2,998 Civilians Killed on 9-11
4,146 US Military Killed in Iraq War
2,402 Killed at Pearl Harbor
7,863 Killed at Gettysburg
58,256 Inscribed Names on Vietnam Wall
16,592 Killed in Vietnam Peak Year 1968
849 Killed in Iraq Peak Year 2004
20 Marines Killed in Iraq in Recent 12 Months
25 Marines Killed in US Motorcycle Accidents in Same 12 Months
5,000 Approximate Kurds Killed in Halabja Gas Attack
41,059 Killed on US Roads in 2007
2 million Died of Aids in 2007
418 Murdered in Detroit in 2006
822 US Military Killed in Iraq in 2006
Monday, December 29, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Christmas Letter 2008
There were no cards and letters after Jeannie passed away before Christmas last year . A year later it isn’t much easier. I’ve put it off, and put it off again. Finally here it is, well after the deadline for regular mail.
In March I moved from California to Arizona, where I’m trying to be of some help to my mother, who at 94 remains in her own home. I get at least as much from this as does she.
I’ve completed three books, Jeannie’s Book, a collection of the photographs of Jean Marie Kjos, Murphy’s Little Recipe Book (self explanatory), and the American Le Mans Series 2007 Season Yearbook. The last is a consequence of my ongoing (since 1999) coverage of that international racing series. I’m working on another publishing project – not yet ready for the light of day.
I edit and write two on-line sites, The Last Turn Clubhouse and Murphy the Bear, in addition to the blog you’re reading. Here are some snapshots of Jeannie at ALMS events over the years. And here is a small gallery of her photographs.
You’d think a little Christmas update would be a breeze, wouldn’t you?
Heather is in her second year at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. This past summer she participated in the George Washington University Law School’s Munich Intellectual Property Summer Program with courses at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center and the Max Planck Institute. Beginning this term, along with her course work, she is a legal researcher for a professor at the college.
Courtney completed her Masters at the University of North Carolina in the spring and then joined the faculty of the United States Military Academy at West Point teaching military history. She will be promoted to Major in January, and has begun her Doctoral dissertation. Husband Dave is also at West Point, Executive Officer of the Center for Enhanced Performance. A first child for them – and a first grandchild for me – will arrive next summer. Oh, and Porky the pug is a recent addition to the family.
Ashley left the Army in April, then spent some time in Chicago, where he has many friends from Drake University. Now in Duluth, Minnesota, he’s been writing, including music and concert reviews.
Jim Miller and Ken Kjos helped out with Last Turn Clubhouse race coverage at Long Beach, Salt Lake City, and Monterey, as did Kelly Wechsler with lodging at Road America . I was able to stay with Courtney and Dave near West Point for Lime Rock, and LTC writer Mike Callahan and I shared lodging for Sebring and Petit Le Mans. With Jeannie no longer by my side, that help and companionship was very much appreciated. Without it, continuing my ALMS coverage in 2008 would have been much more difficult.
I’m getting some equilibrium in what has been a tough year. My thanks to family and many friends who have help that happen.
Have a Merry Christmas – or other festival you might celebrate – and a very Happy New Year!
Tom
In March I moved from California to Arizona, where I’m trying to be of some help to my mother, who at 94 remains in her own home. I get at least as much from this as does she.
I’ve completed three books, Jeannie’s Book, a collection of the photographs of Jean Marie Kjos, Murphy’s Little Recipe Book (self explanatory), and the American Le Mans Series 2007 Season Yearbook. The last is a consequence of my ongoing (since 1999) coverage of that international racing series. I’m working on another publishing project – not yet ready for the light of day.
I edit and write two on-line sites, The Last Turn Clubhouse and Murphy the Bear, in addition to the blog you’re reading. Here are some snapshots of Jeannie at ALMS events over the years. And here is a small gallery of her photographs.
You’d think a little Christmas update would be a breeze, wouldn’t you?
Heather is in her second year at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. This past summer she participated in the George Washington University Law School’s Munich Intellectual Property Summer Program with courses at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center and the Max Planck Institute. Beginning this term, along with her course work, she is a legal researcher for a professor at the college.
Courtney completed her Masters at the University of North Carolina in the spring and then joined the faculty of the United States Military Academy at West Point teaching military history. She will be promoted to Major in January, and has begun her Doctoral dissertation. Husband Dave is also at West Point, Executive Officer of the Center for Enhanced Performance. A first child for them – and a first grandchild for me – will arrive next summer. Oh, and Porky the pug is a recent addition to the family.
Ashley left the Army in April, then spent some time in Chicago, where he has many friends from Drake University. Now in Duluth, Minnesota, he’s been writing, including music and concert reviews.
Jim Miller and Ken Kjos helped out with Last Turn Clubhouse race coverage at Long Beach, Salt Lake City, and Monterey, as did Kelly Wechsler with lodging at Road America . I was able to stay with Courtney and Dave near West Point for Lime Rock, and LTC writer Mike Callahan and I shared lodging for Sebring and Petit Le Mans. With Jeannie no longer by my side, that help and companionship was very much appreciated. Without it, continuing my ALMS coverage in 2008 would have been much more difficult.
I’m getting some equilibrium in what has been a tough year. My thanks to family and many friends who have help that happen.
Have a Merry Christmas – or other festival you might celebrate – and a very Happy New Year!
Tom
Saturday, November 29, 2008
November 29, 2007
Jean Marie Kjos
Born Thursday, September 18, 1947
Died Thursday, November 29, 2007
Click here for a gallery of images
Born Thursday, September 18, 1947
Died Thursday, November 29, 2007
Click here for a gallery of images
Monday, November 10, 2008
Veteran's Day 2008
In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Lt.-Col. John McCrae
Canadian Expeditionary Force
May 3, 1915, near Ypres, Belgium
Medical doctor John McCrea penned those lines during the Second Battle of Ypres after the death the previous day of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer. Written in the voice of those who have perished, it has become an iconic expression of remembrance for the sacrifice of those who’ve fought in our wars.
When I was a child, In Flanders Fields was read over rows of crosses representing the fallen in our small town cemetery (the actual graves of those veterans are scattered among family plots in the Lutheran and Catholic sections). The poem (and the poppies) were originally associated with Armistice Day (now Veterans’ Day), commemorating the end of World War I on November 11, 1918. It still is with Remembrance Day in Canada and elsewhere amongst the allies of “The Great War.”
It should be a time to pause and appreciate those who have given their lives in the cause of our freedom. For far too many that’s just lip service, they disdain the service of our soldiers and veterans the rest of the year; certainly that disdain cannot turn to reverence in the instance of a day.
In July, my daughter Courtney, an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and I visited the grave in Connecticut of a comrade of another time. It was a sobering and long overdue visit. Brian was a soldier, a son of loving parents, a child of the sixties. Unlike those to whom we now apply that sobriquet, Brian still is, and will ever be. He – and we – had an innocent certainty that we were doing the right, in the moment, and for each other. Those others – and their successors – retain only one, disagreeable, part of that era’s popularized persona; a self-righteous and smug judgment of soldiers and soldiers’ endeavors. They have never shared the camaraderie of soldiers; they can can never, ever, understand.
I hold the torch proudly. I have not – will not – break faith with you - and I have passed that torch to others who will hold it in strong hands.
Canadian Expeditionary Force
May 3, 1915, near Ypres, Belgium
Medical doctor John McCrea penned those lines during the Second Battle of Ypres after the death the previous day of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer. Written in the voice of those who have perished, it has become an iconic expression of remembrance for the sacrifice of those who’ve fought in our wars.
When I was a child, In Flanders Fields was read over rows of crosses representing the fallen in our small town cemetery (the actual graves of those veterans are scattered among family plots in the Lutheran and Catholic sections). The poem (and the poppies) were originally associated with Armistice Day (now Veterans’ Day), commemorating the end of World War I on November 11, 1918. It still is with Remembrance Day in Canada and elsewhere amongst the allies of “The Great War.”
It should be a time to pause and appreciate those who have given their lives in the cause of our freedom. For far too many that’s just lip service, they disdain the service of our soldiers and veterans the rest of the year; certainly that disdain cannot turn to reverence in the instance of a day.
In July, my daughter Courtney, an instructor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and I visited the grave in Connecticut of a comrade of another time. It was a sobering and long overdue visit. Brian was a soldier, a son of loving parents, a child of the sixties. Unlike those to whom we now apply that sobriquet, Brian still is, and will ever be. He – and we – had an innocent certainty that we were doing the right, in the moment, and for each other. Those others – and their successors – retain only one, disagreeable, part of that era’s popularized persona; a self-righteous and smug judgment of soldiers and soldiers’ endeavors. They have never shared the camaraderie of soldiers; they can can never, ever, understand.
I hold the torch proudly. I have not – will not – break faith with you - and I have passed that torch to others who will hold it in strong hands.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
So, What's Changed?
What’s different? I’ve been quiet while Gopher Nation’s gotten on Punky’s bandwagon. I even hitched a ride myself, to the extent of finding a place to watch the Rodents play Saturday mornings.
Until today, that is. Yes, it only takes is one loss to hop off the Brewster bandwagon. What’s the tight ends coach done to demonstrate he’s any improvement over his predecessor? Mason’s teams couldn’t “get over the hump,” couldn’t “win the big one.” One season after another played out the same way: Beat up on a few creampuffs, lose to one or more Big Ten “powerhouse,” programs (Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State). Split games with the Big Ten’s “have nots,” (Indiana, Northwestern, Illinois, Purdue). Close the season taking a beating in the “border battles,” with Wisconsin and Iowa.
Limp in with an 8-4 or 7-5 record (Mason often did better than that by a game or so). Go to a third-tier bowl, where a few Golden Gopher faithful barely fill a single stadium section.
For perspective, it’s still more fun than watching Chilly’s Vikings, and the Rodents had a better day than the Dawgs.
It can be entertaining along the way. Jeannie and I had a great time watching the Rodents thump Alabama at the Music City Bowl, and Nashville’s a far more entertaining place than, say Orlando, or San Antonio. We spent a couple of seasons in the Metrodome with Goldy watching Marion, and Laurence set records. We were fans. I still am. But I know the difference between new and old, between different and the same. So far, this is the same.
Until today, that is. Yes, it only takes is one loss to hop off the Brewster bandwagon. What’s the tight ends coach done to demonstrate he’s any improvement over his predecessor? Mason’s teams couldn’t “get over the hump,” couldn’t “win the big one.” One season after another played out the same way: Beat up on a few creampuffs, lose to one or more Big Ten “powerhouse,” programs (Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State). Split games with the Big Ten’s “have nots,” (Indiana, Northwestern, Illinois, Purdue). Close the season taking a beating in the “border battles,” with Wisconsin and Iowa.
Limp in with an 8-4 or 7-5 record (Mason often did better than that by a game or so). Go to a third-tier bowl, where a few Golden Gopher faithful barely fill a single stadium section.
For perspective, it’s still more fun than watching Chilly’s Vikings, and the Rodents had a better day than the Dawgs.
It can be entertaining along the way. Jeannie and I had a great time watching the Rodents thump Alabama at the Music City Bowl, and Nashville’s a far more entertaining place than, say Orlando, or San Antonio. We spent a couple of seasons in the Metrodome with Goldy watching Marion, and Laurence set records. We were fans. I still am. But I know the difference between new and old, between different and the same. So far, this is the same.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Quick Reference Guide to Election 2008 Terminology
Bailout – Financial transaction that benefits a bogyman. (See also socialist.) Also, any loan, funding, acquisition, or other intervention by the government with which someone does not agree. (See bogyman.)
Big Oil – Generally, large companies that explore for and produce crude oil, refine it into products including gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and chemicals such as propylene, ethylene, benzene, and other aromatics, and deliver it for sale to the market.
Bogyman – The cause of what is wrong. (See Big Oil, George W. Bush, socialist)
Deduction – A method of tax reduction for the deserving (See middle class, tax credit, loophole).
Experienced – Qualitative term applied to the personal credentials of my candidate.
Inexperienced – Qualitative term applied to the personal credentials of the other candidate.
Hero – One who participated in, or was the victim of, an event in which there was great danger or carnage, whether willing or unwilling.
Immigrant – A person who moves from one country to another.
Illegal Immigrant – A pejorative term applied to a selected few of the ‘poor and huddled masses’ by racist right wing zealots.
Little Oil – Mythically, small companies that explore for and produce crude oil, refine it into products including gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and chemicals such as propylene, ethylene, benzene, and other aromatics, and deliver it for sale to the market. (See Big Foot.)
Leader – One who is elected to an office, or aspires to the same, and espouses ideas gleaned from polls of popular opinion.
Lobbyists – The other party’s candidate’s policy experts. (See also advisors.)
Loophole – A deduction for someone else. (See Big Oil, bogeyman, )
Main street – The good part of the economy. (See mortgage brokers, used car salesmen, lawyers, bankers, payday lenders, plumbers.)
Policy experts – Knowledgeable advisors experienced in business and industry.
Pig – Policeman. Alternatively, a candidate of the other party. (See pig, lipstick on.)
Political – Action by the other party, a member or a candidate of the other party.
Patriotic – Action by my party, a member, or a candidate of my party.
Socialist – Government program or intervention with which I disagree. (See also bailout.)
Special interests – Individuals and groups with which you don’t agree.
Strategist – Person who quotes a political party’s talking-points-of-the-day regardless of the topic of a question or discussion.
Wall street – The bad part of the economy. (See investment bankers, stock brokers, analysts, traders, retirement fund managers.)
Big Oil – Generally, large companies that explore for and produce crude oil, refine it into products including gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and chemicals such as propylene, ethylene, benzene, and other aromatics, and deliver it for sale to the market.
