside-down!

Now I know a lot of my friends and relatives are participating in the great American tradition of shopping today on "Black Friday". My observation is not meant to be critical of 'shoppers', nor of capitalism, but rather to think reasonably about our nations economic future, if our great retailers are so over extended that they cannot expect to make any profits until the last 5 or 6 weeks of the year, this cannot be considered as a 'healthy economic system', but rather "fragile".  Nor can it be healthy for an economy to "depend" on credit for a "healthy business" to operate. I mean the "credit" of the 'consumer'. When all of our retail industry is counting on the public to go into debt for Christmas shopping, it would seem to me we are walking frayed tight-rope.

How vulnerable has our economy become? What if there is a large scale terroist attack at this season? Or even a cyber attack that "scrambles" the major retailers or banking computer networks? Does this mean our national retail companies are so delicate that they would quickly be driven into bankruptcy if suddenly consumers cut back on their purchases during Black Friday or throughout the Christmas shopping season?  I would suspect many of them are close to the edge as it is.

Here is a "common man's" opinion. From our top government officials, to our corporate heads, all the way down to the shopper on the street, we have lost our collective minds! Just as many people knew that the housing boom of 'recent collaspe' could not possibly continue, we ought to know that an economy built on a foundation of debt is always just one step from a major collaspe.

But cheer up, there is an answer to our economic vulnerability. But it will not start at the top of the food chain with government or big business. It must start at the very root of our economic system and that is with we the people, better know to retailers as consumers. If millions of Americans decide to give up the "debt addiction" and bring our personal finances back to solid ground, our whole nation will benefit, in the long term. It won't be so good for some of the more fragile retailers who are counting on us to keep their boat afloat by our personal debt, but as a nation, we will be better off with fewer companies that are healthy than a million big corporations existing on a thread. Let them go out of business and companies who do their job right will fill up the gap for the real demand.

I don't think it can be disputed that debt is necessary for business and individuals for certain big ticket items like homes, autos and such. How else can normal people finance such items? But those who keep records of such things tell us that our debt is far beyond "reasonable" and credit card debt it totally out of control for far too much of our poplulation.

Soon we will be in a new year. If you are make New Year's Resolutions, another questionable habit of Americans :), I would suggest, for your own peace of mind and the welfare of our country, you can't go wrong, if you to pay down your debt as much as possible. There is nothing we can do to help our economy more than by exercising some common sense restraint, when it comes to spending money that we don't have. It is a sure thing that our government is "not" going to cut their "overspending", after all, next year is an election year. The "powers that be", who have already ran the piggy bank dry, will not stop borrowing money to pacify all the "voters" who are screaming for more government "assistance", as long as they control the printing presses or can get "someone", even our enemies, to loan them money to keep themselves in office.

If on the other hand, you have money that you can spend without putting your personal economics in question, GO SHOPPING!

Happy Black Friday to all.

Thanksgiving or Turkey Day?

One cannot help but notice, as each year passes, the terminology used for our holidays moves more and more to “politically correct” jargon. This year it seems to have jumped up a couple notches with the use of “Turkey Day” rather than “Thanksgiving”. Turkey Day is not a new term, I have heard that used to refer to Thanksgiving as far back as the 80’s at least. Just as “Xmas” has been used for a long time to refer to Christmas. The only difference is in the frequency with which one hears the terms in advertising or reads them in news stories. It really does appear that many people are determined to remove any thought of ‘Thankfulness to God’ from our national language. My question is; what is the point? Either we believe in God and are willing to observe a holiday in which we acknowledge our belief that He is the source of all we have to be thankful for, or we don’t, in which case we can’t thank Him.

Freedom of religion is one of the founding principles of the U.S., from the very beginning of our nation. That also means that our constitution gives an atheist the ‘right to their religion’. But how has it come to be that “the few” are having such an influence on “the many” when it comes to religion and holidays. By “the few” I refer to those of the atheist religion, who somehow are offended that “the many” (those of us who believe in God) are willing to observe a day of “Thanksgiving” for all that God has blessed us with.

We all know the flawed argument that they are using in an attempt to rid our nation of any Christian symbols or influence, that being the ‘separation of church and state’ clause in the constitution. In their extreme zeal for their anti-God religion they act as if the very ideal of God is an affront to their very thin-skinned faith that there is no God.

I can’t say for certain the percentage of Americans who acknowledge faith in God, I see that on a billboard the atheists have put up on a N.J. highway that they claim 37 million Americans don’t believe in the “myth” of Jesus, so what? That only means that about 270 million do believe in Jesus as fact, while the minority want to bury their heads in the sands of ignorance, about recorded history, and refuse to believe. Truth is not determined by “numbers”, but rather by facts. As Ronald Reagan once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” The fact is our nation, until very recently, has recognized that God has blessed us far above any nation on earth, certainly in recent generations, and likely in the history of the world.

What is the point of “the few” insisting that we throw God overboard and be converted to a ‘godless religion’, as they hold. Yes, I am aware that they say atheism is not a “religion”, but in this, they are only fooling themselves. Religion is a belief, or faith in that which is ‘unseen’. Thus it comes down to a simple matter of choices. I chose, based on a whole boatload, of what is commonly referred to as “Christian Evidences” to put my faith in God. That would be the God as in the Jewish/Christian context of faith. On the other hand, the “atheist” has chosen to put his “faith” in; “Nothing” (I don’t mean for it to sound sarcastic, even though it might.) I realize most in the atheist faith claim to arrive at their religion based on modern science in some manner. But even that does not make sense to a person of average ‘reason’. For Science itself could not exist without a universe of order, held together by “some force” that is unseen. When we believe in something ‘unseen’ we are in the realm of “faith”, I chose to believe in God, the atheist chooses to believe that our ordered marvelous universe just came about by accident with no causal force, now that takes “faith”!

Enough on that. I will refer to Thursday as “Thanksgiving” and thank God for all His blessings. Another thing I will be doing on Thursday is ‘digging up memories’ of Thanksgiving days of my youth.

I grew up in the late 60’s & early 70’s. Our family lived on what was called a “farm”, 80 acres of southern OH land, a mixture of fields, streams and woodland. Thanksgiving Day was observed, at least in my memorable teen years, with certain predictable traditions. One, we lived in a small house, in which there were our family of 8, plus often times (the ones I remember most) we had a family of cousins come down from the northern part of the state to spend the holiday with us. This was another 6-8 people, depending on how many of them came. There was at least 12 people in that little house for Thanksgiving dinner.

Naturally the teenage boys & usually our fathers were out of the house first thing after breakfast. I for one, did not want to be around when the women folk were cooking Thanksgiving dinner! If we were not quick to exit the premises, it was very possible to find ourselves put to work peeling potatoes or some such thing. Thanksgiving was a day for rabbit hunting! We would call up the Beagles, if any were about , and head out with our single shot shotguns to beat the brush in search of cottontails. I don’t think the success of the hunt was very important, at least not to me. What was important in my mind was to stay out of the kitchen! I was no hand at cooking then, nor now. Some things are best avoided at all cost. For me, cooking a Thanksgiving Day dinner is one of those things. But the consuming of it is not something to be left to the women folk!
Now here is how the tradition worked. You can’t just sit a dozen people around a small table in a small kitchen, all at once. It was a practice in our family clan, to seat and feed the men and near grown boys, first. Yea, like in the women serving up the food and refilling the bowls, then waiting until the men were all stuffed before they sat down around the table to eat. I suppose in these modern days of “political correctness” that practice would be about as repulsive as Thanksgiving is to an atheist. But that is simply the way things were done and to do otherwise, like in having the women sit down to eat while the men served the food, would have raised more than ’eyebrows’! In fact, I am guessing ‘the women’ would have taken a skillet to the head of anyone who suggested such a change in “tradition”. It just was not done, nor would it have been considered proper to do so.

