Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Hit the Road, Jack

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We go to the polls in just eight days. I’m on the road today, dodging politicians. They all want a piece of my wallet.

Let’s take a look at where we are now, thanks to the crowd in Washington, in Montpelier, in Sacramento, in Tallahassee, and in a capitol near you:

Fun
• I’ve been talking to people in the grocery aisles. “I hate my cow-orkers,” one woman said. “I still couldn’t refinance my mortgage.” “We wanted to go to Hilton Head this year but we couldn’t afford the gas.” People are more negative than ever.
• The Financial Times’ has this depressing air travel story: “Once upon a time, flying was fun. Most of you won’t remember.”
• From trust in airlines to trust in cable companies to trust in food producers to trust in government, doing business isn’t fun anymore. That’s not a political issue but it does contribute to the overall negative vibe. OK, trust in government is political. You know what to do.

Health
• California’s doctor networks will stay limited in 2015. Health Net is dumping its PPO network there and switching to a plan with 54% fewer doctors and no out-of-network coverage. Health Net said its cutbacks were necessary to avoid even steeper rate hikes in California. Obamacare where “if we like our doc, we can keep our doc!”
• Dropped or delayed or pooch-screwed coverage for about 30,000 Californians! The LA Times reported that Californians face enrollment delays, dropped coverage and more, thanks to the Unaffordable Care Act. “If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance!”
• In the People’s Republic of Vermont, another seriously blue state with a broken Health Exchange built by the same company the Feds used, premiums went up and coverage went down. Costs will go down, right?
• Staying in the People’s Republic of Vermont, the state’s largest employer (that would be state government) told workers that their health insurance premiums will rise 17.9% in 2015.
• News from the Veterans Administration to the CDC is of people dying, not people thriving while the agencies from Texas to Arizona “follow protocols.” Government care makes us healthier, right?

Money
• 46.5 million people now live in poverty up, up from when Mr. Bush was president, despite 6 years of “doing better.” Obamapologists keep trying to show how much better we treat our poor. Or to blame Mr. Bush.
• The national debt of $17.76 trillion is up more than a trillion dollars every year this Administration has remained in office, despite 6 years of “doing better.” Obamapologists keep trying to spin that into a smaller number. Or to blame Mr. Bush.
• Median household income fell again, down from when Mr. Bush was president despite 6 years of “doing better,” despite 6 years of inflation. Obamapologists can’t spin that.
• Premium increases for Obamacare policies and Medicare Part B won’t be released until after the election. Obamapologists can’t spin that, either.

Safety
• A man who posed as a congressman was allowed backstage at when Mr. Obama appeared at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation awards dinner, making us wonder, Who would fake being a congressman?
• Mr. Obama has doubled the number of Border Patrol agents and says “border security is stronger than it has ever been” making us wonder, How do so many millions of illegal aliens get in?
• D.C. Spirit killed his daughter, her six children, and then himself. They had had repeated interactions with the Florida Department of Children and Families. In Hardwick, Vermont, Isaac Robitille was 5 when he got a puppy from Make-A-Wish. The Vermont Department of Children and Families confirms that they’ve tracked Isaac’s problems at least seven years. The state removed Isaac from home in 2007 but a DCF expert sent him back in 2008. They “handled” a new complaint in May. His mom and her boyfriend are charged with his murder. Police say they put vodka in Isaac’s IV. Doesn’t that make you wonder?

Every politician in office today ran on a platform of change. Every politician running for re-election is running on a promise that they “know how to fix it.”

If they know how, why didn’t they?

Tell me again why you want to re-elect any of the liars who brought you to this?

 

Stormin’

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I had all the windows and doors open on Friday, for the last time in 2014. Funny how I used to like the seasonal changes.

We moved to Vermont to get away from what I always called “Philly winter.” That was the season of slush and freezing rain.