Bogyman – The cause of what is wrong. (See Big Oil, George W. Bush, socialist)
Deduction – A method of tax reduction for the deserving (See middle class, tax credit, loophole).
Experienced – Qualitative term applied to the personal credentials of my candidate.
Inexperienced – Qualitative term applied to the personal credentials of the other candidate.
Hero – One who participated in, or was the victim of, an event in which there was great danger or carnage, whether willing or unwilling.
Immigrant – A person who moves from one country to another.
Illegal Immigrant – A pejorative term applied to a selected few of the ‘poor and huddled masses’ by racist right wing zealots.
Little Oil – Mythically, small companies that explore for and produce crude oil, refine it into products including gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and chemicals such as propylene, ethylene, benzene, and other aromatics, and deliver it for sale to the market. (See Big Foot.)
Leader – One who is elected to an office, or aspires to the same, and espouses ideas gleaned from polls of popular opinion.
Lobbyists – The other party’s candidate’s policy experts. (See also advisors.)
Loophole – A deduction for someone else. (See Big Oil, bogeyman, )
Main street – The good part of the economy. (See mortgage brokers, used car salesmen, lawyers, bankers, payday lenders, plumbers.)
Policy experts – Knowledgeable advisors experienced in business and industry.
Pig – Policeman. Alternatively, a candidate of the other party. (See pig, lipstick on.)
Political – Action by the other party, a member or a candidate of the other party.
Patriotic – Action by my party, a member, or a candidate of my party.
Socialist – Government program or intervention with which I disagree. (See also bailout.)
Special interests – Individuals and groups with which you don’t agree.
Strategist – Person who quotes a political party’s talking-points-of-the-day regardless of the topic of a question or discussion.
Wall street – The bad part of the economy. (See investment bankers, stock brokers, analysts, traders, retirement fund managers.)
Monday, September 22, 2008
Pigskin Improbables and other Gridiron Observations
The improbable just happened; Punky’s Rodents and Chili’s Viqueens won on the same weekend. Given that the Rodents start their Big Ten schedule at Ohio State next Saturday, it’s not likely to happen again. I mean, I’m a fan and all, but I’m also a realist.
Gus was merely adequate at quarterback for the Purple, but that was huge improvement over his overmatched predecessor, and enough to beat an overrated Carolina team that won its first two but will be lucky to win half on the season.
Speaking of overmatched, the Sun Devils hosted the Dawgs, and some of the locals seemed to think there was some chance for an upset in the desert. There wasn’t, of course. Speaking of overrated, Auburn went down to LSU. Auburn inherited the overrated tag when the fools that vote in the football poles finally saw the light and dumped the Nuts out of the top ten. That doesn’t mean the Rodents are likely to challenge in Columbus. Hapless Auburn dropped below the Nuts - demonstrating once again that the sports writers still haven’t entirely kicked the Ohio State habit.
Poor Army. Having already made ESPN’s Bottom Ten list before getting a week off (and a respite from that high honor), the Black Knights earned their way back to infamy by being soundly beaten by Akron. Can the cadets console themselves that the Zips beat Syracuse? Not with Syracuse firmly ensconced in that same Bottom Ten list. Drake bounced back from its loss to Lehigh with a pasting of William Penn.
Is Florida No. 4, or are they better than that? The first answer will be October 11 when LSU comes to the Swamp. Before that it’s Mississippi (more “S’es” in there than likely SEC wins) and Arkansas. That last is good scheduling; there’s no chance the Hogs can make that a good enough game to steal our concentration away from Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.
Colorado made it three in a row with at win over 21st ranked West Virginia. It gets still tougher, though, with Florida State, Texas and Kansas the next three. The ‘Noles might be the easiest of those. Jay the Kid led the Horsies to a 3-0 start. Someone would be happy.
The Cheezheads had a come-upance, dropping to 1-1 on the season with the home loss to the ‘Boys. (Beating Detroit doesn’t count. Aaron Rodger’s two-game stats will need an asterisk.)
That’s the football for this week.
Gus was merely adequate at quarterback for the Purple, but that was huge improvement over his overmatched predecessor, and enough to beat an overrated Carolina team that won its first two but will be lucky to win half on the season.
Speaking of overmatched, the Sun Devils hosted the Dawgs, and some of the locals seemed to think there was some chance for an upset in the desert. There wasn’t, of course. Speaking of overrated, Auburn went down to LSU. Auburn inherited the overrated tag when the fools that vote in the football poles finally saw the light and dumped the Nuts out of the top ten. That doesn’t mean the Rodents are likely to challenge in Columbus. Hapless Auburn dropped below the Nuts - demonstrating once again that the sports writers still haven’t entirely kicked the Ohio State habit.
Poor Army. Having already made ESPN’s Bottom Ten list before getting a week off (and a respite from that high honor), the Black Knights earned their way back to infamy by being soundly beaten by Akron. Can the cadets console themselves that the Zips beat Syracuse? Not with Syracuse firmly ensconced in that same Bottom Ten list. Drake bounced back from its loss to Lehigh with a pasting of William Penn.
Is Florida No. 4, or are they better than that? The first answer will be October 11 when LSU comes to the Swamp. Before that it’s Mississippi (more “S’es” in there than likely SEC wins) and Arkansas. That last is good scheduling; there’s no chance the Hogs can make that a good enough game to steal our concentration away from Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.
Colorado made it three in a row with at win over 21st ranked West Virginia. It gets still tougher, though, with Florida State, Texas and Kansas the next three. The ‘Noles might be the easiest of those. Jay the Kid led the Horsies to a 3-0 start. Someone would be happy.
The Cheezheads had a come-upance, dropping to 1-1 on the season with the home loss to the ‘Boys. (Beating Detroit doesn’t count. Aaron Rodger’s two-game stats will need an asterisk.)
That’s the football for this week.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
September 18, 2008
Jeannie, it’s your birthday, but
It’s me who has been given a
Gift of beautiful memories.
My world was brightened by your smile,
My heart warmed by your touch.
My life was wonderful because of you.
You were the one that I loved.
My birthday prayer,
That the Lord above
Keeps you safely in his Care,
And enfolds you in his Love.
It’s me who has been given a
Gift of beautiful memories.
My world was brightened by your smile,
My heart warmed by your touch.
My life was wonderful because of you.
You were the one that I loved.
My birthday prayer,
That the Lord above
Keeps you safely in his Care,
And enfolds you in his Love.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Vikes Coach, QB, Without a Clue
The CBS talking heads are wondering why Tavaris Jackson is being booed in the Metrodome. They’re not watching the same game, right?
If the Vikings have a quarterback, the game is out of reach in the first half. One, perhaps two, of those field goals are touchdowns. Jackson throws for 7 yards in the first quarter to go with the 6 yards in the first half of the Green Bay game last week. Jackson pads his stats with a couple of throws in the last minute of the first half. That surprises the Colt's defense and the Vikings kick a late a field goal. It’s 9-0 at the half.
A couple more field goals in the second half make it 15-0, and the throwing stats are deceptively good. The problem is that the misses come on wide open opportunities at the worst time. To add insult to injury, he doesn’t show any ability to run, turning up in one case, and in a couple of others, passing up the opportunity to run for a first down in favor of another wild throw downfield.
Regardless of a few completions, the Colts don’t respect the passing game, and load up against the run. Running back Adrian Petersen, after a 118-yard first half, is contained in the second. The Vikings defense spends more time on the field and starts to fade. The Colts take advantage and score. And score again. Tied.
The Vikings do nothing after the middle of the third quarter.
The Colts have a Manning. The Vikings have Jackson. That’s not all that’s wrong with the Vikings, but it’s enough today. Vikings 0 and 2 in 2008.
Worse, Adrian Petersen, potentially a great running back, is being abused; his career will likely end in injury.
Vikings’ head coach Brad Childress has not demonstrated in any way that he is up to the task. The delusion that Tavaris Jackson is an NFL quarterback is only the most obvious of Childress’ coaching foibles.
If the Vikings have a quarterback, the game is out of reach in the first half. One, perhaps two, of those field goals are touchdowns. Jackson throws for 7 yards in the first quarter to go with the 6 yards in the first half of the Green Bay game last week. Jackson pads his stats with a couple of throws in the last minute of the first half. That surprises the Colt's defense and the Vikings kick a late a field goal. It’s 9-0 at the half.
A couple more field goals in the second half make it 15-0, and the throwing stats are deceptively good. The problem is that the misses come on wide open opportunities at the worst time. To add insult to injury, he doesn’t show any ability to run, turning up in one case, and in a couple of others, passing up the opportunity to run for a first down in favor of another wild throw downfield.
Regardless of a few completions, the Colts don’t respect the passing game, and load up against the run. Running back Adrian Petersen, after a 118-yard first half, is contained in the second. The Vikings defense spends more time on the field and starts to fade. The Colts take advantage and score. And score again. Tied.
The Vikings do nothing after the middle of the third quarter.
The Colts have a Manning. The Vikings have Jackson. That’s not all that’s wrong with the Vikings, but it’s enough today. Vikings 0 and 2 in 2008.
Worse, Adrian Petersen, potentially a great running back, is being abused; his career will likely end in injury.
Vikings’ head coach Brad Childress has not demonstrated in any way that he is up to the task. The delusion that Tavaris Jackson is an NFL quarterback is only the most obvious of Childress’ coaching foibles.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Punky's Rodents 16th?
Punky Brewster’s Rodents beat the stuffin’ out of Bowling Green (ok, BG helped out), who whipped number 17 Pittsburgh last week.
Pitts beat Buffalo this week (whoopee!). Just about every other Midwest big time pigskin program was underwhelming. In fact, Bowling Green State was the best football team in Ohio. The Nuts looked bad sneaking past Ohio U’s Bobcats. Michigan was squeaking by the other Miami (not the football factory one that the Gators whipped last night).
So I figure that makes the Rodents No. 16. Not that Punky’s kids will stay in that lofty spot for long, but hey, you’ve got to enjoy it while you can.
The Gators ended Miami’s hex on them, and even beat the spread – which made Murphy’s friend Gus the Gator very happy.
Elsewhere in the football interests of family and friends, Army lost to New Hampshire, (Courtney was buying hot dawgs when the Mules – that’s more fun than ‘Cadets’ – scored their only touchdown) and Drake was shut out by the Mountain Hawks (sorry Ash. Congrats, Tim).
Speaking of Dawgs, (hot or not) rookie Uga VII remains unbeaten. Will the Cocks be up for the Dawgs next week?
Next Week’s Picks
Rodents, Dawgs, Wolverines, Trojans crush the Nuts, Iowa Dawgs should beat the Statesmen from Oskaloosa, while Army gets a needed week off before playing the Zips (I’m not kidding).
Pitts beat Buffalo this week (whoopee!). Just about every other Midwest big time pigskin program was underwhelming. In fact, Bowling Green State was the best football team in Ohio. The Nuts looked bad sneaking past Ohio U’s Bobcats. Michigan was squeaking by the other Miami (not the football factory one that the Gators whipped last night).
So I figure that makes the Rodents No. 16. Not that Punky’s kids will stay in that lofty spot for long, but hey, you’ve got to enjoy it while you can.
The Gators ended Miami’s hex on them, and even beat the spread – which made Murphy’s friend Gus the Gator very happy.
Elsewhere in the football interests of family and friends, Army lost to New Hampshire, (Courtney was buying hot dawgs when the Mules – that’s more fun than ‘Cadets’ – scored their only touchdown) and Drake was shut out by the Mountain Hawks (sorry Ash. Congrats, Tim).
Speaking of Dawgs, (hot or not) rookie Uga VII remains unbeaten. Will the Cocks be up for the Dawgs next week?
Next Week’s Picks
Rodents, Dawgs, Wolverines, Trojans crush the Nuts, Iowa Dawgs should beat the Statesmen from Oskaloosa, while Army gets a needed week off before playing the Zips (I’m not kidding).
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Six Months Later
In April, I wrote about a call from a friend who’s in the investment business. The short version of that blog is that he was moving his clients into cash, advising them to ride out a downturn in not just the stock market, but in other investments, and positioning them to re-invest when a major bear market was over.
Some asked, ”What about commodities and alternatives like gold?”
“Cash!” was the answer.
Well, there have been ups and downs since then, and, as always, if your timing in day-to-day trading was perfect, you might have done all right, or better than all right.
But if you don’t work at it all day, every day, you make occasional “big moves” like this one, or none at all.
So, what would have happened in you had put everything into cash (dollars, in this case)? And how would a range of investments have done?
Let’s assume – for round numbers – you had $1,000 when I wrote Peninsula Pen on April 14.
If you took my friend’s advice, you sold whatever else you had and kept your money in dollars. Dollars, of course are a commodity, too, traded on world markets, and their value goes up and down. In this case, up. Back in April (if you wanted to go to Paris, for instance) the dollar would have bought 633 Euros. This weekend, 703 – a 16% increase, an annualized return of over 30%.
Your $1,000 would have bought 167 bushels of corn; that investment would have lost $85. Gold? A 14% loss.
What about crude oil? Well, had you bought in April, then been smart enough to sell at its peak, you would have made big bucks. But if you had bought and held, right now you’d be upside down by $70.
Most of you are in stocks, a “basket” of equities known as a mutual fund. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a pretty good proxy for that investment (it does better than most mutual funds); if you’d put your $1,000 there, you’d be pretty unhappy, because you’d have less than $900 left.
Sometimes the sideline is the place to be.
Some asked, ”What about commodities and alternatives like gold?”
“Cash!” was the answer.
Well, there have been ups and downs since then, and, as always, if your timing in day-to-day trading was perfect, you might have done all right, or better than all right.
But if you don’t work at it all day, every day, you make occasional “big moves” like this one, or none at all.