I did cook one Thanksgiving dinner. It might be considered a ‘disgrace’, but it was not turkey and gravy. That day would have been in the mid-90’s. My wife had gone out of state to have Thanksgiving with her family, I was ‘stuck in MN’, to my complete satisfaction. It was one of those years in which cold weather had set in very early. We already had the fish houses out on the lakes, with plenty of ice. Being ‘on my own hook’ that day, I went to the lake and was successful in catching a nice mess of Walleye. What a feast I had that evening for my Thanksgiving dinner!

In a land of freedom, we all ought to have the right to exercise our faith. If the atheist wants to skip the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter holiday, that is their choice, but I don’t give them the power to take away my choice.
As most men, I am not a big fan of holidays, other than ‘deer season’, but I am Thankful that God has given me the ‘right’ and freedom to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the U.S.A. I am also thankful that we have thousands of young soldiers willing to risk and give their lives to keep that freedom from being crushed by ‘religious zealots’ who would force their religion upon me, if they had the power. While the atheist screams and kicks that his eyes might fall upon a nativity scene next month, those same soldiers are fighting for his freedom to whine about it.

God Bless American and Happy Thanksgiving to all!
　

Remembering Nov. 22, 1963

Today is one of those dates in history that everyone living on this date in 1963 remembers where they were. People very much younger than myself will not be able to recall those horrible days of shock and turmoil, I can barely remember a few of the details, being that I was only in the 1st grade.

Our school let out early and sent everyone home. I remember older students talking on the school bus and saying they would not want to be Robert Kennedy, who was Attorney General at the time. I assumed it was because they figured his life was also in danger, as he was in the government too.

I also remember that the grown ups were on edge, thinking the assassination of the president was a prelude to an attack by Russia, on account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a child I was mostly sheltered from the things that concerned the adults, only hearing about them later in life. But at the time, a nuclear war was not beyond the realm of possibility. Neither is it now for that matter, we have just become complacent about the ideal. After all, what can we do as individuals if someone in the world decides to "push the button"? No point in worrying about things we have no control of.

There have been (and are) people who really wished for an assassination of Mr. Bush,  Mr. Clinton, or the current president. These people evidently have no memory, nor have they read history. The murder of a president of the United States can never be viewed as a "good thing", under any circumstance. We can all be thankful for the unbelievable excellent work of the Secret Service, whether we like a current president or not. That is one form of chaos I hope never to see again in my lifetime.

Having read some of the history detailing the policies of JFK, it is impossible not to contrast those policies with his political party of today, the democrats. Everyone has heard the famous clip of JFK's speech when he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." That is surely not the message I get coming from the current politicians of that party. Just listen to the promises they make; it is all about what they "will do for you and me", never mind that they can't afford to keep the lights on in Washington, they still promise to give us all kinds of goodies, if we will only vote for them. Ok, so it is not restricted to that party, but more so than other political parties.

In remembering JFK, take a minute to consider, what would he have thought of his democrat party today?

What Did We Expect?

So the news is that the "super debt committee" has failed to agree on a way to cut about a trillion dollars from the U.S. spending addiction. I would have been surprised if they had found a way to agree, I would have also been holding onto my wallet! Surely no one really thought these few politicians were going to take the axe to a trillion dollars that people who are going to be voting for, or against, them were counting on. The only remarkable thing about this is that someone was foolish enough to set up such a 'waste of time' to begin with.

Now they say, that since an agreement was not reached there will be automatic across the board cuts that will kick in and take the shortage from the budget; but not until 2013, that would be after next falls election. Rather convenient for all those facing election in 2012, which I would assume included some on the committee.

To hear the news coverage, this failure puts us into somekind of a crisis. How can that be, since they are talking about a budget that is over a year away? By then the Federal Reserve will have the printing presses fired up and create from thin air a few more trillion dollars to prop up the overspending government.

Sooner or later we will have a "crisis" if we keep spending money we don't have. I don't see where there is the will on the part of elected officials, nor the public at large to stop spending money we don't have. Everyone wants their own piece of the pie and woe to any elected official who cuts my piece too thin.

My personal opinion is this: We will not stop spending and printing money until the train goes over the cliff, the seeds of self-destruction are already planted, watered and are going to grow until we reap the harvest of what we have planted. Rather cynical and pestimistic, but if anyone can see how we are going to overcome this mess, I would love to hear the solution.

From Gutenberg to Ebooks

As a family of book lovers or “book-oholics”, as we sometimes refer to ourselves, our house is filled with hundreds of books, maybe over a thousand. No one has counted, it would be a major undertaking and very likely to be embarrassing to know the actual number of books 3 people possess. I know that our library system is not very organized, many times I cannot locate a particular book that I know we have, or did have, whichever the case may be.

Blame it all on Johannes Gutenberg, or John if it was anglicized. The historians claim John was a goldsmith by trade. I would take him to be someone who was competent in the art of forming gold into jewelry or other artful items. If I could talk to Mr. Gutenberg, I would like to ask him, how it came to be that he thought of forming letters with metal and putting that all together into a printing press? But those details seem to be lost to history. At any rate, Johannes receives credit for inventing the first “modern” printing press. Before this the making of books was a rather slow process. There were some wood block type printing and typographic hand printing processes in use at that time which, at best, was a slow way of printing books. The Chinese are said to have printed with wood blocks as early as 800 A.D., but when John got his press going around 1440 A.D. he could soon print 3,600 pages in a day. Compared to hand written books, called manuscripts, it was the difference between a typewriter and a modern day printing shop.

I like looking at manuscript books. Imagine how long it took a scribe to make a copy of the Bible in 1400 or before, and he did not have a modern ink pen! Hand written from beginning to end, after dipping his quill into an inkpot every few words. The cost of such books must have been out of sight, naturally not many people owned books. It is little wonder that the ability to read and write were also rare up until the 15^th century. What would the point be for most people? Unless they had access to a library, books were just not common. Even as recent as 150 years ago in this country, many college students could not afford their textbooks, so they were required to borrow from the library and hand write their own textbook. What a howl that would raise in our American school system today! I would suspect we would have a lot less college graduates.

They claim, over the next 50 years or so after the printing press was invented, by 1500 A.D. Europeans had turned out over 20 million volumes. Obviously there must have been a ‘market’ for books.