Oh it did snow there in my corner of southeastern Pennsylvania, a lot sometimes, but interwoven with the times we skied or tobogganed down Turtleback, the big hill in the pasture that led down to Russell Jones’ pond, were the weeks of sorry slush soaking our boots and the ice to chip off the stone path. That part of the world gets only 27 inches of snow in an average year.

I thought more snow (and less slush) would be a good thing. Silly me.

I do remember two particularly memorable snowstorms.

The first, in 1950s Pennsylvania, closed Shiloh Road. I’ve never understood why the road builders did what they did but they made this story possible. See, our house sat on a broad, sloping lawn and was probably 35 feet in elevation above the main road. Our driveway sloped down to Shiloh which rose sharply to meet it, then cut a straight-and-narrow path deeply through the field to the Hays family home, the next house a quarter mile up the road. The banks of this cut touched the edge of the pavement. The banks were nearly vertical and 10-12 feet tall.

The snow blew straight across our field for what I remember as days and days and days but it was probably just a couple of and days. Not much had a chance to build up on that reach of pasture but It surely liked to nestle into the gorge.

The Township plow truck couldn’t make a dent in it.

The state plow truck couldn’t make a dent in it.

The front end loader couldn’t make a dent in it.

They’d all spend hours revving engines and gnashing gears but there was no place to put the snow.

That snow-filled gorge was no more than a quarter mile long but it was 10-12 feet deep and packed in tight by gravity, wind, and the attacking plow trucks.

A couple of the other troublemakers, my dad, and I all figured this was a pretty good excuse to practice engineering techniques. We tunneled it. We built fort walls. My mom made a lot of tomato soup and grilled a lot of sandwiches for us.

It took 10 days, but the state eventually trucked in the biggest snowblower I have seen to this day. It had a maw taller than my dad and enough diesel horsepower to throw the snow halfway across the field. It still took a couple of days to clear out the gorge.

The second great snow came to Vermont. It fell a day or two before we flew up on a house hunting trip in what should have been the early spring of 1978. We didn’t have a bit of trouble with snow on the roads — even then Vermont seemed to have a “clear road” policy. But a police officer in Alburgh did.

My enduring memories of that trip are the kids’ first flight in a private jet (the company I worked for had a Beechcraft King Air turboprop) and the sight of a police car.

We’ve all had the experience of seeing a police car zooming up behind us, light bar a-flashing. Drivers tense up a little. Passengers start chattering. Some people hunch down in their seats. Everybody looks straight ahead.

This was different.

This particular police car was buried in fresh snow up to its roof with just the “bubble” showing. I thought the officer should have lit it up so the plow trucks didn’t clip him.

The cloudier part of the year begins around October 4. Vermont averages an inch in May and October, and 102 inches for the year.

It snowed here in North Puffin yesterday. It’s only October and it snowed. The TV weather guy even showed photos. Me and my bare feet are heading for South Puffin, you betcha.

Feets of North Puffin
 

Used Food

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Pugnaciously parsimonious.

Regular readers will remember that Rufus says I am a “c-h-e-a-p   b-a-h-s-t-i-d” so I also think long about what most things cost before buying.

I’m not the first in the fambly to have that trait. My great grandfather was a Quaker farmer who never threw anything away which largely explains the size of the moving van we needed when we moved to North Puffin. I really believe in reduce, reuse, and eventually, recycle.

My mom coined the term “used food” when the grocery store would mark down the day old meats in the refrigerated meat case. We’ve expanded its meaning.

Dented CanI see an upside down cake in my future.

SWMBO and I keep our own grocery bills as low as we can by shopping the used food store for dented cans. That emporium is a liquidation center that clears out “zoins” — the pallets of rejected non-perishables from grocery stores. My mom always worried that the dent could damage the can coating and at the very least change the taste of the contents. We’ve never had a problem.

There are some rules to follow with used food.

Bulging or bloated can?
What? Are you nuts? Cans bulge and bloat when bacteria outgasses.