So, what would have happened in you had put everything into cash (dollars, in this case)? And how would a range of investments have done?
Let’s assume – for round numbers – you had $1,000 when I wrote Peninsula Pen on April 14.
If you took my friend’s advice, you sold whatever else you had and kept your money in dollars. Dollars, of course are a commodity, too, traded on world markets, and their value goes up and down. In this case, up. Back in April (if you wanted to go to Paris, for instance) the dollar would have bought 633 Euros. This weekend, 703 – a 16% increase, an annualized return of over 30%.
Your $1,000 would have bought 167 bushels of corn; that investment would have lost $85. Gold? A 14% loss.
What about crude oil? Well, had you bought in April, then been smart enough to sell at its peak, you would have made big bucks. But if you had bought and held, right now you’d be upside down by $70.
Most of you are in stocks, a “basket” of equities known as a mutual fund. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a pretty good proxy for that investment (it does better than most mutual funds); if you’d put your $1,000 there, you’d be pretty unhappy, because you’d have less than $900 left.
Sometimes the sideline is the place to be.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Going Home
They’re teachers and teamsters, pilots and preachers, foremen and farmers. Lots of farmers. They’re the kids with whom I misspent my youth. We gathered this past Saturday night, some of us, forty-five years after we graduated from high school. For the first time in thirty years I attended my high school class’ reunion.
US Highway 212 was once called “The Yellowstone Trail,” two lanes of asphalt that carried American moms and dads, with the kids in the back seat, on vacation. Driving on this August Saturday I wasn’t on my way to Yellowstone, nor was this a family vacation. I was going home. To the little town on the prairie where I grew up. The names of the towns through which two-twelve passes – Cologne, Sacred Heart, Danube – say much about the first settlers and their descendents. In those places, and in Madison, where I grew up, there were Norwegians and Germans – and a few Swedes. Lutherans and Catholics – and a few Congregationalists. There were Swensons and Henrich’s, a few Petersons and lots of Fernholz’s. Still are, I suspect.
Social hour was at five, dinner at seven. I stopped at the Pickett Fence Motel in Dawson; I’d be there overnight. Madison has a motel, but it’s fully booked by wedding revelers. The white clapboard Pickett Fence is one the kids in the back seat would have vetoed all those years ago. No pool. After ablutions there, I headed over to Madison.
It’s a town of 1700-something; that was 1900 twenty years ago and 2200-something a couple of decades before that. Main street’s decline exceeds the population drop. It was transportation, the railroad, then highways and cars that created these once-vibrant small towns on the prairies of the Midwestern United States, and it is ultimately the same gasoline engine that has shrunk them. When I was growing up, farms were still a half section – maybe a section (that’s 640 acres) – but growing fast. We were at the end of decades of a farmstead in every section, and of families with a half-dozen kids. Inexorably, over the years, proportional to the number of acres you could plow in a day (and to the trend to 1.3 kids per parent set) the farm population has fallen. It’s that fall that’s ravaged small town America. No one is to blame, it’s not a political thing, it just is.
I visited the cemetery after turning off State Highway 40 from Dawson, passing places I lived, and friends lived, on the way. My father, his parents, and an aunt and uncle are buried there. As I walk through headstones toward those family graves, I’m struck by all the names I recognize, people who filled my life not-so-many years ago. A druggist, the proprietor of a five-and-dime store, both businesses now also gone from the town’s main street. The publisher-editor-writer of the town’s weekly paper. My chemistry teacher. The parents of close friends, the mothers who mixed Kool Aid for us on a hot summer day. Too many graves of young men and women near my age. Just months after Jeannie’s passing, it’s another sobering reminder of my own mortality.
I’m eager for this, I’m there ahead of most. Others arrive. After a moment’s hesitation old friends and acquaintances are recognized. No one bothers with “you haven’t changed” – that platitude of three decades earlier can no longer be said with a straight face.
Rudy looks as good as any of us, and is as settled, too; satisfied and successful. Kids are through college. Lee is our master of ceremonies, retired from teaching and waiting for a liver. It’s unclear if the liver will be on time. Ed is missing some lung – a lot of lung – and (like me) has a failed heart valve. He exercises but with the help of oxygen. Harlan, his twin brother, died soon after the last reunion, five years ago. We’re told of others who aren’t well.
Those there seem happy enough, though. Marc farms fish and nuts in California. He’s successful, in his business, in his family, in his life – you can just tell. My mother told me that “Nettie (Marc’s mother, now gone) was very, very proud of that boy.” Forty-five years later it’s clear she had good reason.
George is a preacher – perhaps minister is more descriptive, recently a hospice chaplain – can you think of anything more emotionally draining? He’s moved to South Dakota to be nearer family. George and his wife don’t eat the roast beef on their plates. George has St. Olaf college and Harvard University on his curriculum vitae, which might be adequate explanation for the diet.
My closest childhood friends aren’t here, and some are nearby enough to have made the trip. Charlie, Stan, Ron (a recluse, I’m told), Rick was in the class behind, but died a few years ago. Arvin is far enough away, in Pennsylvania, that I didn’t expect him. That these are missing is too bad, but not really important; I thoroughly enjoyed those who were here. I have no idea if I’ll see another of these gatherings, but I know now the effort is worthwhile.
The line says “you can’t go home.” It’s wrong, you can. It’s not the same, not by a long shot, but it is an experience of great personal value. It’s a trip that I highly recommend.
US Highway 212 was once called “The Yellowstone Trail,” two lanes of asphalt that carried American moms and dads, with the kids in the back seat, on vacation. Driving on this August Saturday I wasn’t on my way to Yellowstone, nor was this a family vacation. I was going home. To the little town on the prairie where I grew up. The names of the towns through which two-twelve passes – Cologne, Sacred Heart, Danube – say much about the first settlers and their descendents. In those places, and in Madison, where I grew up, there were Norwegians and Germans – and a few Swedes. Lutherans and Catholics – and a few Congregationalists. There were Swensons and Henrich’s, a few Petersons and lots of Fernholz’s. Still are, I suspect.
Social hour was at five, dinner at seven. I stopped at the Pickett Fence Motel in Dawson; I’d be there overnight. Madison has a motel, but it’s fully booked by wedding revelers. The white clapboard Pickett Fence is one the kids in the back seat would have vetoed all those years ago. No pool. After ablutions there, I headed over to Madison.
It’s a town of 1700-something; that was 1900 twenty years ago and 2200-something a couple of decades before that. Main street’s decline exceeds the population drop. It was transportation, the railroad, then highways and cars that created these once-vibrant small towns on the prairies of the Midwestern United States, and it is ultimately the same gasoline engine that has shrunk them. When I was growing up, farms were still a half section – maybe a section (that’s 640 acres) – but growing fast. We were at the end of decades of a farmstead in every section, and of families with a half-dozen kids. Inexorably, over the years, proportional to the number of acres you could plow in a day (and to the trend to 1.3 kids per parent set) the farm population has fallen. It’s that fall that’s ravaged small town America. No one is to blame, it’s not a political thing, it just is.
I visited the cemetery after turning off State Highway 40 from Dawson, passing places I lived, and friends lived, on the way. My father, his parents, and an aunt and uncle are buried there. As I walk through headstones toward those family graves, I’m struck by all the names I recognize, people who filled my life not-so-many years ago. A druggist, the proprietor of a five-and-dime store, both businesses now also gone from the town’s main street. The publisher-editor-writer of the town’s weekly paper. My chemistry teacher. The parents of close friends, the mothers who mixed Kool Aid for us on a hot summer day. Too many graves of young men and women near my age. Just months after Jeannie’s passing, it’s another sobering reminder of my own mortality.
I’m eager for this, I’m there ahead of most. Others arrive. After a moment’s hesitation old friends and acquaintances are recognized. No one bothers with “you haven’t changed” – that platitude of three decades earlier can no longer be said with a straight face.
Rudy looks as good as any of us, and is as settled, too; satisfied and successful. Kids are through college. Lee is our master of ceremonies, retired from teaching and waiting for a liver. It’s unclear if the liver will be on time. Ed is missing some lung – a lot of lung – and (like me) has a failed heart valve. He exercises but with the help of oxygen. Harlan, his twin brother, died soon after the last reunion, five years ago. We’re told of others who aren’t well.
Those there seem happy enough, though. Marc farms fish and nuts in California. He’s successful, in his business, in his family, in his life – you can just tell. My mother told me that “Nettie (Marc’s mother, now gone) was very, very proud of that boy.” Forty-five years later it’s clear she had good reason.
George is a preacher – perhaps minister is more descriptive, recently a hospice chaplain – can you think of anything more emotionally draining? He’s moved to South Dakota to be nearer family. George and his wife don’t eat the roast beef on their plates. George has St. Olaf college and Harvard University on his curriculum vitae, which might be adequate explanation for the diet.
My closest childhood friends aren’t here, and some are nearby enough to have made the trip. Charlie, Stan, Ron (a recluse, I’m told), Rick was in the class behind, but died a few years ago. Arvin is far enough away, in Pennsylvania, that I didn’t expect him. That these are missing is too bad, but not really important; I thoroughly enjoyed those who were here. I have no idea if I’ll see another of these gatherings, but I know now the effort is worthwhile.
The line says “you can’t go home.” It’s wrong, you can. It’s not the same, not by a long shot, but it is an experience of great personal value. It’s a trip that I highly recommend.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Communicating
Jo was a friend of Jeannie’s of many years. Now retired from teaching, Jo has continued a monthly newsletter she’s sent to friends and family for many years.
Her newsletters are the snail mail equivalent of blogs, like this one, though Jo’s topics are exclusively personal, trips, and daily life with cats Gypsy and Lola, her annual trip to visit family and friends, and her photography and crafts, which she combines into some of the most beautiful and unique note and greeting cards you’ll ever see. I look forward to the envelopes containing her musings.
A new blog, short term and topical – by my daughter Heather – started me thinking about communicating. Heather has returned to academia – law school – a decade after graduating from the University of Minnesota. This summer, she’s taking intellectual property law in Munich, Germany, under the auspices of the George Washington University College of Law. To keep her friends and family informed she’s launched “Ein Deutscher Student.” a blog specifically about her trip. Well, I caught up with her entries yesterday, and they’re nothing short of delightful.
This whole personal blog thing was started by Courtney, Heather’s (a bit) younger sister. Courtney has recently joined the history department faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point; she started a blog while in graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In point of fact it largely dwelt on her trips to Okinawa to spend time with husband Dave, who was commanding a Patriot missile battery there.
They are now in New York, and I was able to spend time with them while covering the Lime Rock Park. As you can imagine, they’ve been busy moving and getting settled in a new place with new responsibilities (I’ll devote one of these entries to detail as soon as I can.) In the meantime, however, I can’t direct you to their blog, because it’s disappeared – honest!
Son Ashley has no blog, doesn’t answer phone calls, and rarely responds to emails. Is that just a condition of being a twenty-something single male? I know he can write. In fact, I think that’s what he’s doing for a living – here is a music album review – perhaps he has to be paid to write anything at all?
My sister Barb does a blog about the adventures of the Millers, as she and husband Jim ski, ride, and drive through life.
All of which brings me to this tome. I’ve not been as diligent about it since Jeannie died. There’s less to tell, of course. Even commentary about the world around doesn’t seem as important, and isn’t focused any longer by our discourse.
I write for two other web sites, wrote/edited a race series yearbook last year, and am working on this year’s follow-up; that means about 500 words a day. Still, I do need to get to Peninsula Pen more often. I’ll try.
In the meantime, enjoy Ein Deutscher Student.
Her newsletters are the snail mail equivalent of blogs, like this one, though Jo’s topics are exclusively personal, trips, and daily life with cats Gypsy and Lola, her annual trip to visit family and friends, and her photography and crafts, which she combines into some of the most beautiful and unique note and greeting cards you’ll ever see. I look forward to the envelopes containing her musings.
A new blog, short term and topical – by my daughter Heather – started me thinking about communicating. Heather has returned to academia – law school – a decade after graduating from the University of Minnesota. This summer, she’s taking intellectual property law in Munich, Germany, under the auspices of the George Washington University College of Law. To keep her friends and family informed she’s launched “Ein Deutscher Student.” a blog specifically about her trip. Well, I caught up with her entries yesterday, and they’re nothing short of delightful.
This whole personal blog thing was started by Courtney, Heather’s (a bit) younger sister. Courtney has recently joined the history department faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point; she started a blog while in graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In point of fact it largely dwelt on her trips to Okinawa to spend time with husband Dave, who was commanding a Patriot missile battery there.
They are now in New York, and I was able to spend time with them while covering the Lime Rock Park. As you can imagine, they’ve been busy moving and getting settled in a new place with new responsibilities (I’ll devote one of these entries to detail as soon as I can.) In the meantime, however, I can’t direct you to their blog, because it’s disappeared – honest!
Son Ashley has no blog, doesn’t answer phone calls, and rarely responds to emails. Is that just a condition of being a twenty-something single male? I know he can write. In fact, I think that’s what he’s doing for a living – here is a music album review – perhaps he has to be paid to write anything at all?
My sister Barb does a blog about the adventures of the Millers, as she and husband Jim ski, ride, and drive through life.
All of which brings me to this tome. I’ve not been as diligent about it since Jeannie died. There’s less to tell, of course. Even commentary about the world around doesn’t seem as important, and isn’t focused any longer by our discourse.
I write for two other web sites, wrote/edited a race series yearbook last year, and am working on this year’s follow-up; that means about 500 words a day. Still, I do need to get to Peninsula Pen more often. I’ll try.