Move forward 500 years. Now we have people who predict the demise of the printed page due to the invention of electronic books. I doubt it. If the “progress” of printing goes the way of ‘wood-block’ books, I doubt that the ability of man to move information is going to disappear. That is the “worry” of those who bemoan E-books. Their theory is that by having a book stored in a electronic device rather than on paper, there is a danger of some catastrophe destroying all electronic devices and the world moves back into the “dark ages”, because we lost all that information. I can just imagine what the “scribes” thought when old John started printing books by the millions. They guessed right if they thought they would be out of work, but the spread of information only changed gears and moved up to the speed of a hand operated printing press. Now we move information very close to the speed of light! Simply by posting this entry to my blog, in a matter of minutes any number of millions of people, all over the globe, could access this little essay. Of course, they are not going to, because my name is not one that attracts the attention of very many people. But the technology is in place. It is beyond the ability of my imagination how men, of my own generation, brought this state of affairs about. They obviously had more imagination then I do! They also have more money! Good for them, they earned it.

At some point it does appear that our technology advancements will have to slow down. In recent years it has been moving forward at an extreme pace. Every few months new and more advanced smart phone systems come on the market, same with most electronic technology. Most of these advancements are only possible because of the science of physics that keeps getting the elements reduced to a smaller size, thus more information can be stored in a smaller space. Soon they must reach to the lowest common denominator and there will be a leveling off in electronic development. That won’t mean an end to the research and development though. The world is full of possible applications of technology and as long a we don’t self-destruct through stupidity or war, those applications will continue to spread and, for the most part, make our lives easier.

Here is one to think on which I don’t believe has been “invented” yet. If any of my readers know how we can invent the “transfer of electricity”, sans a power cord, we can be on the cutting edge of technology! Every time I trip over a power cord the thought comes to my mind, why has not someone figured out how to do that? Sure, I know about “cordless drills”, just in case some of you wonder if I am that far away from the “modern world”. J All cordless tools today require a battery power system, what I would like to see in my lifetime, is the technology that will send electricity by “radio signal” to my machines without having to plug it into the wall! Just think of the possibilities. We have the power come to a transformer at our house and that is it, set up whatever electric tool or appliance we want and turn it on. No electric wiring anywhere! Now that would be an innovation I could live with.

I know it seems like an impossibility and science fiction, but so is most of the technology that we are now take for granted. In the mean time, I still love “books”, whether they are on “old fashion paper” or delivered to my computer or Kindle via CORDLESS SIGNALS moving through the air.
　

Dog Days of Fall

This time of fall is not unlike the ‘dog days of summer’. All the main activities in preparation for winter are generally done, at least they should be. Like having the woodshed filled with firewood, any items you don’t want hidden under snow put in, stakes with red flags drove into the ground on each side of the driveway. Now that is an important item, if you have deep ditches! Having learned that lesson the hard way I try very hard to get them up before the ground freezes, not that it is a major job; it is a memory thing.

However, my memory as to why we put up the flags is very clear. A few years ago I was plowing a deep snow, one in which the wind had done its job of piling the ditches even with the driveway and the surrounding area. Not until I felt the front end of the tractor “disappear” did it dawn on me that I was off the ‘high ground’ and into the ditch. Not a nice place to be on a cold day with the drive still plugged with snow. I did manage to exit the ditch, but only because I was so far from the driveway that I totally missed the culvert, if my front tires had caught the culvert it would not have been so easy to get out, thus put up the flags.

In the ‘dog days of summer’ we outdoors people are ready for fall activities. Fishing is never very good that time of year, it is generally too hot to hide out in the woods with the mosquitoes scouting for deer season, there is just not many “fun” things to do, unless it is “work”, which is not much of a distraction from itself.

So now we are in the ‘dog days of fall’. Deer season is over (in MN), the lakes have not yet frozen enough for “normal people” to venture out on them. I say “normal people” because I know some folks, of Finnish origin, in one small town who are always on the lake fishing before the ice is thick enough to hold a mouse! I am not afraid of ice, but I would rather not have it moving up and down as I walk on it! There is not enough snow for snowshoeing, it is too warm to be ‘interesting, it needs to be around -20 with some wind before it is any fun to just roam around aimlessly, for the pure joy of knowing you are along in the woods.

I have a theory that the reason the “holiday season” is so popular is because people get bored in the ’dog days of fall’. What better way to get folks excited than create a annual shopping season, which I note gets earlier every year. Soon the ’big box’ stores will meet themselves ’a-coming’, by the time they get the spring clothing sales done they will be promoting “Christmas” sales in June!

I also observe that this ‘holiday’ business is infectious, as in young girls getting into the season. This afternoon I saw my 11 year old daughter dragging last years Christmas tree up out of the woodlot where she had stashed it last winter, to the door of her playhouse. I ask her what she was doing with that tree? She said she was setting it up in her playhouse to decorate! So much for my “good influence”. I had helped her ‘decorate’ with some steel traps, axes, BB-gun, deer antlers and such things fit for a playhouse, I would never have thought of a Christmas tree! So she is obviously infected, with what appears to be an incurable disease, judging from what I see in other “ladies” who love the “holidays”.

Wait! Maybe there is hope. The last I talked to her, she was on her way outside with a plan of getting out a sled, tying her Beagle to it and using him as a ‘sled dog’! I ask her how she was going to get him to pull, she said she was going to turn a cat loose in front of him! I only hope she has a plan for when that cat shoots underneath a low building, for sled on not, that dog will be on its tail.
Too bad we don’t all have the imagination and ambition of a child.
Happy ‘dog days of fall’.
　

Friday, Nov. 18, 2011

Ernie's World is rather quiet tonight. The rest of the family is gone for the night. I will take full advantage of a quiet house to read, research on the web for a couple things I am wondering about and generally be a "bum".

After a day of outdoor work, getting things in order for what they claim might be our first snowfall of the season, I am not very creative, nor do I care to get involved in any 'rants' about the general condition of the country and world. My world is pretty peaceful right now, I think it best to keep it that way for a day.

If we do in fact get a good snow storm, it is very likely that we will have seen the last of our ground until late March or April. For snow, at this time of year is very unlikely to be melting until spring. That is what we have snowshoes for, we also have some new trails cut through the woods that we will be able to use this winter. Snow is more of a bother to me than cold, but snowshoeing is a nice exercise that lets one get into the woods and see all the sign of wildlife activity from the fresh tracks made after every snowfall.  For that reason along I will enjoy the snow, whenever it comes, no matter what, it won't be long until our world turns 'white' for about 5 months.

Occupy, Why?

We can’t help but hear on the news constantly for the past couple months about the “Occupy Wall St.” protesters. We also hear that some of our elected officials seem to show support for this movement, even the president had encouraging words for them a week or so ago. Never mind that the individual arrested for shooting into the White House was known to have been at the N. Y. protest. I doubt that the president would have any ’encouraging words’ for that one.

Those rumors aside. I decided today to look up one of their websites to see what they claim to be “wanting”, for protesters always want something of a political nature. It was enlightening. This information came from the Occupy MN website. I jotted down a few of their demands:
1) They demand their right to “free speech”- Sounds ok to me, that is the 1^st amendment to our constitution. I haven’t seen where anyone has been denying them that right, the news media is certainly giving them a “voice”.

2) They demand, (and I quote here) “the right to shared prosperity”. I don’t think I noticed that in our constitution. What do they mean? Are they saying; if Mr. Jones has more money, or property, than I do, I have the “right” to just go take it from him by force? Last I knew that was robbery! I am not making this up, it was on their list of “demands”.