Push on the top and bottom of the can
If the lid moves or pops, throw it out.

Rusted cans
Rust weakens the floor of Vermont cars and lets bad stuff in. Does the same for cans, doncha know.

The can sprays when you open it
A can ought not spray or explode when you open the lid with a can opener or screwdriver or Swiss Army knife. Safe dented cans will open the same as non dented cans.

Foods that have abnormal odors should not be eaten.

Lots of new laws went into effect in Vermont this summer.

I hadn’t realized just how just stupid Vermont lawmakers are. All food scraps must be recycled back into consumption by 2020. The best of my food scraps, after sitting on my summer porch, will help feed people, lawmakers say. Oh it’s good to be poor in Vermont.

Oh yeah, bags of trash cost an extra 25 cents to toss now, and bulk trash an extra $10 per ton. Canceling the fees for recycling is just the first step in an effort to keep everything that can be recycled or composted out of Vermont landfills by 2020, the goal of the state’s Universal Recycling law, Act 148. Mandated recyclables. (Sounds really good, except the trash haulers still pay for recyclables by weight.) Otter stuff. And this.

It is the policy of the state that food residuals collected under the requirements of this chapter shall be managed according to the following order of priority uses:
(1) Reduction of the amount generated at the source;
(2) Diversion for food consumption by humans;
(3) Diversion for agricultural use, including consumption by animals;
(4) Composting, land application, and digestion; and
(5) Energy recovery.

Back to the food on my porch. Our trash hauler retired (he didn’t want to buy a new truck to split recyclables) so we make a “dump run” every couple of weeks. In that time we fill two or three barrels with mixed recyclables and one large bag with household garbage. Uncooked chicken trimmins. The bones and skin of that small mouth bass. And the mouse I caught last Monday. Mmmm. Smells soooooo fine. Oh, my.

I good with #1. We do need to cut down on the amount of food we throw away. This is Vermont, for heaven’s sake. Thrifty farmers. Make do folk. And #3, #4, and #5 are great.

I may have to rethink this whole “used food” idea, though.

 

I Lurve My Tractor

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Subtitled: And I’m pretty fond of my come-along.

I spent Friday cleaning out the cellar. It was sunny and pleasant outside and I need the space for a root cellar.

This house was built about 1855. We know it wasn’t here for the 1850 tax roles (the earlier farmhouse was listed) and we know it was in 1860. We also know it had a cellar because

Sunset on the (nearly) finished porchCellars in houses of a certain age are … interesting. This one starts with a dirt floor and a cistern.

I’m not sure exactly how many generations of the Stevens family worked this farm. Ira Allen first rented, then sold 180 acres to W.C. Stevens around the turn of the 19th century. He built the original house here on the rise where this house sits now. The original road from St. Albans to Canada came right past the front door and up across our driveway before heading north. The family tore down that first house but salvaged most of the lumber and the rubble stone foundation to build the house we live in today. They extended the foundation, doubling its footprint to build the new house with two wings, one brick, one frame. Its style is country Victorian.

One bequest in the family left “one bedroom plus full use of the cellar for storage” to the widowed Mrs. Stevens. She made good use of it.

We bought the house from the widow of a local judge who had in turn bought it from Mildred Stevens.

They made good use of the cellar, too.

It was sunny and pleasant outside so I spent the day cleaning out the cellar. Sheesh. Anne and I managed to haul out the 1950s frig that came with the house (we had put it down there and used it as our “second frig” until it stopped making cold), the freezer that froze up this winter, and a pair of water tanks one of which still had about 10 gallons of water innit.

The Great Tractor LiftI lurve my tractor. It’s a “compact,” meaning it fits in between the typical lawn and garden style and the heavy duty workhorses of the modern farm. With about 24 diesel horsepower, it could pull a two-bottom plow better than my Ford 9N and yet it’s small enough to fit most places. And it has a 54″ wide bucket.