In the meantime, enjoy Ein Deutscher Student.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
You won't hear this in a Debate
In February, I described the disparity between self-pay, at time of service, medical lab charges and the amount that was billed to – and paid by - insurance, or by me if I opted to be billed. One critique posited that the difference was accounted for by the amount that insurance carriers are subsidizing the uninsured. That doesn’t seem to be the case, at least in hospital costs.
Uninsured patients and those who pay with their own funds are charged 2.5 times more for hospital care than those covered by health insurance and more than 3 times the allowable amount paid by Medicare, according to a study by Gerard F. Anderson, PhD, a health economist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Anderson’s analysis determined the ratio between the prices hospitals charged self-pay patients and Medicare-allowable costs, which are the costs that Medicare has determined to be what it costs to provide care to all patients. In 2004, the ratio was 3.07, which means that for every $100 in Medicare-allowable costs, the average hospital charged a self-pay patient $307.
The study also shows that the gap between the amount self-pay patients are charged and what Medicare pays for hospital services more than doubled over the past 20 years. Anderson argues that the widening gap in prices makes it increasingly difficult for the uninsured to pay their medical bills. The ratio between the amount hospitals charged self-pay patients (gross revenue) and the amount the hospitals actually collected (net revenue) was 2.57 in 2004. This means that hospitals collected only $0.39 for every dollar charged. Anderson estimated that if hospitals had actually collected the full amount charged to every patient, the profit margin per hospital would average more than 200 percent.
In other words, on average hospitals were paid $120 by self-pay patients for treatment that Medicare valued at $100. Interestingly, the amount paid for those same services by insurance companies and their insured? $122 – almost exactly the same.
Thus, when a hospital reports it has “donated,” say $1,000,000 in services, what it really means is that it billed an inflated $1,640,000 for treatment, and was paid $640,000 of that.
For the same treatment, however, insurance companies (including patient co-payments) would have been billed – and paid - $656,000. Medicare would have reimbursed $427,000 and Medicare patents(or their co-insurance) would have paid $107,000, a total of $534,000.
More simply, on a same-service basis, the insured pay $656,000, the uninsured $640,000, and Medicare $534,000.
Not included are federal payments (your tax money) under the Disproportionate Share Hospital Program (DSH). Those are intended to defray the costs that hospitals incur delivering services “not paid for.” In 2004 the total (including state matching funds) was $16 billion, or $385 per uninsured patient. In addition even to that, states and hospital have funds donated over many decades (similar to college endowments) to cover “free beds,” or to use a more classical phrase “charity patients.” It’s hard to know how much that is in total, but Connecticut’s “endowment,” for instance, is more than $130 million.
It’s clear the reported $1,000,000 “donation” is entirely bogus. In fact, if all that treatment were delivered to “normally” insured and Medicare patients, a hospital would actually be worse off. If our mythical hospital has a patient population consisting of 1/3 of each group receiving exactly the same treatment, its net revenue will be $1,830,000. If it has no “uninsured” patients at all and its population is made up of the other two groups, half each, its net revenue is $1,785,000 – and it can no longer claim it’s “losing” or “donating” $1,000,000.)
It seems logical the proportion collected would increase if the billing amount wasn’t initially so inflated. After all, if an uninsured patient received a bill for $100 (the value of the treatment according to Medicare) rather than $300, it’s far more likely to be paid.
What’s also clear in the data is that insurers are not subsidizing the uninsured, as they claim.
Whatever the reality is, it seems we won’t hear it from television’s talking heads – or from candidates.
Uninsured patients and those who pay with their own funds are charged 2.5 times more for hospital care than those covered by health insurance and more than 3 times the allowable amount paid by Medicare, according to a study by Gerard F. Anderson, PhD, a health economist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Anderson’s analysis determined the ratio between the prices hospitals charged self-pay patients and Medicare-allowable costs, which are the costs that Medicare has determined to be what it costs to provide care to all patients. In 2004, the ratio was 3.07, which means that for every $100 in Medicare-allowable costs, the average hospital charged a self-pay patient $307.
The study also shows that the gap between the amount self-pay patients are charged and what Medicare pays for hospital services more than doubled over the past 20 years. Anderson argues that the widening gap in prices makes it increasingly difficult for the uninsured to pay their medical bills. The ratio between the amount hospitals charged self-pay patients (gross revenue) and the amount the hospitals actually collected (net revenue) was 2.57 in 2004. This means that hospitals collected only $0.39 for every dollar charged. Anderson estimated that if hospitals had actually collected the full amount charged to every patient, the profit margin per hospital would average more than 200 percent.
In other words, on average hospitals were paid $120 by self-pay patients for treatment that Medicare valued at $100. Interestingly, the amount paid for those same services by insurance companies and their insured? $122 – almost exactly the same.
Thus, when a hospital reports it has “donated,” say $1,000,000 in services, what it really means is that it billed an inflated $1,640,000 for treatment, and was paid $640,000 of that.
For the same treatment, however, insurance companies (including patient co-payments) would have been billed – and paid - $656,000. Medicare would have reimbursed $427,000 and Medicare patents(or their co-insurance) would have paid $107,000, a total of $534,000.
More simply, on a same-service basis, the insured pay $656,000, the uninsured $640,000, and Medicare $534,000.
Not included are federal payments (your tax money) under the Disproportionate Share Hospital Program (DSH). Those are intended to defray the costs that hospitals incur delivering services “not paid for.” In 2004 the total (including state matching funds) was $16 billion, or $385 per uninsured patient. In addition even to that, states and hospital have funds donated over many decades (similar to college endowments) to cover “free beds,” or to use a more classical phrase “charity patients.” It’s hard to know how much that is in total, but Connecticut’s “endowment,” for instance, is more than $130 million.
It’s clear the reported $1,000,000 “donation” is entirely bogus. In fact, if all that treatment were delivered to “normally” insured and Medicare patients, a hospital would actually be worse off. If our mythical hospital has a patient population consisting of 1/3 of each group receiving exactly the same treatment, its net revenue will be $1,830,000. If it has no “uninsured” patients at all and its population is made up of the other two groups, half each, its net revenue is $1,785,000 – and it can no longer claim it’s “losing” or “donating” $1,000,000.)
It seems logical the proportion collected would increase if the billing amount wasn’t initially so inflated. After all, if an uninsured patient received a bill for $100 (the value of the treatment according to Medicare) rather than $300, it’s far more likely to be paid.
What’s also clear in the data is that insurers are not subsidizing the uninsured, as they claim.
Whatever the reality is, it seems we won’t hear it from television’s talking heads – or from candidates.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Kids
Kids write about their Dads on Father’s day. What should a father write about? Kids. After all, he owes them his status.
I wonder who gets the most out of the relationship between fathers and kids. Fathers love babies as much as do mothers, but they really don’t have the instincts to know what do with them, so they may seem a bit less involved – perhaps even stand-offish – in early years. That was the kernel of truth in Michael Keaton’s Mr. Mom that made the comedy film funny.
It’s later that dads come into their own, when the resident gremlins finally become sentient beings. That’s also when the tykes are getting the idea they’re independent, so dad’s participation isn’t always welcome.
Doing it right means setting limits, encouraging participation and criticizing performance. Limits were a combination of practical considerations – like family financial resources – and priorities.
There was the great car and work debate. Kids want cars. Mobility, they whine, but really they're asserting independence (for which most parents instinctively know they aren't ready). The job is part of the same topic because it’s necessary to pay for the car.
My kids lost that argument. Even in a metropolitan suburb the mobility thing didn’t fly (bus, friends, parents), and thus the job wasn’t so necessary, either. To earn enough to support a car, there’s little time left for study. That’s where priorities come in. What are we here (in high school) to do anyway? Whatever might come after, certainly it’s to take advantage of the learning and participation unique to those years.
In the learning thing they all did very well. Did it help that the jobs were over vacations, not year-around?
The participation part was baseball, dance, stage plays and musicals, softball, declaim, choir, cross country, and volleyball – I may have missed something. They were successful in those things, too, appearing on high school, but on regional and community stages, “going to state” in declaim, All State choir, stealing bases in little league, and much more. Even in those considerable accomplishments there was a balance between praise and criticism.
I cared not only about what they did, but how well they did it. Pushing them? No, that wasn’t the issue so much as it was realism. What benefit can there be in promoting an ability a child simply doesn’t have? Particularly if it were to supplant time they might spend developing one they do have.
Still, I’m certain I’ve gotten more out of all that then they did. It was – and is – far more fun to be their dad than they’ve had being the kids.
They’re all college graduates, one now a professor at one of the premier colleges in the nation. One in law school, having already graced film and stage in LA. One writing – what he wants to do. Two of them were officers in our armed forces – one still is. Musicians, writers, actors, commanders, professors, athletes, students of the law.
I can hardly wait to see what comes next.
I wonder who gets the most out of the relationship between fathers and kids. Fathers love babies as much as do mothers, but they really don’t have the instincts to know what do with them, so they may seem a bit less involved – perhaps even stand-offish – in early years. That was the kernel of truth in Michael Keaton’s Mr. Mom that made the comedy film funny.
It’s later that dads come into their own, when the resident gremlins finally become sentient beings. That’s also when the tykes are getting the idea they’re independent, so dad’s participation isn’t always welcome.
Doing it right means setting limits, encouraging participation and criticizing performance. Limits were a combination of practical considerations – like family financial resources – and priorities.
There was the great car and work debate. Kids want cars. Mobility, they whine, but really they're asserting independence (for which most parents instinctively know they aren't ready). The job is part of the same topic because it’s necessary to pay for the car.
My kids lost that argument. Even in a metropolitan suburb the mobility thing didn’t fly (bus, friends, parents), and thus the job wasn’t so necessary, either. To earn enough to support a car, there’s little time left for study. That’s where priorities come in. What are we here (in high school) to do anyway? Whatever might come after, certainly it’s to take advantage of the learning and participation unique to those years.
In the learning thing they all did very well. Did it help that the jobs were over vacations, not year-around?
The participation part was baseball, dance, stage plays and musicals, softball, declaim, choir, cross country, and volleyball – I may have missed something. They were successful in those things, too, appearing on high school, but on regional and community stages, “going to state” in declaim, All State choir, stealing bases in little league, and much more. Even in those considerable accomplishments there was a balance between praise and criticism.
I cared not only about what they did, but how well they did it. Pushing them? No, that wasn’t the issue so much as it was realism. What benefit can there be in promoting an ability a child simply doesn’t have? Particularly if it were to supplant time they might spend developing one they do have.
Still, I’m certain I’ve gotten more out of all that then they did. It was – and is – far more fun to be their dad than they’ve had being the kids.
They’re all college graduates, one now a professor at one of the premier colleges in the nation. One in law school, having already graced film and stage in LA. One writing – what he wants to do. Two of them were officers in our armed forces – one still is. Musicians, writers, actors, commanders, professors, athletes, students of the law.
I can hardly wait to see what comes next.
Friday, June 6, 2008
A Near Run Thing
Sixty-four years ago today, American, British, and Canadian soldiers landed on the north coast of Normandy. It was an heroic feat of arms by any measure, but it was also, as Wellington said, of Waterloo, “a near run thing.”
Today, railing against the war in Iraq is in vogue. Derisive characterizations of the troops, their commanders, and the nation’s civilian leaders trip easily off the tongue of the hip generation at favorite fern-filled after-work watering holes.
Hack writers of mindless fiction make public sport of our nation’s soldiers, the most recent, “...if you learn to read, you go to college and are a success. If you don’t, you what - join the Army?”
The media picks and chooses those things they think are “news,” and that (to them) suitably demonstrate the incompetence of the war-fighters. They only demonstrate their own lack of knowledge of their own country’s history, knowledge that might – were they interested – provide some context to their ravings.
Victor Davis Hanson, writing in National Review a year ago, catalogued the failures of the campaign that began in June over a half-century ago.
We attacked places there was no enemy, dropped paratroopers miles away from their objectives, landed on the wrong beaches.
We were unprepared for ambushes from cover and concealment. Planners and commanders hadn’t expected the enemy’s resilience and strength.
Our weapons were mostly inferior. One of our best commanders had been relieved before the landings even took place.
We bombed our own troops, killing and wounding over 1,000. Friendly fire incidents were routine. Such errors were “covered up,” including the death of an American Lt. General.
By two months after D-Day, we’d won – after 30,000 Americans had died, part of a quarter-million allied casualties.Most who have the barest grasp of such things know that the history of wars is the history of failure as much as it is of heroism.
Those who believe that tactical errors and battlefield shortages are proof of unique perfidy or unusual incompetence prove only their own journalist incompetence or political perfidy. It’s not that such things are unimportant per se, but that they are so unavoidable – the historic norm – as to be irrelevant to the debate between war and peace.
We can elevate that debate if we accept war’s inevitable tragedies, and ponder, for instance, what our meaning was when we vowed after Auschwitz and Buchenwald, “Never again.” Was it that we would never again turn a blind eye to the suffering of a minority at the hand of a tyrant? Did we mean, perhaps, that we would not sit idly while a tyrant built great power to destroy? Or is that vow no longer relevant to our world?
Today, railing against the war in Iraq is in vogue. Derisive characterizations of the troops, their commanders, and the nation’s civilian leaders trip easily off the tongue of the hip generation at favorite fern-filled after-work watering holes.
Hack writers of mindless fiction make public sport of our nation’s soldiers, the most recent, “...if you learn to read, you go to college and are a success. If you don’t, you what - join the Army?”
The media picks and chooses those things they think are “news,” and that (to them) suitably demonstrate the incompetence of the war-fighters. They only demonstrate their own lack of knowledge of their own country’s history, knowledge that might – were they interested – provide some context to their ravings.
Victor Davis Hanson, writing in National Review a year ago, catalogued the failures of the campaign that began in June over a half-century ago.