My observation about “the right to shared prosperity” is simple. The very statement is against every principle the U.S. of America has ever stood for. You take away a persons right to enjoy the prosperity, that they themselves have worked for, you undermine all productivity in a society. Tell me why I should have worked, saved, sacrificed, done without expensive vacations, drove junk trucks etc. etc. And now, I own my little piece of property, a very small business, have some savings, but since I have more than one of these “kids” sitting on the street corner whining about their lot in life, I should be forced to ‘share my prosperity’? (Not that anyone would mistake me for a “rich” person.) But ‘wealth’ is a relative term. To the homeless man living in his car or on the street, I would be considered a rich man.

You get a share in the prosperity of this country, when you earn it!

3) Again from their website: “We demand the right to jobs and education”. They also had in there somewhere, a demand to an end to the “student debt trap”. Pray tell me, where on earth do they get the ideal that a “job” is a “right”? Or an “education” is a “right”? Then, it appears, they expect that education to be paid for by someone else.

I really have to wonder what country these people grew up in? It is not the U.S.A. that I grew up in! I was not taught in school that I had a “right” to a job. Rather, we were taught that you “find” a job, then you prove your worth to your employer and earn money “for him”, so that he can afford to pay your wages and hopefully make some profit for himself. If he does not, you won’t be getting a paycheck very long. (Unless you work for the taxpayer, then we “owe” you a job, right.)

4) Also “We demand the right to make Wall St. pay for their crisis”. How do you intend to make Wall St. pay? Is it by violating the rights of working people trying to get to their jobs? This is what was tried this very morning. (Nov. 17, 2011) By blocking the public roadways, do they think they are exercising their “rights” to free speech? There are thousands of workers on Wall St. who are not in the richest 1%, as if that has anything to do with right and wrong. It matters not how wealthy a person is, the ‘free-loading bums’ calling themselves “Occupy Wall St.” does not have the “right” to execute vigilante justice on anyone! Since when did it become a “crime” in the United States of American for a person to become wealthy? If that is a “crime”, we are done for as a nation.

I would not deny that there are ‘guilty criminals’ working on Wall St. and certainly some of the things that have been done under the name of “free enterprise” by some banks and security firms on Wall St. would be considered criminal. That is why we have a justice department, securities and exchange commission and dozens of other tax supported law enforcement agencies to deal with. Sure there is corruption that goes on in the banking sector, corruption in politics, corruption on Wall St. I don’t think anyone would deny that. However, if a free society is going to exist, I don’t see how mob justice is going to help the situation.

The Occupy MN website advertised an event for 4 PM today. They were organizing a march on the 10^th St. Ave Bridge; yea, right during rush hour. I assume this is in Minneapolis (could be St. Paul). Either way the point remains the same; the mob wants to exercise their “rights” by interrupting the flow of traffic on the 10^th St. Ave Bridge. I can’t help but think of the thousands of “working people” trying to make their way home from a hard day at work, only to be frustrated by a bunch of “cry babies” who seem to want a communist/socialist country to take care of them. Get a life! Hey, I know where some of you could get a job! No, maybe not, they need people who are “willing to work”.

5) “We demand a federal jobs program for all, funded by taxes on corporations and the rich who sit on trillions in reserves.” Again, this was on their website. My blood pressure might be getting a little high! Just what the country needs! “A federal jobs program”! Hey folks, in case you don’t understand basic economics. A job is suppose to “produce” something! Whether it be a product or service, there must be some “value” produced by the job.

To put this into a simple illustration. Say we corner a person worth 5 million dollars. Just take the 5 million and start spending it to pay ‘salaries’ of 50 people at $50,000 a year. (That would be more than twice what my family lives on, but it is just an example to illustrate the point.) Assuming these are “make work” jobs, which is what they are demanding, in just two years time, what do you get? The 5 million is gone, those 50 people are out of work again, the millionaire has nothing; no one is any better off. This is exactly what a “make work” jobs program does to an economy, when the money is all gone, we are done. Unless we keep printing it out of thin air, which we have been doing. Just wait until that inflation kicks in, then they are going to be screaming for “price freezes” so they can buy a loaf of bread.

Ok, one more point from the Occupy MN website and I will end this rant. One of their “occupy activities” was to be in support of a movement called “jobs, not cuts, protest”. This protest, so says the website, is endorsed by the Amalgamated Transit Union Local #1005 and the United Auto Workers Union Local #879. If I understand this right, the “Occupy MN” movement has joined hands with these two unions to protest spending cuts by state, local and federal governments. Does any of these people not know that the United States has reached a debt of 15 trillion dollars! Yet, they don’t want any cuts in government spending. Is it not obvious that we cannot keep spending money the we don’t have and expect not to go bankrupt? Is the “me” generation so devoid of morality that they are willing to steal every last dollar anyone has earned to support “make work” overpaid public jobs?

It is marvelous to me that just in my lifetime, it appears that we have gone from a “Republic” with a Representative form of government, to a “democracy” which in its pure form is nothing more than “mob rule”. The big push to call ourselves a ’democracy’ has been on since I was a young man, but when I was in high school, our teachers stressed the fact that a pure ’democracy’ was not a “good thing”, for it does not protect the “rights” of minorities. The point is well illustrated in that these “occupiers” claim they represent the 99% against the 1%, therefore, their reasoning is the “majority” has the right to confiscate the property of the minority! I can’t even believe this discussion has come up in the U.S.A.

I have to wonder what really is at the bottom of all this madness? Who or what force is really behind this movement? It does not seem reasonable the just out of nowhere we suddenly have an organized movement to dismantle our Republic and replace it with a socialist/communist system.

Sorry if this offends anyone, but think it through. Either we are a country that enjoys freedom responsibly, or we will lose that freedom by self-destruction. To throw away all restraints and demand the property of others be taken away and given to someone else just because you don’t like “rich people” is insane. To expect our government to act with justice if crimes are committed, is not the same as demanding we confiscate wealth from others, just because we want it, or think they don't deserve it and we do.

It will be a sad day for America if these so-called protests turn to violence when their ‘cry-baby’ tactics don’t work. You can rest assured on which side I will be standing. Freedom is not a ‘free ride’.

Me and the AARP

What does the AARP want with me? For some of you younger folks that stands for (American Association of Retired Persons), in case you are not aware of this organization. We get literature from these well meaning folks on a regular basis, the only problem being, we are not retired. We are not old enough even for social security, much less have the means to “retire”, as in a private retirement account.

Fact of the matter is, I don’t have plans to retire, even if there are “benefits” left in the social security fund when I reach a qualifying age, which I notice is a moveable number. Depending on how much of the funds “Big Brother Government” has raided and how fast we die off, they might have to adjust the age at which we can begin to receive social security benefits, always up of course. Now I am aware that this is a sensitive subject with most working class people. It was with me too, that is until I decided to forget the ideal of receiving any social security.

You might assume a couple possibilities when hearing someone say they don’t plan to retire. One, they have an easy job that age does not affect, after all, Andy Rooney worked until he was 92 years old! Then conveniently ’kicked the bucket’ within a few weeks of retiring. Two, they are independently wealthy and plan to have all the money they need without social security. A third possibility is they are just “stupid”, maybe I should leave that one off the list, because the first two are certainly not true in my case! I am neither wealthy enough to retire, nor is my job easy on the body, better known in my vocabulary as my “carcass”.