Remember that size.

My original plan, conceived not while in the shower, was simply to reach in the cellarway with the bucket, strap the stuff to the bucket, and deadlift it straight out. Unfortunately, the doorway is 6″ narrower than the bucket.

Time for Plan B.

I used the 2×12 I otherwise use for a scaffolding plank as a ramp. My tiedown straps are missing again so I dug out the anchor rode from the boat and put a couple of loops around the frig and dragged it up the ramp with the tractor. Did the same with the tanks. The freezer, actually lighter than the frig, was harder because it wanted to stand up on its side instead of sliding on its lid. I pulled it with the comealong because that was easier than dragging down the 100 pounds of railroad chain so I’d have enough reach.

I lurve my tractor. The top photo is part of the porch I finished four years ago; the lower one is the tractor lifting plywood onto the rafters to finish the now-finished porch. You can see the cellarway bay framed by the bucket arms, to the right of the portico. Having that bucket didn’t just make these jobs easier. It made the jobs possible.

The final indignity of the cellar project was to haul all that stuff up to the truck for its last open air ride to Hodgson’s. I used the tractor bucket.

The whole job was still a lot of stairs and a lot of work but I now have a lot more open floor down there. Maybe I’ll build some more shelves…

 

Can You Sell That?

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Mr. Obama says the country is doing better. I guess if he says it, it must be true.

“Can you sell that?” Steve Kroft asked on 60 Minutes.

Good question.

Mr. Obama says he doesn’t have to sell it because the data proves it.

Yeppers. Here’s the data:

  • Median household income fell again.
  • 46.5 million people now live in poverty.
  • Oh, yeah. And the national debt approaches $17.76 trillion.

Remember Little Mikey?

Mikey was the young boy in a television commercial for the breakfast cereal, Life. The popular commercial first aired in 1972 and stayed on the air for more than twelve years, ending up as one of the longest continuously running commercial campaigns ever aired.

Little Mikey would eat anything.

Quaker Oats ran the commercial to change kids’ perception that something they thought would be bad would taste good. Mikey liked it.

Let’s look at the data that proves we’re doing better.

Median household income fell again, but only slightly in a change the Census Bureau does not consider statistically significant.

Heh. I have a statistically insignificant smaller number of bucks in my wallet but everything I bought last week cost more than the week before. Yeppers, I’m doing better. The data proves it.

Of course, Mr. Obama’s federal government also says the US inflation rate is low, something anyone who has shopped for ground beef (up from to $1.99/pound six years ago to $4.79/pound today), or home heating oil ($2.21/gallon on January 16, 2009, $2.56 by that November, and $3.869/gallon today), chocolate chips (on sale at 99 cents in 2008 but $2.50 today), or a basic Internet connection (I paid !@#$%^Comcast $41.81/month for spotty Internet service six years ago and $61.14/month for it this month) might question. Could it be that the Consumer Price Index doesn’t track what real consumers “pay at the pump”?

46.5 million — that’s one out of every seven people in the USA — now live in poverty. That’s also the largest number in the 54 years the Census has measured poverty. (Worthy of note is the fact that the percentage of people in poverty has declined as the actual number has risen because the overall population has also climbed.) Yeppers, they’re doing better. The data proves it.

Oh, yeah. And the national debt to pay for social programs to eliminate poverty and other stuff is about $17.76 Trillion (the national debt stood at about $10.7 Trillion on this date in 2008). Yeppers, we’re all doing better. The data proves it.

There’s plenty more. The NYTimes reports today on ER costs skyrocketing in spite of Obamacare. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that ATM fees keep climbing despite government banking watchdogs. The Chicago Tribune reports today that Americans are stepping up spending, but the home market is weakening, despite federal programs. Doing better.

The True Believers like it.

“Can you sell that?” Steve Kroft asked.

Of course he can. He can sell it to Mikey. Mikey will eat anything! The data proves it.