We attacked places there was no enemy, dropped paratroopers miles away from their objectives, landed on the wrong beaches.
We were unprepared for ambushes from cover and concealment. Planners and commanders hadn’t expected the enemy’s resilience and strength.
Our weapons were mostly inferior. One of our best commanders had been relieved before the landings even took place.
We bombed our own troops, killing and wounding over 1,000. Friendly fire incidents were routine. Such errors were “covered up,” including the death of an American Lt. General.
By two months after D-Day, we’d won – after 30,000 Americans had died, part of a quarter-million allied casualties.Most who have the barest grasp of such things know that the history of wars is the history of failure as much as it is of heroism.
Those who believe that tactical errors and battlefield shortages are proof of unique perfidy or unusual incompetence prove only their own journalist incompetence or political perfidy. It’s not that such things are unimportant per se, but that they are so unavoidable – the historic norm – as to be irrelevant to the debate between war and peace.
We can elevate that debate if we accept war’s inevitable tragedies, and ponder, for instance, what our meaning was when we vowed after Auschwitz and Buchenwald, “Never again.” Was it that we would never again turn a blind eye to the suffering of a minority at the hand of a tyrant? Did we mean, perhaps, that we would not sit idly while a tyrant built great power to destroy? Or is that vow no longer relevant to our world?
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
A Personal History of Computing, Part 5
Leaving Little Town on the Prairie
It wasn’t just the turn down of my proposal to invest in computer technology (see Part 4) that led to my leaving Little Town on the Prairie in the late 1970s. It was a collapsing rural economy.
My cousin Roger, a good small town jack-of-all-trades lawyer and County Attorney, thought our small burg might thrive as a retirement community. On the frozen tundra of the northern plains? I thought differently. I sold the real estate and property management business to the bank that refused the loan; our house was the last residential sale in about four years.
That was the summer I ran for State Senate. One foot in the district and one foot out. Not a profile likely to be successful...but still surprisingly close.
We ended up in St. Paul, I took a few courses at the University of Minnesota and made some money trading stocks. I might have been the first “day trader,” except the trading cycle wasn’t “day,” because – wait for it – there wasn’t (personal) computer access to markets.
Big Oil Productivity
After some time, I went to work for a “management consulting” company, Keith-Stevens, Inc., that specialized in maintenance productivity. Work orders, reports, backlog management, FTE’s (that’s Full Time Equivalents). We could usually cut some fat out – there was a lot to cut – but the changes weren’t often lasting. Short term improvement that faded after time – a pattern repeated through many other companies and many more years to come.
The Killer Ap
My first attempt at “automation” was designing work control forms – work orders and backlog reports – using early spread sheet functionality on a Compaq “portable.” (Had Compaq gotten a deal on the molds for Singer sewing machine plastic cases?) I started that at Shell Oil in McCamey, Texas. Did more of it at Mobil Oil in Bakersfield, California.
By then I was the Account Manager for Texaco, Shell, Unocal, Gulf, Chevron. For the next few years I was in most of the major oil fields and refineries in North America, overseeing consulting gigs.
RIS and VAX
One of those was RIS – Refinery Information System – for Gulf Oil’s refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. It would be the prototype for all of Gulf’s refining and chemical production facilities.
There were two teams at Gulf; one focused on work practices (what people actually did in their jobs) and the other on coding a system that would support those practices, providing on-line tools to initiate work requests, and to plan, schedule, and then summarize the completion of work. I was the overall manager. We were writing in INFO, a prototypical non-procedural 4GL (fourth generation language) on a DEC VAX 750. When the system went live, it would reside on multiple 750s, clustered with DEC’s HSC 50 clustering hardware.
We finished that, and implemented it, but INFO turned out to be a dog. Most of the system was rewritten in Fortran. (I suspect many young computer geniuses have no idea what Fortran is.)
That was around 1982. We were on the cusp of such systems. They’ve since become multimillion dollar investments. Hell, I guess they were then, too. More on that later.
I became an Assistant Vice President (sort of like a bank, wasn’t it) at Kieth-Stevens. They dumped me Christmas 1984; in that I followed a string of predecessors. By January 1985, I was up to my eyeballs in the commercialization a maintenance management-inventory control-purchasing software product at EMA, Inc., in St, Paul.
That’s Part 6.
It wasn’t just the turn down of my proposal to invest in computer technology (see Part 4) that led to my leaving Little Town on the Prairie in the late 1970s. It was a collapsing rural economy.
My cousin Roger, a good small town jack-of-all-trades lawyer and County Attorney, thought our small burg might thrive as a retirement community. On the frozen tundra of the northern plains? I thought differently. I sold the real estate and property management business to the bank that refused the loan; our house was the last residential sale in about four years.
That was the summer I ran for State Senate. One foot in the district and one foot out. Not a profile likely to be successful...but still surprisingly close.
We ended up in St. Paul, I took a few courses at the University of Minnesota and made some money trading stocks. I might have been the first “day trader,” except the trading cycle wasn’t “day,” because – wait for it – there wasn’t (personal) computer access to markets.
Big Oil Productivity
After some time, I went to work for a “management consulting” company, Keith-Stevens, Inc., that specialized in maintenance productivity. Work orders, reports, backlog management, FTE’s (that’s Full Time Equivalents). We could usually cut some fat out – there was a lot to cut – but the changes weren’t often lasting. Short term improvement that faded after time – a pattern repeated through many other companies and many more years to come.
The Killer Ap
My first attempt at “automation” was designing work control forms – work orders and backlog reports – using early spread sheet functionality on a Compaq “portable.” (Had Compaq gotten a deal on the molds for Singer sewing machine plastic cases?) I started that at Shell Oil in McCamey, Texas. Did more of it at Mobil Oil in Bakersfield, California.
By then I was the Account Manager for Texaco, Shell, Unocal, Gulf, Chevron. For the next few years I was in most of the major oil fields and refineries in North America, overseeing consulting gigs.
RIS and VAX
One of those was RIS – Refinery Information System – for Gulf Oil’s refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. It would be the prototype for all of Gulf’s refining and chemical production facilities.
There were two teams at Gulf; one focused on work practices (what people actually did in their jobs) and the other on coding a system that would support those practices, providing on-line tools to initiate work requests, and to plan, schedule, and then summarize the completion of work. I was the overall manager. We were writing in INFO, a prototypical non-procedural 4GL (fourth generation language) on a DEC VAX 750. When the system went live, it would reside on multiple 750s, clustered with DEC’s HSC 50 clustering hardware.
We finished that, and implemented it, but INFO turned out to be a dog. Most of the system was rewritten in Fortran. (I suspect many young computer geniuses have no idea what Fortran is.)
That was around 1982. We were on the cusp of such systems. They’ve since become multimillion dollar investments. Hell, I guess they were then, too. More on that later.
I became an Assistant Vice President (sort of like a bank, wasn’t it) at Kieth-Stevens. They dumped me Christmas 1984; in that I followed a string of predecessors. By January 1985, I was up to my eyeballs in the commercialization a maintenance management-inventory control-purchasing software product at EMA, Inc., in St, Paul.
That’s Part 6.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Remembering Connecticut Memorial Days
A friend writes of his own Memorial Day's memories and where those experiences led him.
Hi Tom,
I have been reflecting on your two Memorial Day postings and at the same time received a picture from my brother Dave in this years Memorial Day Parade back at my home town in Tariffville, Connecticut.
I have no experience with war and your story in Vietnam. While I was in Korea in 1964-65 with the Army Air Defense Command, 38th ADA Brigade they were only sending RA officers to Vietnam. I just saw Chinese MIG Jets going up and down the China Sea and checking on our radar signals. Every month they would send in B -52 Bombers to check our response time. They would come in at random times during a 3-4 day time frame so we always had to be ready in “Red Alert.”
One of my fellow Lieutenants, Jim Hennesy, went to Helicopter school after his first tour and died on a mission in Vietnam. I have visited his name on the Wall in DC.
Brother Dave was marching in the Tariffville Memorial Day parade, which continues the tradition of respecting the soldiers in all our wars. My memory is first of marching as a child with flowers and dropping them on the grave of solders when the guns went off, then as a Cub Scout, and later a Boy Scout and Scout Leader. The parade always started at the grammar school near the fire house. All my friend's fathers that returned from the WWII were dressed up in their respective uniforms (Army, Marines, and Navy) These same fathers were my mentors. They coached our Little League teams, played in the Tariffville Men's Baseball League, and supported the Scout Troop.
Most of the time the town fathers were able to afford a Fife and Drum Corps - four guys who provided the beat for the parade. There was no high school band in our town in the 50's. This parade had a very important impact on me as it did for you. I was in awe when they played taps during the ceremony and then the echo was returned from deep in the woods. The 8 gun salute also had a big impact. It was then followed by us kids breaking ranks and scrambling to get one of the shell casings.
As a result of these annual Memorial Day parades, it was a no brainer for me to join Army ROTC and go into the service after college. It was the right thing to do!!
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
Peace, George
Hi Tom,
I have been reflecting on your two Memorial Day postings and at the same time received a picture from my brother Dave in this years Memorial Day Parade back at my home town in Tariffville, Connecticut.
I have no experience with war and your story in Vietnam. While I was in Korea in 1964-65 with the Army Air Defense Command, 38th ADA Brigade they were only sending RA officers to Vietnam. I just saw Chinese MIG Jets going up and down the China Sea and checking on our radar signals. Every month they would send in B -52 Bombers to check our response time. They would come in at random times during a 3-4 day time frame so we always had to be ready in “Red Alert.”
One of my fellow Lieutenants, Jim Hennesy, went to Helicopter school after his first tour and died on a mission in Vietnam. I have visited his name on the Wall in DC.
Brother Dave was marching in the Tariffville Memorial Day parade, which continues the tradition of respecting the soldiers in all our wars. My memory is first of marching as a child with flowers and dropping them on the grave of solders when the guns went off, then as a Cub Scout, and later a Boy Scout and Scout Leader. The parade always started at the grammar school near the fire house. All my friend's fathers that returned from the WWII were dressed up in their respective uniforms (Army, Marines, and Navy) These same fathers were my mentors. They coached our Little League teams, played in the Tariffville Men's Baseball League, and supported the Scout Troop.
Most of the time the town fathers were able to afford a Fife and Drum Corps - four guys who provided the beat for the parade. There was no high school band in our town in the 50's. This parade had a very important impact on me as it did for you. I was in awe when they played taps during the ceremony and then the echo was returned from deep in the woods. The 8 gun salute also had a big impact. It was then followed by us kids breaking ranks and scrambling to get one of the shell casings.
As a result of these annual Memorial Day parades, it was a no brainer for me to join Army ROTC and go into the service after college. It was the right thing to do!!
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
Peace, George
Thursday, May 29, 2008
2008 - Forty Years On
Observed Memorial Day, 2008, was the day on which there were bugles, flags, fly-overs, and poems. I told a bit of Brian Tierney’s story, representative of many others who have served and died. Today is the traditional date of Memorial Day.
On May 30, 1868, Gen. John Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (the GAR was the post-Civil War American Legion) designated a special day "for the purpose of strewing flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the latest rebellion."
When I was a boy in a small Minnesota town, a few members of our National Guard artillery battery, some Legion and VFW veterans, and the high school band, marched out to the cemetery. There a long roster of the community’s dead in the great wars, the ones with the numerals was read – and a few names from the very recent Korean Conflict – a volley was fired, and taps were played. A poem that had been written – according to lore – in the trenches of World War I by Canadian colonel John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” was solemnly read to the gathering of Scandinavian and German merchants and farmers who made up most of our small town.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
On the plains of western Minnesota there was no fly-over, and most of the marchers had already acquired the paunches of middle age, but those spring days, the rifle volleys, and taps, in a small town cemetery had a powerful effect on a small boy.
That boy didn’t notice – then – that it wasn’t just the graves of veterans that got flowers, and over which those stolid citizens prayed, but those of mothers, wives, sisters, fathers, and brothers. Most having nothing to do with military valor.
He’s no small boy anymore, he’s learned so much. So, after paying tribute on the observed holiday and on this traditional Memorial Day date to those who died in the service of our country – in the service of us all – he offers his love to those others he misses so deeply.
Lost family, friends. You’re in my heart. Dad, you were tired those last years. I didn’t understand. I do now.
Jeannie, I miss you most of all. The hurt is so recent, so deep, it's so hard to express the longing. In our few years together, I came to see all of the world from the perspective of “we,” not “me.” We shared everything; favorite places, people, all the things we did together...everything. You’re with me every day. Since you’ve gone, you’d be surprised how many friends suffered a similar loss. It helps they’ve shared that with me.
Now, in 2008, Memorial Day comes to mean so much more – is about more loved ones – than that small boy ever imagined. I guess it’s good there are two of them – Memorial Days, that is.
On May 30, 1868, Gen. John Logan, Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic (the GAR was the post-Civil War American Legion) designated a special day "for the purpose of strewing flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the latest rebellion."
When I was a boy in a small Minnesota town, a few members of our National Guard artillery battery, some Legion and VFW veterans, and the high school band, marched out to the cemetery. There a long roster of the community’s dead in the great wars, the ones with the numerals was read – and a few names from the very recent Korean Conflict – a volley was fired, and taps were played. A poem that had been written – according to lore – in the trenches of World War I by Canadian colonel John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” was solemnly read to the gathering of Scandinavian and German merchants and farmers who made up most of our small town.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
On the plains of western Minnesota there was no fly-over, and most of the marchers had already acquired the paunches of middle age, but those spring days, the rifle volleys, and taps, in a small town cemetery had a powerful effect on a small boy.
That boy didn’t notice – then – that it wasn’t just the graves of veterans that got flowers, and over which those stolid citizens prayed, but those of mothers, wives, sisters, fathers, and brothers. Most having nothing to do with military valor.