Here is the reason for saying I don’t “plan” to retire. A “plan” means I would expect to be able to retire, but since I like living in “reality”, there is no way on earth that I can imagine the government having the means to send me a check every month, nor is it possible that I could send myself a check, at least not one the bank would cash!

I have come to look at the matter from a different angle. I hate disappointments, thus by planning to work until the day I “drop dead” I won’t be disappointed to find that I cannot afford to retire. If, on the other hand, through a miracle of Divine intervention, the U.S. economy does recover to the point that the government can and does sent me a social security check and I can manage to “retire”, I will be pleasantly surprised. I like surprises that are “nice”. I would certainly consider it nice if I could retire someday, but it seems better for my “peace of mind” if I just accept as if it is a fact, that I will not be retiring, then I won’t be looking forward to something that is a “pipe dream” and find myself severely disappointed.

That brings me back to the AARP. I have a cynical ideal what they want with me. Money. Yea, I send them hard earned money and they “lobby” Congress and the government on my behalf. Seems to be this lobby business is one of the things that has gotten us into such financial trouble to begin with. Everybody and his brother has a lobby arm in Washington passing out favors or promising votes or making threats to various politicians in order to obtain more government money or favors. The politicians, on their part, are all too happy to “help the public”, after all the money they are spending does not come from their own back pocket, but ours. So if they can do a few favors for the AARP or any of the other hundreds of lobby groups and get themselves re-elected in the process, everyone is happy. That is except the holders of all the U.S. debt. Which just so happens to be you and me as the “banker of last resort”. Yes, Washington has a fine scheme going. With their near total power to “tax” the citizens at whatever rate they desire, they can spend all the money they want. Besides, by the time the bill comes due, said politician, will be off to his mansion estate living well, “retired”, with all the honors of having “served his country” and receiving a nice fat retirement check.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not picking the AARP out for special mistreatment, they are just one of the many organizations who work on behalf of their members. What I find shameful is that it is “necessary” to have lobbying groups in our Republic, to keep Washington from robbing us blind. For honesties sake, I belong to at least one lobbying group, which I choose not to reveal. But why should we need such organizations? Is it that the government really wants to take our last cent, or could it be that ‘we the people’ want to take money from other people’s pocket, so we have lawyers greasing the palms of ‘elected officials’ to make it look like a ‘good thing’? All the while, we are draining the nation dry by taxation in an attempt to keep everyone happy, when the end result will be that no one will be happy if we bankrupt the country and bring an economic collapse on a scale not yet experienced in the U.S.A.

Legend of the Wooly Worm

Folklore says that the bands of reddish & black on the Wooly Worm can predict how severe the winter will be. In times past many of the older generation put a lot of stock in weather signs from nature, in fact, I know people who still do. After all, they did not have the weather channel or the national weather service, so it is no surprise that they would look to the only information they had available, things in nature.

I am of the generation that is suppose to “know better”, we have “real science” for weather prediction, just think of the millions of dollars a year of our tax money that goes into weather research. But here is the question; are the modern methods any more reliable than the Wooly Worm? Not from what I can tell, leastways for long-term predictions.

So you get a confession. I don’t believe in folklore weather signs, but it never fails that when I come across a Wooly Worm at this time of year I will stop and have a word with it. Just a few days ago while leaving the woods I saw one laying on the ground. I picked it up for a closer look and noticed that the band of black on its head was very short, while the black at the tail end was about 3 times as long. Now if the Wooly Worm is right, this is suppose to mean that we will have a mild beginning of winter (the short band on the head), but a long spell of nasty weather lasting until late in the spring. (the much wider band of black on the tail) I would have liked to ask this fellow a question or two about the big band of black, and would have, but even if he gave me a straight answer, no one would believe me anyway! The part that leaves me “thinking” is that, we have had extremely mild weather for MN at this time of year. Just a dusting of snow so far and none in the 10 day forecast of the National Weather Service. If I judge the Wooly Worm on what I know now, I would have to say he is right about the beginning of the season.

Another confession. I have looked at the Wooly Worm every fall for as long as I can remember, but, for the life of me, I can never remember what the fellow predicts! By the time spring comes to MN, our minds are so numbed from the cold that we have forgotten that there is any such thing as a living insect; except the mosquito, we can never forget what has been called the “Minnesota Air Force”.

Folklore makes an interesting study. Much more interesting than having some ‘weather man’ tell me what the weather will be like, I do remember what he says simply because he is wrong so often and he talks everyday.

Sometimes I think we humans are strange creatures. We look with skepticism at the “wisdom of yesteryear”, just because we don’t see any “science” behind the it, but then we are prone to believe our own weather man when we know for fact that he is wrong about 50% of the time. (Don’t hold me to the 50%, I pulled it out of thin air, but they are wrong a lot.) So who is the wiser, our ancestors who got their Wooly Worm prediction for “free”, or us who “pay” a high price for our weather information?

Then we have the whole global warming debate. The only thing I have to say about that is this; Have the scientists who blame the warming trend that we are obviously in ever read history? Remember George Washington and the Continental Army crossing the Delaware to take Trenton on Christmas night in 1776? There was ice on the Delaware. I tried to find out when the last time that spot had ice, but was unsuccessful, I think it is safe to say it is not very often in the last 100 years. My information for the ice does not come only from the famous picture. Recently I read a journal kept by one of the doctors in the army at that time and he mentions that detail and also the snowstorm that was raging as Washington and the troops marched to take Trenton.

What does that have to do with global warming? One might ask. Only this; it would appear we have been in a gradual warming period a lot longer than what some would have us believe. The reason, they claim, is from our “carbon footprint” (sounds like something out of caveman fiction, carbon footprint). But the warming trend began long before the U.S. had much of a carbon footprint. Come to think of it, I have seen a lot of footprints on the ground, but never one left by an animal called “carbon”. Maybe I will study up on the folklore methods of weather prediction, this science thing sounds a bit like “science fiction”.

Time Is Not My Friend

I made mention in another post that “time is not our friend”. There are certain realities that begin to dawn upon our dim minds as the years fly by. It is a fact that time is an equal opportunity employer, everyone living has the same 24 hours in every day. It is observable and very obvious that some people make better use of their time than others. However, the way one uses their 24 hours is subject to personal taste. What you might consider a ‘waste of time’, someone else might highly value. Unless everything in life is reduced to “dollar and cents value”, the way we spend our time can be either helpful or harmful depending on the viewpoint of the one who’s time is being used.

It is true the real cost of an item is the “amount of our life” it takes to earn the money to pay for it. Everyone’s time is not equal when it comes to that equation, it depends on how much you earn with your time. For a doctor, who’s time is certainly more valuable in dollars than my time, an item that might cost me a weeks ’time’, may only cost him an hour. Either way we must decide if something that costs hard earned money is worth the amount of our lives it takes to purchase it.

