They have a way of gaining mass and getting in the way. They’ve been adding up around the shed lately and I’m sure some of you have noticed. I’ve been trying to tweak the next installment of “On the Line”, it’s important that I get this one right and even though the original version was actually committed to the memory chips years ago (hate to admit that even to myself) I’m still not pleased with it. Bear with me.
My wife and I recently closed down our retail kitchen shop, another victim of the economy. It was a fun six years full of wonderful people and talented chefs, one of which made it to prime time. We like to think that cooking in front of our live (and lively) crew gave him a leg up on “Chopped” but the talent was all James. To Frances and Diane, we couldn’t have done it without you and wish we could have kept it going. That unfortunate closure netted my garage shop some new cabinets which required pulling ten years of accumulation out of the garage and reorganizing. If you’ve been following the canoe posts you can imagine what that entailed!
The Old Town patiently awaits her remaining few replacement ribs to be installed. A few minutes here and there have been spent driving tacks, an exercise that’s tough on the old back but good for the mind for the focus involved. Time in the shop tends to push the worries aside. Next to the Old Town, Alicia’s new boat is taking shape on the form but it’s impossible to run planking through the planer when there’s a flood going on outside since the out-feed must go out the door. Weather, another one of those little things.
Our partnership relies on mortgages and equipment sales to keep the roof over our heads and unless you’ve had your head in the sand alongside our current “leadership” you know it’s anything but consistent. We keep plugging away and every so often it produces results but not nearly as often as it used to. As account balances shrink we hope for change (pun intended).
But the little things that really matter, we have plenty and gratefully acknowledge that fact.
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You amaze me Steve, here you go to another level. Quote for the day-The greater part of our happiness depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. Martha Washington
Steve –
Keep plugging away, just like the rest of us. But please keep up with the site. And some more Moose stories. Yesterday we just put to sleep our 15yr11mo2wk old lab…Samantha. BestDamnDogEver. The dalmatian just got nuttier, if there can be such a thing.
Don
Thanks for the encouragement Don. Sorry to hear about your Lab – almost 16 years is amazing!
Just remember that the current administration is only dealing with the aftermath of 8 years of mismanagement. You may believe they have their “head in the sand” but the prior administration had their heads up their asses when they weren’t kissing the high and white asses of big business and forcing an unnecessary and unwinable war down the throat of the public, which is what got us in this situation in the first place.
All accounting calculations indicate that if the country had continued on the Clinton era balanced budget effort we would have had the national debt paid off by the end of the Bush administration; that is prior to the stimulus spending.
Just my humble opinion
To find the trigger that caused the melt down you have to look back to Clinton and his policies that forced Fannie and Freddie to make high risk loans. He wanted everyone in a house regardless of their ability to actually pay for it. When Bush tried to reign in the loose money, the congresscritters told him to back off.
The “head in the sand” comment refers to the belief that the stimulus is working – it’s not. Excessive spending as a means of achieving economic recovery only prolongs the process. We’ve experienced it before and yet didn’t learn from it. The current administration is repeating mistakes made in generations past and hoping for different results. Every administration has to deal with inherited issues – quite often proposed solutions to existing problems is what drives an election. Like it or not, we are a capitalistic society and business drives capitalism. Government cannot replace the private sector but it certainly seems like the current administration would like to test that statement.
I agree that government intervention has gotten WAY out of hand and the prolongation of potential failure is crazy thinking.
Government can replace the private sector….it is called socialism and communism!
Despite our differences in opinion, I do enjoy reading your posts and especially your non-political meanderings.
Thanks Doc. You and I were thinking alike in this case. What I was thinking (and should have written) was that government can’t replace the private sector without becoming socialism or communism which is where we’re headed unless we make a major course correction.
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