He’s no small boy anymore, he’s learned so much. So, after paying tribute on the observed holiday and on this traditional Memorial Day date to those who died in the service of our country – in the service of us all – he offers his love to those others he misses so deeply.
Lost family, friends. You’re in my heart. Dad, you were tired those last years. I didn’t understand. I do now.
Jeannie, I miss you most of all. The hurt is so recent, so deep, it's so hard to express the longing. In our few years together, I came to see all of the world from the perspective of “we,” not “me.” We shared everything; favorite places, people, all the things we did together...everything. You’re with me every day. Since you’ve gone, you’d be surprised how many friends suffered a similar loss. It helps they’ve shared that with me.
Now, in 2008, Memorial Day comes to mean so much more – is about more loved ones – than that small boy ever imagined. I guess it’s good there are two of them – Memorial Days, that is.
Spam
Spam...no, not the email kind, the sort-of-meat kind. Disclaimer: I actually like Spam, the canned meat product that earned fame feeding our troops in World War II.
This isn’t a paean to Spam, though, it’s rather a commentary on silliness in shopping, or journalism, or both.
This was the headline in the Arizona Republic’s business section this morning: Sales of Spam rise as consumers try to cut food costs. The article was written by Emily Fredrix, dateline Milwaukee, distributed by the Associated Press.
“Love it, hate it or laugh at it – at least it’s inexpensive,” is the lead. Later, “The price of Spam is up, too, with the average 12-ounce can costing about $2.62.” Later still, this “expert” summary statement, “Consumers are quick to realize that meats like Span and other processed foods can be substituted for costlier cuts as a way of controlling costs, said Marcia Mogelonsky, senior research analyst with Mintel International in Chicago.” (“Senior research analysts” are becoming as ubiquitous as “democratic strategists.”)
Whew! Where to start? Inexpensive? Only for the math challenged – or perhaps the very, very lazy. Hey, shoppers, $2.62 for 12 ounces is $3.49 a pound!
There are five full-service groceries within a mile and a half of me. (Don’t get me started on the cretins who frequent “convenience stores” for staples like milk. By using my freezer for something other than Pop Tarts, I’ve lately become accustomed to paying $1 for a half gallon.) Here are the meat, poultry, and seafood items I can buy this week for less than the price of Spam: chuck roast, center cut loin pork chops, ground beef (up to 90% lean), chicken (various, including boneless, skinless breasts), lamb chops, Hillshire Farms smoked sausage, spare ribs, boneless pork top loin chops, eye of round roast, Johnsonville brats, country style ribs, beef brisket, cod and catfish fillets.
It’s good I like Spam, otherwise I’d never buy it – too expensive.
So is it good reporting to find a consumer who thinks she’s saving by buying Spam? “Kimberly Quan, a stay-at-home mom of three...has been feeding her family more Spam in the past six months as she tries to make her food budget go further.” At least Ms. Quan has something of a rationale for the apparent contradiction, “Pulling Spam from the shelf prevents last-minute grocery trips and overspending, said Quan.” Ok, I get it. We can’t be bothered to plan ahead far enough to keep from running out of center cut loin port chops, can we?
What’s the rationale for the AP story, though? It’s got no basis in fact, except for the fact that Spam sales have been on the rise lately. But isn’t the real story that – whatever consumers who continue to buy big pick em up trucks and gripe about fuel costs think – there really is no cost-saving reason to put Spam in your meat budget. Perhaps there’s a clue in the story, though. It’s full of sales data provided by Hormel, Spam’s maker. I suspect this is another press release masquerading as news. Much of what we read and see on television these days is exactly that. Most of it makes more sense than this one, of course.
As for the shoppers, it’s probably true that there are enough of them who believe Spam is a low-cost processed alternative to fresh meat to move the sales curve upward for Hormel. After all, the busiest of those five groceries near me is the most expensive, too. It’s not because of Safeway’s wide isles, good lighting and attractive displays, either; that would be Bashas’. Habit, I think. Or inability to perform the most rudimentary mental functions.
In Safeway yesterday, (preying on the sales and specials) I watched a woman ignore the $1-a-dozen large eggs (coupons required, but provided at checkout and elsewhere in the store) in favor of a carton costing $2.19 (no, they weren’t organic). You explain it. I can’t.
This isn’t a paean to Spam, though, it’s rather a commentary on silliness in shopping, or journalism, or both.
This was the headline in the Arizona Republic’s business section this morning: Sales of Spam rise as consumers try to cut food costs. The article was written by Emily Fredrix, dateline Milwaukee, distributed by the Associated Press.
“Love it, hate it or laugh at it – at least it’s inexpensive,” is the lead. Later, “The price of Spam is up, too, with the average 12-ounce can costing about $2.62.” Later still, this “expert” summary statement, “Consumers are quick to realize that meats like Span and other processed foods can be substituted for costlier cuts as a way of controlling costs, said Marcia Mogelonsky, senior research analyst with Mintel International in Chicago.” (“Senior research analysts” are becoming as ubiquitous as “democratic strategists.”)
Whew! Where to start? Inexpensive? Only for the math challenged – or perhaps the very, very lazy. Hey, shoppers, $2.62 for 12 ounces is $3.49 a pound!
There are five full-service groceries within a mile and a half of me. (Don’t get me started on the cretins who frequent “convenience stores” for staples like milk. By using my freezer for something other than Pop Tarts, I’ve lately become accustomed to paying $1 for a half gallon.) Here are the meat, poultry, and seafood items I can buy this week for less than the price of Spam: chuck roast, center cut loin pork chops, ground beef (up to 90% lean), chicken (various, including boneless, skinless breasts), lamb chops, Hillshire Farms smoked sausage, spare ribs, boneless pork top loin chops, eye of round roast, Johnsonville brats, country style ribs, beef brisket, cod and catfish fillets.
It’s good I like Spam, otherwise I’d never buy it – too expensive.
So is it good reporting to find a consumer who thinks she’s saving by buying Spam? “Kimberly Quan, a stay-at-home mom of three...has been feeding her family more Spam in the past six months as she tries to make her food budget go further.” At least Ms. Quan has something of a rationale for the apparent contradiction, “Pulling Spam from the shelf prevents last-minute grocery trips and overspending, said Quan.” Ok, I get it. We can’t be bothered to plan ahead far enough to keep from running out of center cut loin port chops, can we?
What’s the rationale for the AP story, though? It’s got no basis in fact, except for the fact that Spam sales have been on the rise lately. But isn’t the real story that – whatever consumers who continue to buy big pick em up trucks and gripe about fuel costs think – there really is no cost-saving reason to put Spam in your meat budget. Perhaps there’s a clue in the story, though. It’s full of sales data provided by Hormel, Spam’s maker. I suspect this is another press release masquerading as news. Much of what we read and see on television these days is exactly that. Most of it makes more sense than this one, of course.
As for the shoppers, it’s probably true that there are enough of them who believe Spam is a low-cost processed alternative to fresh meat to move the sales curve upward for Hormel. After all, the busiest of those five groceries near me is the most expensive, too. It’s not because of Safeway’s wide isles, good lighting and attractive displays, either; that would be Bashas’. Habit, I think. Or inability to perform the most rudimentary mental functions.
In Safeway yesterday, (preying on the sales and specials) I watched a woman ignore the $1-a-dozen large eggs (coupons required, but provided at checkout and elsewhere in the store) in favor of a carton costing $2.19 (no, they weren’t organic). You explain it. I can’t.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
1968
The Year That Changed the World, it says on the TIME 40th Anniversary Special cover.
Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Columbia University, the Chicago 7, Soviet tanks in Prague, Hair, Mrs. Robinson, and Che Guevara populate the memories of many. The Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. North Korea grabbed the Pueblo, astronauts orbited the moon.
None of that meant much to me, or means much today. It was all far away – as far away as Tet, Khe Sanh, and the A Shau valley were for most Americans, whether or not they understand that. Veterans rarely share experiences with non-veterans, probably because there is so little shared experience.
April 5 and June 5 are not dates seared in my memory as they are for many Americans. May 21 is. Brian Tierney was killed in action near Quang Tri, South Vietnam. Brian arrived “in country” on December 8, two weeks after I did. We were assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry. Fifty-three in our battalion died during the following year. In that same year decorations for soldiers of Company D included a Medal of Honor and two Distinguished Service Crosses. There would be 14,590 US, 979 allied, and – belying one of many cherished myths of that war – 70,695 soldiers of the Republic of South Vietnam who died in combat in 1968. It was a year in which we won on the ground and were sold out at home.
I was a Platoon Leader. Brian, who was 19, (I was just 21) became my RTO (he carried my radio). We were in the An Lao valley in for Christmas. In Quang Tri for Tet, I dragged Brian where he quite rightly didn’t want to go. When 122 mm rockets were screaming in on Route 9 southwest of Khe Sanh, we got as deep as possible in our foxhole. We were bombed by a “friendly” F-100 in the A Shau. On a starry night the ground shook while we watched an arc light strike down the valley. We pitched a tent of two ponchos together nearly every night. When I became the company executive officer in May, Brian remained in the third platoon.
On May 21, the battalion’s commander, flying overhead, thought he saw an enemy soldier. Inexplicably, he decided it would be a good idea to drop a couple of infantrymen in to investigate, and so stopped by the nearby Company D for volunteers – one of whom was Brian.
The official citation for Brian E. Tierney’s Distinguished Service Cross reads:
For extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations involving conflict with an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam: Specialist Four Tierney distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on 21 May 1968 while serving as a radio telephone operator near Quang Tri City. Specialist Tierney and two other soldiers entered a small village to capture a Viet Cong whose position had been spotted from a helicopter. When the point man saw the enemy crouching in a thicket and ordered him to surrender, the communist started to stand up as if to give himself up, but suddenly threw a grenade that he had been concealing. Seeing the deadly missile land a few feet from himself and his companions, Specialist Tierney shouted a warning and lunged towards the grenade to shield the others from the blast. Specialist Tierney was mortally wounded when the grenade exploded, but by his selfless act he saved his companions from injury. Specialist Four Tierney’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty, at the cost of his life, were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.
Brian’s father wrote me in June: “Brian arrived home and was buried in our little cemetery here in Roxbury on June 5. He had many friends, and there are a great many people in the area who appreciate what he has done for his country...We are greatly consoled by your words about Brian as a person and as a soldier. We have tried to instill good ideals in our children, and a sense of responsibility and conscientiousness to duty. Above all, especially while over there I wanted him to be a good soldier, and according to your letter and that of Capt. Kent and SP4 Dyer, he was just that. Thank you for the copy of the proposed citation. It seems he has gone beyond my highest expectations by his gallant deed.
Thank you for being a friend of Brian...We wish you all safety and well-being, and pray for the end to this and all conflicts as soon as possible.
May God bless you."
Brian E Tierney is memorialized on Line 2 of Panel 65E on the Vietnam Memorial and in the hearts of his friends and comrades forever.
Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Columbia University, the Chicago 7, Soviet tanks in Prague, Hair, Mrs. Robinson, and Che Guevara populate the memories of many. The Beatles visited the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. North Korea grabbed the Pueblo, astronauts orbited the moon.
None of that meant much to me, or means much today. It was all far away – as far away as Tet, Khe Sanh, and the A Shau valley were for most Americans, whether or not they understand that. Veterans rarely share experiences with non-veterans, probably because there is so little shared experience.
April 5 and June 5 are not dates seared in my memory as they are for many Americans. May 21 is. Brian Tierney was killed in action near Quang Tri, South Vietnam. Brian arrived “in country” on December 8, two weeks after I did. We were assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry. Fifty-three in our battalion died during the following year. In that same year decorations for soldiers of Company D included a Medal of Honor and two Distinguished Service Crosses. There would be 14,590 US, 979 allied, and – belying one of many cherished myths of that war – 70,695 soldiers of the Republic of South Vietnam who died in combat in 1968. It was a year in which we won on the ground and were sold out at home.
I was a Platoon Leader. Brian, who was 19, (I was just 21) became my RTO (he carried my radio). We were in the An Lao valley in for Christmas. In Quang Tri for Tet, I dragged Brian where he quite rightly didn’t want to go. When 122 mm rockets were screaming in on Route 9 southwest of Khe Sanh, we got as deep as possible in our foxhole. We were bombed by a “friendly” F-100 in the A Shau. On a starry night the ground shook while we watched an arc light strike down the valley. We pitched a tent of two ponchos together nearly every night. When I became the company executive officer in May, Brian remained in the third platoon.
On May 21, the battalion’s commander, flying overhead, thought he saw an enemy soldier. Inexplicably, he decided it would be a good idea to drop a couple of infantrymen in to investigate, and so stopped by the nearby Company D for volunteers – one of whom was Brian.
The official citation for Brian E. Tierney’s Distinguished Service Cross reads:
For extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations involving conflict with an armed hostile force in the Republic of Vietnam: Specialist Four Tierney distinguished himself by exceptionally valorous actions on 21 May 1968 while serving as a radio telephone operator near Quang Tri City. Specialist Tierney and two other soldiers entered a small village to capture a Viet Cong whose position had been spotted from a helicopter. When the point man saw the enemy crouching in a thicket and ordered him to surrender, the communist started to stand up as if to give himself up, but suddenly threw a grenade that he had been concealing. Seeing the deadly missile land a few feet from himself and his companions, Specialist Tierney shouted a warning and lunged towards the grenade to shield the others from the blast. Specialist Tierney was mortally wounded when the grenade exploded, but by his selfless act he saved his companions from injury. Specialist Four Tierney’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty, at the cost of his life, were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.