Everyday I live it seems that time moves faster, a common delusion that comes with aging. I recall when I was much younger and spend a great deal of my time in a boat. I had a friend, much older, who always said he wanted to go fishing. But every time I invited him, he would say he did not have time this week. He was a woodworker. Now I am a woodworker, my boat did not leave the yard this past summer! My excuse, other than the extreme amount of gas it takes to get to a lake from this ’rocky farm’, is that I never get the time.

This leads me to reflect on the reality of how much time it takes to do jobs that, say 20 years ago, would have taken half the time. Somehow as we get more pressed for the time to do the things we want, we also get slower at doing the things we must, so we either live in a perpetual state of “hurry” or we learn to take one day at a time and be thankful we have that day and the health to do whatever activity we are involved in. We may not have tomorrow.
There are many people who would consider time spend fishing, a waste. While the same person will take a set of ‘sticks’, called golf clubs, and whack a little white ball all over what ought to be a cow pasture! I guess this gives my opinion of golfing away. Oh, I have been on a golf course, it was nice too. The ‘gentleman’ that took me, told me (this was also many years ago in the land of the south) that golfing was a “gentlemen’s sport”, it was his decided opinion that I should learn it. He only took me once. His observation was that some people just did not have the makings of a “gentlemen”, that is as defined by a certain class of southerners.

At this same period of time, I had another friend who was a fishermen, good one too, unlike some of us who just enjoy the effort regardless of the outcome. Over a two or three year period of time when I knew these two fellows as very good friends, there was only one trip to the golf course, but there must have been a hundred or more trips with the boat and fishing gear to various water holes in southwest Kentucky. Now that was not a waste of time! You cannot eat a golf ball, even if you do whack it on the head and manage to retrieve it from the field, which was a challenge in itself, since the little rascals love to head for the nearest water hole or high grass, at least when I swing on them. But fish become food! Something useful to me.

In those days I thought, and felt like, I had all the time in the world, even under that circumstances that I put in many more hours a week at “employment” than I do now. Somehow the only thing that has changed is me. There are still 24 hours in a day & 365 days in a year. This is why I have come to the conclusion that “time is not my friend”. As each year passes, ‘father time’ picks up the pace, while Ernie gets slower and slower, and I am relatively young! What must it be like for the “old timers”? At some point it must become clear that we are not going to get done all the things we plan to, but I have observed that not many people want to accept that as reality. I am certainly not ready too. Nor do I think it is healthy to just sit down and say, “I’m done”, that would be no fun. Our nature is not designed for giving up, this is why we often meet aged folks who are in what is clearly the last stages of their life, but they always talk about what they are going to do “when they get better”. At times it is saddening, but then we realize that as long as a person has something they plan to do, they have a reason to keep living and often do recover to a health that surprises everyone around them.

Take the time
Look around you, find something that you want to accomplish and lay your hand to the plow and get at it. Even if it is as simple as fishing. to do the things you most desire while you have it. There is nothing more pitiful than seeing older people living with regrets about all the things they could have done, but did not take the time. I speak here of things that are realistic and possible, not of dreams that would ‘break the bank’. At times it is wise to refine our dreams to things that we can do, rather than “waste” away our lives, standing at the “wishing well”, dreaming of something that is just not practical, all the while we could be doing other things that are just as satisfying if only we would stop looking down the wishing well.

Last Day of Deer Season Holiday

Today will end the great MN holiday of Deer Season. As is common, I won't be hunting on this day. For several reasons. Truthfully, at this stage in my life, I don't have the ambition to hunt 9 days! When I was much younger, if I had not harvested a deer, I would stick to the 'job' to the bitter end of daylight on the last day, but that mindset left somewhere in my mid-40's. Secondly, our deer season does not take a break for Sunday, like it did in my "old country", here many people, even church going folks will show up to Sunday services in blaze orange, just having come from the deer woods, I may have done this myself on a few occasions, but time, that great enemy of life, has caught up with me & I would rather have a slow Sunday.

Sunday routine is different in many parts of the country. Many of us make it a habit of attending a gathering of the church on Sunday, a tradition that goes back at least two thousand years. There was a time, not very long ago, when a majority of Americans would be found at a church service on Sunday morning. It would appear that we are no longer in the majority, though there are great numbers still attending church services throughout this land.

As nightfall comes this evening, the woods and forests will fall relatively quiet again. My poor confined Beagle will be able to make his morning rounds tomorrow without the danger of being shot as a 'deer chasing crimminal'. He will not know what to think since he has been tethered to his run rope for 9 days straight, only being released for a couple daily walks. It is the reality of rural MN life. Hunters take a dim veiw of hunting dogs being on the loose, especially during deer season, besides, in my understanding, our state law is on the hunters side, so Trigger, the Beagle, has be confined for his own protection, I don't think he understands that. But first thing tomorrow morning he will be taking to 'his woods' to see what all has been taking place and with his nose find out who has been in the neighborhood.

Even though our bow season extends until the end of the year, I always hang it up at the end of the rifle season, especially in this neighborhood. There are a lot of Amish folks here, they hunt. They also have big families and have a lot of deer tags to fill, so by the time this season is over our local deer herd is thinned out and I have no wish to thin it anymore.

Another reason to hang up the weapons for another year; as all common working people, I too must get back to work!

War & Veterans

Veteran’s Day. May God Bless our veterans! We who have never served in the U.S. military are indebted to the many soldiers who have given of their lives to secure safety and freedom for the rest of us. Some are sacrificed on the battlefield, as if the blood of young men is the price of freedom.

On this day it makes no difference what we might think about the various wars that our soldiers have and are involved in, at least not to me. The fact is most young soldiers care little about the politics involved in our nation going to war, their goal is to accomplish the mission they are sent on, without a lot of analysis as to the ‘why’ of their job.

I read history. The extreme suffering by soldiers, in every war, makes it evident that freedom is not “free”. It was obtained by soldiers and fighting men and women in the late 1700’s. Since then American soldiers have been called upon to fight many conflicts in the interest of keeping that freedom that was bought at such a high price.

War is not something that rational people what to see, yet when it comes, thousands of young Americans volunteer to fight. I have no interest in debating the moral implications of war, the fact is that if a nation wants to be free, there will be times when war is the only way to settle the question.

No nation that has ever existed is morally compelled to accept attacks from outside forces without putting up a fight in self defense.

This day was set aside in 1918 as Armistice Day to celebrate the end of the “War to End All Wars”, better know as World War I. The fact that this horrific war, fought in Europe, did not end war now stands as a monument to the folly of the notion that war can always be avoided. The reality is that this world has plenty of ‘madmen’ who are willing to sacrifice the lives of others for some cause that they deem most important, when these people get into positions of power they can and do, bring war upon nations. As nice and cozy as the thought of abolishing war is, it is only a delusion to believe that it is possible in a world gone mad.

Some like to think war could be avoided if some kind of “world government” could be put in place whereby all nations sign on to a peaceful co-existence. Dream on, it would be a nice reality, but human nature is not likely to change anytime soon. Thus we have thousands of American men and women in uniform this very day, some of them are likely to die today by violence on battle fields in various parts of the world. My hope is that they die with a personal feeling that their nation is thankful for their sacrifice. I am.