Brian’s father wrote me in June: “Brian arrived home and was buried in our little cemetery here in Roxbury on June 5. He had many friends, and there are a great many people in the area who appreciate what he has done for his country...We are greatly consoled by your words about Brian as a person and as a soldier. We have tried to instill good ideals in our children, and a sense of responsibility and conscientiousness to duty. Above all, especially while over there I wanted him to be a good soldier, and according to your letter and that of Capt. Kent and SP4 Dyer, he was just that. Thank you for the copy of the proposed citation. It seems he has gone beyond my highest expectations by his gallant deed.
Thank you for being a friend of Brian...We wish you all safety and well-being, and pray for the end to this and all conflicts as soon as possible.
May God bless you."
Brian E Tierney is memorialized on Line 2 of Panel 65E on the Vietnam Memorial and in the hearts of his friends and comrades forever.
Friday, May 9, 2008
A Personal History of Computing, Part 4
The road onward from Ski-U-Mah went through Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, coincidentally my birthplace, but a stop in 1973 because it was the world headquarters of the Aluminum Company of America, aka ALCOA. My BS in Marketing was going to make me a salesman – an interesting turn of phrase.
Later in the year, after training and orientation that took me all over the country to ALCOA fastener, sheet, primary (ingot), extrusion, and forging plants, I landed in the Bettendorf, Iowa sales office. The following years weren’t really the best, but there were moments. First child Heather came along in 1974, while I was unselling aluminum. Unselling? Yup, that was a time of “commodity shortages” including aluminum, and my job was literally to make ALCOA’s customers as miserable as possible. Turns out that’s a pretty good way to make a salesman miserable, too. Raising prices? Not the half of it. Changing the product mix; dropping simple extrusions for complex ones. Winnebago wants to extrude its own parts from ingot? Forgetaboutit!
Anyway, back on topic. Not much computer stuff going on. Typewriters. Calculators. Green bar computer paper mailed out periodically with numbers printed on it. A big mainframe was spewing out nunbers showing me I wasn’t making life hard enough on my customers. They weren’t taking their low-margin business over to Reynold or Alcan fast enough. It finally got me fired.
So I went home. Ok, they say you can’t, and maybe they are right, but the next four years weren’t in rural western Minnesota weren’t so bac. Courtney’s birth interrupted a golf game in 1977, I was a Jaycee, in a bowling league, a golf league, a softball league, and Co-chair of the Republican Party in the Sixth Congressional District. I was also selling real estate and managing farms, which is where computing came in. Renting land, cash or share, sometimes managing a “custom farming” operation. Negotiation, buying, selling – and contracting to sell – grain, keeping records. Periodically reporting to owners. The limit to income was the record keeping and reporting one person could do with an electric typewriter, carbon paper, a calculator, and a pencil. I was maxed out.
That’s when I found the IMSAI 8080. S-100 buss, Intel 8080 processor. Later Mathew Broderick’s home computer in War Games (1983). I’m not sure where I saw it. Perhaps an ad in Popular Electronics? Anyway, all that led to my first report dealing with computing, productivity, and business processes – a proposal to the Klein National Bank to finance a small business computer. It didn’t fly. Though they never said so, I’m pretty sure they thought I was “round the bend.” Little computers? In small businesses? Print letters and reports? Nonsense. Certainly nothing on which to risk the bank’s money. It was a green eyeshade era.
That little roadblock eventually took me back to the big city, but not before a campaign for the State Senate.
That, as they say, is another story. But not part of these computer tales.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Memories Live On
Today, April 26, is our fourth Wedding Anniversary. I can’t say what we would have done. Something special for certain – every day was special. We went out in Monterey on Jeannie’s sixtieth birthday, her last. We were back at Paddy’s at Chateau Elan in Braselton Georgia in October, one of Jeannie’s favorite places. That same weekend, we met friends – Martin, Mike, daughter Courtney, Murphy was there, too – after Petit Le Mans. That was the last time Jeannie was well enough to go out.
I’m thinking today of what was. But I can’t help thinking, too, of what could have – would have – been.
Many years ago, Jeannie gave me a book called “Love in the 90’s” about the love between a couple who were able to grow old together. It was inscribed in her hand in the flap.
“Tom, my love – Merry Christmas,” she wrote. “I am looking forward to growing old with you. Someday there could be a book about us like this one. Your Jeannie.”
Of course there won’t be that book, but there are – and will be – others. There were only three anniversaries together after our wedding in Las Vegas, but there were many stories, many wonderful times.
The stories and times began years before this scene from that April day in 2004; the memories will go on forever.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Out of Whack
A friend in the investment business called on Friday. “I'm not dead yet,” he said, “in fact, I'm feeling better.” (Sorry, that’s a bit of an inside joke – and a reference to medieval Europe – so a bit offbeat, too.)
“I've had a glass of wine – or two. Ruffino Cianti Classico Riserva.
Unfortunately, the bottle was too small.”
“Good wine,” I said.
“Si,”
“Too early here," I observed.
“Ha,” he laughed. “Is there such a thing? It's after lunch, no?”
“So it is,” I agreed. “What’s the celebration?”
“I'm just about finished moving my clients to cash. I have a few who haven't returned calls, but they should be out by mid next week.” “I started moving them in December. I think we are in real trouble here.”
I thought about that, and added, “This is a time when commodities are no refuge either – that looks like a bubble.”
“Agreed. I don't think they are in a bubble, but I think they need a near term correction,” he said. “They are ahead of themselves.”
“When we get a true correction – a bear market – there is nowhere to hide in equities.
“I’ve arranged for healthy lines of credits for my clients For the purpose of investment, "if" we get a large correction But I don't intend to use them, unless we drop 20% or more
“This is the second time in my career that I've felt the markets were out of whack, out of synch... the other was in 1999 into early 2000.
“I have a cartoon from that time on my desk at work. A smiling commentator says, ‘Alan Greenspan noted that the glass was half full... markets rose on the news.’”
“Was the GE news today a wake-up,” I asked?
"Tom, there have been so many wake-ups at this point. I just laugh at the general apathy."
"So, there’s a correction looming?"
"I'd like another month and a half. But if I was confident I had a month and half, my clients wouldn't be in cash already. I'd like more time to call prospective clients, to tell them I'm moving clients to cash, while their broker is pitching the ‘we are long term investors BS.’"
So, there it is. A point of view. A professional point of view. One I’m inclined to take seriously.
“I've had a glass of wine – or two. Ruffino Cianti Classico Riserva.
Unfortunately, the bottle was too small.”
“Good wine,” I said.
“Si,”
“Too early here," I observed.
“Ha,” he laughed. “Is there such a thing? It's after lunch, no?”
“So it is,” I agreed. “What’s the celebration?”
“I'm just about finished moving my clients to cash. I have a few who haven't returned calls, but they should be out by mid next week.” “I started moving them in December. I think we are in real trouble here.”
I thought about that, and added, “This is a time when commodities are no refuge either – that looks like a bubble.”
“Agreed. I don't think they are in a bubble, but I think they need a near term correction,” he said. “They are ahead of themselves.”
“When we get a true correction – a bear market – there is nowhere to hide in equities.
“I’ve arranged for healthy lines of credits for my clients For the purpose of investment, "if" we get a large correction But I don't intend to use them, unless we drop 20% or more
“This is the second time in my career that I've felt the markets were out of whack, out of synch... the other was in 1999 into early 2000.
“I have a cartoon from that time on my desk at work. A smiling commentator says, ‘Alan Greenspan noted that the glass was half full... markets rose on the news.’”
“Was the GE news today a wake-up,” I asked?
"Tom, there have been so many wake-ups at this point. I just laugh at the general apathy."
"So, there’s a correction looming?"
"I'd like another month and a half. But if I was confident I had a month and half, my clients wouldn't be in cash already. I'd like more time to call prospective clients, to tell them I'm moving clients to cash, while their broker is pitching the ‘we are long term investors BS.’"
So, there it is. A point of view. A professional point of view. One I’m inclined to take seriously.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and that Check from Uncle Sam
I keep reading references to a “tax rebate.”
That check you’re expecting is not a "tax rebate." It's cash from the government (congress and the administration) to make you feel good. They hope you’ll conclude that they are doing something about “the economy.”
The trouble is that this distribution of nearly $150 billion won't stimulate a damn thing if the government then cuts spending by the same amount, as they – particularly the congress – claim they will. They must be counting on the voters to be economically illiterate.
It’s simply Keynesian. (1) Here’s why. A net surplus disinvests in (takes funds out of ) the economy, slowing economic growth. It also deflates the currency, given neutral monetary policy. A deficit invests in the economy, (puts funds into) stimulating a higher rate of growth. Given neutral monetary policy, it inflates the currency. So, if the government mails out $150 billion, then “pays for it” by raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere (it makes little difference which) the net effect is zero. $150 billion in, $150 billion out. In fact, if it takes the money from productive uses (repair of transportation infrastructure, for instance) in favor of Joe Schmoe buyng a new (Sony) television set at Walmart... Well, I suspect that nothing could be worse in the long run.
Monetary policy - owing much to Milton Friedman (2) - is what the Federal Reserve does, and its current policy is stimulating – to lower interest rates, and pump more liquidity into the domestic economy. To the extent that the lowered interest rates are below those available in other currencies, that weakens the dollar. A weaker dollar increases our price of crude oil (one example) and reduces its price for those using other currencies to buy energy (the Euro, and Asian currencies).
Most of the recent run-up in the price of crude in the US is not "real" but rather simply follows the drop in the value of the dollar.
Right now that formula is very simple. Interest rates down = dollar down = oil (and other fungible energy sources) up.
The trouble is, both party's candidates are busily promising more of exactly the same or worse. , What would be worse? Two simple policies, which together are exactly what Herbert Hoover and the Republican congress gave us in 1930.
Hoover’s big economic fix for the recession of 1929 (form which the country was already recovering in early 1930)? A budget in surplus. Of course that – as we have seen – pulled money out of the economy at a time when stimulus was required.
Then along came the congress, which in June passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. This greatest blunder in modern economic history prevented a recovery from the 1929 recession when many countries retaliated with their own increased tariffs on U.S. goods, American exports and imports plunged by more than half, and massive layoffs resulted.
Consider the most popular economic themes of the current presidential campaign: one, “fiscal responsibility” (a balanced budget), and two, protection from “unfair trade practices” (tariffs against imported manufactured goods).
Those who don't learn from history will repeat it. Which we're about to do.
(1) John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) British economist who advocated government fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the effects of economic cycles. Keynes is generally recognized as one of the fathers of modern macroeconomic thought.
(2) Milton Friedman (1912 –2006) American economist who made major contributions to macroeconomics, and in particular, monetary policy. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. "Friedman's monetary framework has been so influential that in its broad outlines at least, it has nearly become identical with modern monetary theory," said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke recently.
That check you’re expecting is not a "tax rebate." It's cash from the government (congress and the administration) to make you feel good. They hope you’ll conclude that they are doing something about “the economy.”
The trouble is that this distribution of nearly $150 billion won't stimulate a damn thing if the government then cuts spending by the same amount, as they – particularly the congress – claim they will. They must be counting on the voters to be economically illiterate.
It’s simply Keynesian. (1) Here’s why. A net surplus disinvests in (takes funds out of ) the economy, slowing economic growth. It also deflates the currency, given neutral monetary policy. A deficit invests in the economy, (puts funds into) stimulating a higher rate of growth. Given neutral monetary policy, it inflates the currency. So, if the government mails out $150 billion, then “pays for it” by raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere (it makes little difference which) the net effect is zero. $150 billion in, $150 billion out. In fact, if it takes the money from productive uses (repair of transportation infrastructure, for instance) in favor of Joe Schmoe buyng a new (Sony) television set at Walmart... Well, I suspect that nothing could be worse in the long run.
Monetary policy - owing much to Milton Friedman (2) - is what the Federal Reserve does, and its current policy is stimulating – to lower interest rates, and pump more liquidity into the domestic economy. To the extent that the lowered interest rates are below those available in other currencies, that weakens the dollar. A weaker dollar increases our price of crude oil (one example) and reduces its price for those using other currencies to buy energy (the Euro, and Asian currencies).
Most of the recent run-up in the price of crude in the US is not "real" but rather simply follows the drop in the value of the dollar.
Right now that formula is very simple. Interest rates down = dollar down = oil (and other fungible energy sources) up.
The trouble is, both party's candidates are busily promising more of exactly the same or worse. , What would be worse? Two simple policies, which together are exactly what Herbert Hoover and the Republican congress gave us in 1930.
Hoover’s big economic fix for the recession of 1929 (form which the country was already recovering in early 1930)? A budget in surplus. Of course that – as we have seen – pulled money out of the economy at a time when stimulus was required.
Then along came the congress, which in June passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. This greatest blunder in modern economic history prevented a recovery from the 1929 recession when many countries retaliated with their own increased tariffs on U.S. goods, American exports and imports plunged by more than half, and massive layoffs resulted.
Consider the most popular economic themes of the current presidential campaign: one, “fiscal responsibility” (a balanced budget), and two, protection from “unfair trade practices” (tariffs against imported manufactured goods).
Those who don't learn from history will repeat it. Which we're about to do.
(1) John Maynard Keynes (1883 – 1946) British economist who advocated government fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the effects of economic cycles. Keynes is generally recognized as one of the fathers of modern macroeconomic thought.
(2) Milton Friedman (1912 –2006) American economist who made major contributions to macroeconomics, and in particular, monetary policy. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. "Friedman's monetary framework has been so influential that in its broad outlines at least, it has nearly become identical with modern monetary theory," said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke recently.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Dad, I did it!
I heard from daughter Courtney last night. She’s in Okinawa with her husband on spring break from her Master’s work at the University of North Carolina. (Suddenly she’s a basketball fan, but that’s another story.)
Anyway, she’s in her last term, graduation in May, then on to West Point to teach history to the cadets. So of course she’s finishing up her thesis.
The note last night read:
I did it! Dad, I did it!
There followed comments from the professor advising her in the completion of that all important thesis, who wrote in part:
"It's a terrific thesis--your writing is just excellent! It flows smoothly, expressively, and persuasively. Your research seems solid and persuasive. It's a model piece of work.
If you do this, (his suggested revisions) and at some future point condense the text to about 30 pages, you'll certainly have an article publishable in a first-rate journal. And that's what these MA theses are supposed to be. So, success!!!!
So, in sum, with some fixing and strengthening of the introduction and conclusion, you're there!! I'm sure my colleagues will have some useful suggestions, since each one of us reads things differently. But I'm delighted with this, and feel it's a skillful, thoughtful, important piece of work."
Here’s the opening of the draft of this 57 page work:
The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend: Okinawan Identity and Military Government Policy in Occupied Okinawa, April 1945
On May 31, 1945, two American soldiers sat cross-legged on the floor of a small hut in the gutted village of Nodake on the island of Okinawa. Their hostess, a middle-aged Okinawan woman, stooped down over them as she poured hot tea into small round clay cups. Many families shared the hut with the woman and some of them crowded into the main room to join in the tea ceremony with the Americans. The bombings, begun in October, 1944, had destroyed numerous homes in the village. Under the direction of the United States Army, several families now lived together in the homes that survived.
Military Government Detachment B-5 had operated Camp Nodake for two months. Outside its perimeter, the Battle of Okinawa (Operation ICEBERG) that began with the invasion of the island on March 26, 1945 still raged as the Japanese prepared to fall back to their second line of defense and the Americans seized Shuri Castle, the headquarters of the Japanese 32nd Imperial Army.
Anyway, she’s in her last term, graduation in May, then on to West Point to teach history to the cadets. So of course she’s finishing up her thesis.
The note last night read:
I did it! Dad, I did it!
There followed comments from the professor advising her in the completion of that all important thesis, who wrote in part:
"It's a terrific thesis--your writing is just excellent! It flows smoothly, expressively, and persuasively. Your research seems solid and persuasive. It's a model piece of work.
If you do this, (his suggested revisions) and at some future point condense the text to about 30 pages, you'll certainly have an article publishable in a first-rate journal. And that's what these MA theses are supposed to be. So, success!!!!
So, in sum, with some fixing and strengthening of the introduction and conclusion, you're there!! I'm sure my colleagues will have some useful suggestions, since each one of us reads things differently. But I'm delighted with this, and feel it's a skillful, thoughtful, important piece of work."
Here’s the opening of the draft of this 57 page work:
The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend: Okinawan Identity and Military Government Policy in Occupied Okinawa, April 1945
On May 31, 1945, two American soldiers sat cross-legged on the floor of a small hut in the gutted village of Nodake on the island of Okinawa. Their hostess, a middle-aged Okinawan woman, stooped down over them as she poured hot tea into small round clay cups. Many families shared the hut with the woman and some of them crowded into the main room to join in the tea ceremony with the Americans. The bombings, begun in October, 1944, had destroyed numerous homes in the village. Under the direction of the United States Army, several families now lived together in the homes that survived.
Military Government Detachment B-5 had operated Camp Nodake for two months. Outside its perimeter, the Battle of Okinawa (Operation ICEBERG) that began with the invasion of the island on March 26, 1945 still raged as the Japanese prepared to fall back to their second line of defense and the Americans seized Shuri Castle, the headquarters of the Japanese 32nd Imperial Army.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Chickens Come Home to Roost
WASHINGTON — A missile launched from a Navy cruiser soared 130 miles above the Pacific and smashed a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite Wednesday, the Pentagon said. Two defense officials said it apparently achieved the main aim of destroying an onboard tank of toxic fuel.
Don't believe the evil Pentagon? Perhaps you'd rather believe the Chinese, who claimed to have killed a satellite in space last year?
So, are we all going to just ignore all those years of derision, lies, and attacks from the haters of the United States? Those who wrote long "scholarly" articles deriding "star wars" as fantasy? Those who poked fun at it? The ones who said anyone who disagreed with them were idiots and fools, or lackies of that fool Reagan?
Now we know who the crooks and fools are, don't we?
Don't believe the evil Pentagon? Perhaps you'd rather believe the Chinese, who claimed to have killed a satellite in space last year?
So, are we all going to just ignore all those years of derision, lies, and attacks from the haters of the United States? Those who wrote long "scholarly" articles deriding "star wars" as fantasy? Those who poked fun at it? The ones who said anyone who disagreed with them were idiots and fools, or lackies of that fool Reagan?
Now we know who the crooks and fools are, don't we?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Valentine's Day 2008
For Jeannie
Forever Love
You are my forever love.
I shared with you
Adventures and joys,
Times good and bad.
Happiness and tears we
Treasured in our years.
I loved you just the
Way you were.
You are gone but
The love is forever.
Some thoughts on unconditional love.
If there is any lesson for me to learn from my life so far, it is that love must not abate. It must not hinge on reciprocity. If you have truly loved, love on, no matter what. Admit that the harsh act or word of a loved one is undesired – but love on. Otherwise you will build up for yourself great suffering.
That passage was sent to me by my mother a few years ago.
Happy Valentine's Day to everyone.
Forever Love
You are my forever love.
I shared with you
Adventures and joys,
Times good and bad.
Happiness and tears we
Treasured in our years.
I loved you just the
Way you were.
You are gone but
The love is forever.
Some thoughts on unconditional love.
If there is any lesson for me to learn from my life so far, it is that love must not abate. It must not hinge on reciprocity. If you have truly loved, love on, no matter what. Admit that the harsh act or word of a loved one is undesired – but love on. Otherwise you will build up for yourself great suffering.
That passage was sent to me by my mother a few years ago.
Happy Valentine's Day to everyone.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
A Dirty Little Secret
Year after year, the cost of medical care keeps rising, ever faster than anything else – even gasoline over the longer run.
Why? Rich doctors? Nurses on easy street? Perhaps it’s unnecessary tests – a lot of folks say that. Is it that we’re paying the cost for the rest of the world for pharmaceutical research? That’s certainly an argument for which one can find some support. Much of the hot air around the topic boils down to “we have the best system – of course it costs more,” and that contributes to a solution, it makes no difference whose – Obama’s, Hillery’s, or even Romney’s – that boils down to mandatory health insurance for all. In other words, "everything thing’s fine, just make sure everyone’s insured."
But is that right? Let me tell you about what looks like a dirty little secret to me.
Having been given an artificial heart valve in 2004 (no complaints about that care, by the way) I regularly have a blood test called a “Protime.” Basically, rate of clotting. PrimeCare, the lab associated with my general practitioner, billed my insurance, and later, me, $43. The breakdown on that was $23 for the test and $20 for taking by blood.
On he advice of a doctor, we – Jeannie and I – switched to Sanford Medical (yes, that Stanford) Labs. The cost there? $15 ($7 test, $8 taking blood). Enough of a difference? Sure. But that’s not the whole story. It turns out if Stanford were billing my insurance – or me – the cost would be $36 ($21 test, $15 draw), close to the PrimeCare number. The $21 difference? The cost of supporting the health car administrative structure, including, mostly, bloated insurance company costs (and perhaps margins?). The cost for supporting all that seems to be 140% of the real cost of the care.
So is our Protime test unrepresentative? It sure isn’t. Many of you (hopefully) get tested for cholesterol. That’s called a Lipid Panel. I had that today. Cost? $24. Also a metabolic C. $19.00. One charge for drawing all three, the same $8. Go ahead, ask your lab what your costs are. (Your doctor will likely not know.)
It looks to me like most of the money I’m paying is for the insurance industries’ ridiculous overhead. And we rail against oil companies?
Do I have a solution? I’ve been accused that I often don’t. I don’t here, either, but that demand is what sends us off to debate baloney – just as the politicians are doing. They all agree that the health insurance industry should remain untouched in the solution. Why is that? The health care lobby has them all by the short hairs? (I can’t say “balls,” can I?) If so, that includes Barack Obama. So much for “change.”
Why? Rich doctors? Nurses on easy street? Perhaps it’s unnecessary tests – a lot of folks say that. Is it that we’re paying the cost for the rest of the world for pharmaceutical research? That’s certainly an argument for which one can find some support. Much of the hot air around the topic boils down to “we have the best system – of course it costs more,” and that contributes to a solution, it makes no difference whose – Obama’s, Hillery’s, or even Romney’s – that boils down to mandatory health insurance for all. In other words, "everything thing’s fine, just make sure everyone’s insured."
But is that right? Let me tell you about what looks like a dirty little secret to me.
Having been given an artificial heart valve in 2004 (no complaints about that care, by the way) I regularly have a blood test called a “Protime.” Basically, rate of clotting. PrimeCare, the lab associated with my general practitioner, billed my insurance, and later, me, $43. The breakdown on that was $23 for the test and $20 for taking by blood.
On he advice of a doctor, we – Jeannie and I – switched to Sanford Medical (yes, that Stanford) Labs. The cost there? $15 ($7 test, $8 taking blood). Enough of a difference? Sure. But that’s not the whole story. It turns out if Stanford were billing my insurance – or me – the cost would be $36 ($21 test, $15 draw), close to the PrimeCare number. The $21 difference? The cost of supporting the health car administrative structure, including, mostly, bloated insurance company costs (and perhaps margins?). The cost for supporting all that seems to be 140% of the real cost of the care.
So is our Protime test unrepresentative? It sure isn’t. Many of you (hopefully) get tested for cholesterol. That’s called a Lipid Panel. I had that today. Cost? $24. Also a metabolic C. $19.00. One charge for drawing all three, the same $8. Go ahead, ask your lab what your costs are. (Your doctor will likely not know.)
It looks to me like most of the money I’m paying is for the insurance industries’ ridiculous overhead. And we rail against oil companies?
Do I have a solution? I’ve been accused that I often don’t. I don’t here, either, but that demand is what sends us off to debate baloney – just as the politicians are doing. They all agree that the health insurance industry should remain untouched in the solution. Why is that? The health care lobby has them all by the short hairs? (I can’t say “balls,” can I?) If so, that includes Barack Obama. So much for “change.”
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Lie de Jour
Commitments to books – two are complete, one is on an early February deadline – have meant little attention to this personal blog.
I’ve been thinking. I keep seeing and hearing things that are just absolutely wrong. It drives me crazy, and that’s a particular problem in a presidential election year.
They’re frauds. Some big, some small. Lies. Some big, some small.
So, I think I’ll launch a “Lie de Jour.” I’m not going to argue at length – if you believe some of this crap, well, you’ll probably just keep believing it.
And don’t take that “de Jour” thing literally. Here’s the first.
Yesterday, the New York Times trumpeted, with photos and with about the front page territory they gave to 9-11, Iraq Vets Charged with 121 Murders.
Fine, but do the numbers. That’s about the same proportion as the general population, and one fifth - yes 20% - of the homicide rate for the demographic most similar to Iraq vets - males 18-34. It’s “front page stuff” why?
A sidebar says Iraq Vets at fault in 25 traffic accident deaths. That’s also way less than the expected incidence in a similar population. What makes that rate a story?
Has the great paper run out of “...news that’s fit to print?” Has its research failed? Math challenged? An agenda? Or perhaps they’re just plain stupid.
There’s the lie – or stupidity – of the day.
I’ve been thinking. I keep seeing and hearing things that are just absolutely wrong. It drives me crazy, and that’s a particular problem in a presidential election year.
They’re frauds. Some big, some small. Lies. Some big, some small.
So, I think I’ll launch a “Lie de Jour.” I’m not going to argue at length – if you believe some of this crap, well, you’ll probably just keep believing it.
And don’t take that “de Jour” thing literally. Here’s the first.
Yesterday, the New York Times trumpeted, with photos and with about the front page territory they gave to 9-11, Iraq Vets Charged with 121 Murders.
Fine, but do the numbers. That’s about the same proportion as the general population, and one fifth - yes 20% - of the homicide rate for the demographic most similar to Iraq vets - males 18-34. It’s “front page stuff” why?
A sidebar says Iraq Vets at fault in 25 traffic accident deaths. That’s also way less than the expected incidence in a similar population. What makes that rate a story?
Has the great paper run out of “...news that’s fit to print?” Has its research failed? Math challenged? An agenda? Or perhaps they’re just plain stupid.
There’s the lie – or stupidity – of the day.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Voting and Bowling
But, Will it do any Good?
New Hampshire votes tomorrow. Obama and McCain seem to be leading. Could we really get two pretty attractive candidates? That’ll seem like the millennium. It seems too soon, but here we are, like it or not, already deep into another national election. Those two make me hopeful...but then I realize that in the end they’ll just have to deal with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Bowling with the Bear
Murphy and I are going to settle in for the football game this evening. We’re ready to cook up a half dozen of the Bear’s Buffalo Wings (I don't need any more weight here, so that’ll be enough.)
Will the 2008 Allstate BCS National Championship Game from New Orleans’ Superdome be worth watching. Probably. There are plenty of story lines here. The good stuff includes Ohio State’s defense and LSU’s offense. On the list of the not-so-good there’s a suspect LSU defense and an anemic Ohio State offense.
Then there’s Ohio State’s odds-defying bowling record against the South Eastern Conference. Zero, zip, nada...and eight. My Suthren friends are fond of quoting such things. In that regard it’s too bad it’s not Michigan out there, they’re a pretty good 7-3 bowling against the same conference, and an impressive 23-5-1 in regular season games.
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