I read recently that in 1913, the year before the “great war” broke out, that people in general just had a gut feeling that something bad was on the horizon, nations were moving in too many opposite directions for peace to remain. Some nations were building up arms and armies at a pace that appeared they were planning on needing them, Germany in particular. Many governments were telling their citizens that everything was fine, no need to worry about a war in Europe, then a shot was fired, one man was assassinated and the world went to war.

We truly do have a lot of forces on edge this very day. In the middle east we have a powder keg just waiting for the “short fuse” to be lit. History has shown that economic depressions make for a dangerous world. Though our news media and government avoids the word depression as if it was ‘taboo’, the real condition of the world’s economy is little different than a true depression. When economies of nations begin to crumble and governments fall, the finger pointing begins. From there it is just a small step for one nation to threaten another. A few rude exchanges and next bullets fly and the process spirals out of control. We would rather live at peace, but don’t be deluded into thinking it is a possibility anytime soon.

As long as there are wars, there will be veterans to thank for their service.

To all veterans on this Veteran’s Day, Thank You and May God Bless You!

Respect For Our Ancestor's Skills

The skills of our ancestors were such that we of a modern age can barely imagine. What we take as “primitive”, was normal life a couple generations ago. The common abilities of pioneering people were broad based, where we generally specialize in a career and purchase nearly every item we use, they supplied many things with their own hands, made from resources harvested from nature’s abundance.

Take the early Long hunter’s as an example. These were men who, in the late 18^th century, would leave civilization in small groups and enter the wilds of what is now Kentucky, Tennessee and the Ohio valley. There they would explore, hunt, trap and live for months or years at a time with the few items they carried with them, which was not very much. From what we know they carried a long rifle (that being a flintlock black powder rifle), butcher knife, powder horn, salt, tobacco, and maybe a few traps. When the salt gave out, they went without. Same with their tobacco and coffee. Often they are known to have substituted some natural plants for tobacco and roots for coffee.
For shelter they commonly put up a very primitive lean-to made from tree limbs to shed wind, rain or snow. Roll up in a buffalo robe and sleep through long winter nights. Their food consisted mostly of meat taken with the long rifle, or trapped. No doubt they ate whatever wild plants were available and in season. For certain, the area they were in had and still does a great variety of eatable wild plants.

We of modern day cannot really relate to the actual skills required to ‘survive’ under such circumstances, much less thrive as they appear to have done. I am certain the only difference between them and us is their “skills” learned at an early age and practiced constantly as a way of life. Having read some early diaries of some of these woodsmen it is remarkable the powers of endurance, observation, energy and confidence they possessed.

There is no way to roll back time, nor would it be desirable to live their lives without the wonderful inventions to make our lives easier. However, the basic skills should not be forgotten and regulated to the history books. There is a lot of foolish misinformation about some of these skills, no doubt spoken by people who themselves have had no real experience with the tools and proper skill to use them.

Take the muzzle loading flintlock rifle as an example. We often read the ‘old wives tale’ that a flintlock is an unreliable weapon, or that the ignition system is slow or that they were worthless beyond very short ranges. Here is the reason such rumors get started; someone takes up a flintlock rifle and goes out to shoot it without any instruction or experience. First they put too much priming powder in the pan, that will certainly make for a slow ignition as the powder has to burn its way to the main charge. The ideal is to have a small amount of powder in the pan that when fired, what actually sets off the main charge is a flash rather than a burn. Sometimes we hear of a person trying to treat a muzzle loader as a modern weapon by shooting it and then not cleaning the bore until days later, not good. You will have a poor opinion of any muzzle loading weapon if not properly cleaned after a shooting session.

I don’t claim to be an expert with a flintlock, but I have observed some people who can shoot a flintlock rifle better than most of us can a modern gun. It is a matter of “skill”, that is properly learned and practiced. Same is true of starting a fire without matches. You sometimes read how it took the pioneers hours to get a fire going with flint and steel. Only if they were a 4 year old child! In fact, with the proper items for catching the spark and tow for getting the flame, with a little practice one can have a flame in just a few seconds. I have seen many flames within 15 seconds from a flint and steel. Again it is a matter of “skills”.
I have often wondered why it seems so hard for me to use a felling axe. I have two conclusions. One is our forefathers knew how to keep a sharp edge on their axe. Two is training. I don’t know how to use an axe properly. There are plenty of men who do, just watch some of the logging show competitions, there is a certain skill and training required to properly use an axe, saw or any other tool that was the common article of days gone by. There is another element to axmanship too, that is the quality of steel found in axes. I have a fair collection of axes and have noticed that any axe over 50 years old seems to take and hold a much better edge than any axe purchased over the last decade or two. Woodsman of yesteryear who entered the wilderness for an extended stay demanded an axe they could depend on, a ‘junk axe’ would have cost them their lives, if they survived, it might have cost the “axe maker” his life!
Do we not wonder how our civilization would survive if for some reason we had to relearn the skills of yesterday? I don’t think we can even say “the strong” would survive verses the “weak”, for even those terms have a misleading premise. What is “strong”? If we speak of physical strength only we kid ourselves. Strength is more than physical power. Just look at some pictures of special forces soldiers of our own day. What often strikes me is just looking at these men, who are the best among our generation, often they are not imposing as a specimen of the human body. But knowing the training and testing they have withstood to succeed, they are strong and not just in muscle and bone. These guys have an invisible backbone made of steel! The mental toughness has more to do with their success than their raw physical power. Not that they are weaklings, obviously the physical fitness must be there and in spades! But the difference between those who make the grade compared to those who fail, is more often in the psychology of the mind than in the actual strength of the body. The man who would rather die than quit is the one who often endures to the end of his course.

But I have digressed. Our current state of affairs seems to be on a fast track toward losing the skills that enabled our nation to survive a lot of tough times. Even though we don’t need to chop a tree down with an axe, it is a skill that should not be forgotten. Just because we might not need to grow our own food, does not mean that we will “never need to”.

If you want to create respect for our ancestors, just try to learn some of the things they did on a daily basis. Cook a few meals over a woodstove, cut some firewood with an axe and saw. Butcher a hog, chicken or deer. All of these things will seem “hard” at first, but I dare say with experience and instruction, if it is available, we just might surprise ourselves with the skills we can acquire.

You might just find that life is more interesting if you challenge yourself to make a life habit of learning new things, and old things rediscovered.
　

Emergency Broadcast Test- Why?

Today the government attempted to test a new emergency broadcasting program. According to most media, it was a failure. But never fear, a few billion dollars should take care of that.

My question is, what is the purpose of a new emergency broadcasting program? There has been one in place for many years, everyone has heard them say, "this is a test of the emergency broadcasting system, if this had been an actual emergency you would be informed where to tune in for information." Why suddenly do we need to have "one man" in total control of what information we receive? What if that "one man" is mistaken or unreliable? What if he has a motive other than the welfare of the nation? Surely we are not a nation with some "king" who will control the flow of information, or are we?

Maybe it is cynical to question the motives of our government, but I have lived long enough to realize that no one person ought to have that kind of power, whether he is all good or not. The old saying comes to mind, "power corupts, absolute power corupts absolutely." They report that the president will soon have, if he does not already have a "internet kill switch"! Surely not. Again, what would be the purpose? At best we are dealing with a threat we are unaware of, but giving any one man total power of informatin in a free society does not seem like the best way to keep our freedom. At worst, we could some day find ourselves in a state of confusion, induced by a lack of information or misinformation.

Just an opinion; but a free people ought to take responsibility for themselves and be able to make a reasoned judgment without being spoon fed by "one man".  Freedom requires personal responsibility.

Is History Worth Knowing?

History. To some, especially school age students the very word sounds boring, but so does math, English and a lot of other subjects. I was no different than a lot of my peers back in the “dark ages” of my school life. (60’s-70’s) Until! A ‘good teacher’ made history exciting. The sad part is that I can’t even remember his name, but I cannot forget the influence this high school teacher had on my interest in history. In some way this teacher reached my very distracted mind, (as in having a whole lot more interesting things to do than read history) to the point that the study of history has become one of my favorite subjects for lifelong learning.

Often it is said that if man does not learn the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat them. I might let the so called ‘scholars’ debate the actual facts of that argument, but the reality is we will do well to learn some things by observation rather than experience.

To illustrate the point. If I read in the news that someone attempted to fly off a high bridge, flap their arms as if they were wings, but hit the water in a splashy death, I should learn a lesson without repeating the experiment, that being, a human‘s arms are a poor substitute for wings. A rather simple example, but the reality is that if we would make a rational study of history we would find a whole world of mistakes and failures that man has already made and thus be educated without the consequences being upon our own head.

Some describe this as the ‘wisdom of the ages’. How many ancient nations have come and gone? The great ones we are aware of, the Greek kingdom of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire being a classic case study of a republic, so-called, that more or less self destructed from within. No outside force was big enough to destroy that Empire. But when it decayed from within by individual and government moral decay, it fell. Some of the most visited sights in the world come from those marvelous ruins, of massive structures, build by the Romans. Many volumes have been written on the history and fall of that great Empire. So, is history worth knowing? I would answer it is, unless we want to find out everything the hard way.

Human nature makes for a strange study. Even closer to our own lives we see many examples illustrated in ‘living color’ of human beings, assumed to be rational creatures, do things that defy what should be common sense. How is it that our modern American society spends more money on ‘education’ than any nation in history, but somehow we forget the most basic elements of education that affect our whole nation and every individual citizen? I speak here of economics. I don’t recall having taken a course in economics in high school, maybe there was one and I have forgotten it. We were required however to take common general math. Truthfully, simple math is all one needs to realize that you cannot subtract 90 from 10 and end up with a positive number. Yet it would appear that such accounting is what our society would have us accept. As if a negative balance sheet for our personal households and our nation is a “good thing”.

Through whatever insanity that afflicts our politicians, lawmakers, educators, banking firms and even our households we cannot grasp the simple fact that oppressive debt will destroy us, something is “upside down”, besides millions of home loans.

It is not so hard for us to understand how a company or individual can get into debt beyond their ability to pay. Sometimes it is by unfortunate circumstances, like medical bills or accidents that take away our source of income, or a sudden downturn in the economy that dries up a particular market that a business depends on and they simply ‘go broke’. Often it is being irresponsible in spending verses income, easy credit can be an addiction to some people and they can’t, or won’t, stop spending until they ‘crash’. When that happens most people look at them with a mixture of pity or in the case of unnecessary spending, they are judged to be ‘spending addicts’ and void of common responsibility.

In the most resent economic upheavals ‘capitalism’ has been blamed, with some people saying, “see, capitalism does not work”. When I hear such talk, the first thing that enters my mind is the late Soviet Union. They were not capitalist and they went broke, so maybe we should look at history in an attempt to learn why nations fall.

Here is my short answer, since I am not writing a book. Just as it was said by some of our founding fathers about freedom, and which one of my teachers in school strongly enforced that we learn; “freedom cannot exist without responsibility”. Taking responsibility for our own actions, whether it be a person or nation should be an easy concept to understand, even if it is not always easy for our egos. If you run a business and make a bad choice to invest a lot of money in a project that fails, you know (at least we used to know) that your decision could very well bankrupt your business. If we fail to teach our children to be responsible for their own actions, are we surprised when those children spend their whole lives blaming others for their own failures?

The Soviet Union is a prime recent historic example that we should learn from. They embraced the socialist/communist ideal that collectivism was a “good thing”. That Peter should share with Paul, even if Paul had no ability or ambition to provide his share of the labor. But Peter, being full of ability and drive could create income was forced to give up the fruit of his labor to bring Paul up to his living standards by sharing with Paul his hard earned wealth. The theory was that all human effort should be considered as equal in value. No matter that a doctor must spend years of intense dedicated study to learn the skills necessary to treat the ill, his time was worth no more than another’s, who might be doing work that any unlearned child could perform. The great socialist experiment proved one thing for certain. Take away a persons incentive to produce, by giving it to a non-producer, and what you end up with is two non-producers, not two equal partners. That theory tries to defy all of history. It denies basic human nature. For as far back as history records, there are some people who excel and achieve great things, while the mass of folks live a “common life” with no such ability, nor ambition.

How can it be consider as moral, if I, who have no great burning desire to create wealth, (nor ability that I am aware of) just tell Paul; “since you have more than I do, I am just going to take part of what you have and we will be equal?” In realistic terms this is what socialism attempts. The result is as predictable as the sunrise, Paul is going to do one of two things. He might say, “over my dead body” and go to war! Or the common alternative in history has been, if Paul sees he can’t win the war, he just quits producing.

Once his wealth is all gone, taken by the non-producers and consumed, they all starve together

Hum? Makes me wonder about a lot of details. How is our “social justice” movement any different than the communist ideals of the 20^th century? Tax the rich and give to the poor, so we all can have a more “equal” living standard. Here will be the results, which in our own time we see taking place. One, the so-called “poor” come to depend upon a handout and thus are content with a few basic comforts, so they quit trying to pull themselves up and turn to idleness, which always destroys a people. Or, in our day of “Hollywood appetites”, the poor want more, and more and more. Until they, by sheer numbers, like a plague of locust, have consumed the wealth of a nation. Two, the so-called rich, sooner or later will pull the Atlas Shrug routine and just quit producing.

I understand the anger and frustration that is experienced by thousands of Americans in the face of some “close-by” historic facts. There really appears to be no doubt that some of the “big bankers” and corporations have economically raped our nation. However, we must look at the root of the problem rather than just on the surface. The root is that we have a “moral problem”. That is, when those in positions of power have no moral foundation of right and wrong it is easy for them in an environment of “freedom” to steal from others, anyone and everyone.

Capitalism has not failed, our “moral standards” have failed.

Capitalism is the vehicle that produced the greatest nation to arrive on earth. It thrived as long a we had a basic moral standard where most people were not out to cheat, steal and plunder, but create wealth by hard work and imagination, fueled “freedom” which gave them the right to attempt whatever honest enterprise their minds could think of. Some failed, some succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. But if we remove the underpinnings of “moral behavior”, then not only will capitalism fail, freedom also will fail.
There has never been a nation supported and sustained by a few producers, while the masses ate drank and were happy. As long as the known principles of nature exist, there will also never be a nation that can provide a “free ride”. The USA cannot just, out of thin air, keep printing money to prop up failed enterprises or individuals.

I say, “History is worth knowing”.
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