|
Wednesday, 20 October 2010 21:32 |
|
by Bob Smith
Hi there.
We enjoyed our vacation visit to family in Denver and San Diego. We drove out, took trains back. It was exhausting! The speed limits are higher on all western interstate highways, and Judy mostly has driven two lane roads in Michigan and here. She shared interstate driving going west, and on I69, I tried to show her what to expect from idiots driving 80 around us.
I found in western states, where the speed limit was 75 or more, very few people exceeded that, and I felt safer among them. We drove because I wanted my son to have my classic Mercedes for his family and clients to enjoy. We returned by train, and we were amazed at how smoothly the train started each time, so I asked how much the diesel-electric engine weighed. They weigh 180 tons!! I have always approached rail crossings timidly, but now I am super sure no 180 ton engine pulling a loaded train is thundering down the tracks towards where I am crossing its path!
I hired my now lawyer son as a co-driver back 40 years ago so he would have some experience and be hirable as a driver, a position I thrived in. He did well, but I asked him to fly to Denver so I could teach him how to treat the classic car I was entrusting to him. I believe in forming good habits, especially if doing something boring, like driving long distances, or gardening, in an off gardening year like this.
I consider a habit something that you repeat every time you do a job - look in both mirrors before turning into another lane, turn on the proper turn signal, look again, ease into the lane for instance is a good habit to develop. I believe if that becomes a habit, if you neglect any part of the action, you will realize you did it wrong, and correct it. Watering house plants should be habitually done, as should weeding garden plots, and treating family members better than I treat Judy. But habits take developing, and improving. Judy agrees, and I continue to try.
Going to a doctor regularly or in emergency is a really good habit, young or old, and my favorite for 45 years has been Dr. Willyard, who has a younger partner-Doctor, a beautiful, friendly, fun receptionist, an excellent staff of nurses, and knows the best area specialists to send me to for further treatment, and I am still alive!
Fall is here, and we have pretty good fall tree leaf color, for the weather this year, and leaves are falling. Leaves are a problem, or a blessing, depending on what you learn about them, and what you and your neighbors choose to do about them. My choice is to chop them up with a mulching mower, blow and rake them into piles, and layer them in mulch piles to use as mulch and fertilizer.
They are pretty weed seed free, we are going to till our vegetable garden in the fall anyway, chopped up and tilled in - they decompose quickly. Sawdust decomposes much, much quicker than pieces of wood, also, but chopped leaves are quickest and best.
When you till your garden areas is an excellent time to test your soil for nutrient content, and advice on what to add to help it do what you want of it. We have an excellent soils lab in Fort Wayne, A & L Great Lakes Lab - its address is 3505 Conestoga, near U.P.S. Call them at 483-4759 for information or directions, but I recommend digging about six inches deep (depth of garden and lawn roots), and taking a sample, about 1/2 cup, putting it in a pint jar, along with about 6 to 10 other samples of your area to be tested. Write on it what you want to grow in that area. My tiller makes garden samplings easier.
They will test it, mail you the results, telling you the pH, the amount of organic matter, the concentration of the principle plant nutrients present, and their recommendations on correcting any problems discovered. In Allen County, I believe, they notified the Extension Office of the results by location, to help the horticultural and agricultural experts guide land owners in that area with problems. Some agricultural and garden supply stores may send and pay for your sample to help you buy proper fertilizer. I try to re-check it every three or four years, and the food we harvest is wonderful and plentiful, if it is warm and it rains properly. . . . Good gardening by Bob Smith Hi there. We enjoyed our vacation visit to family in Denver and San Diego. We drove out, took trains back. It was exhausting! The speed limits are higher on all western interstate highways, and Judy mostly has driven two lane roads in Michigan and here. She shared interstate driving going west, and on I69, I tried to show her what to expect from idiots driving 80 around us.
|
|
Monday, 11 October 2010 17:25 |
|
by Bob Smith
Hi there.
Back years ago, when my hair was not white, and I was a travelling salesman, away from my family most of the time, but making a decent living for them, I had a few extremely wealthy customers. Almost universally, they refused to let me buy a meal we shared, saying, we don’t want your money, we just want you to help us make this new business profitable.
One time they invited the manager of sales at a huge Texas airport to dinner at their country club, to talk about the line of goods my company produced. I asked the band to play a waltz, so I could dance with the owner’s wife, - not being gifted dance-wise.
Suddenly, the orchestra leader played his violin loudly in my ear, and counted, “one, two, three, one, two, three!” I realized he was playing my waltz, and we did, happily. I went to the bar and wanted to buy for the orchestra, and was told only members were allowed to purchase.
At coffee the next day, at the owner’s house, where he sipped coffee floating on a raft, which the butler would pull in to refill his cup whenever it needed, I protested the inability to not be able to pay for something I ordered, and his explanation was; “What percent of your gross income do you pay in Federal taxes?” I replied, “about 30 percent I think.” He said, “Our corporations pay 90 percent of our income in taxes, so when you buy a $1 cup of coffee, you spend $0.70. Our corporations have a whole lot more of ten cent dollars than you do of seventy cent dollars. We will not discuss this again!”
We are in a recession now, caused, in my opinion, by well intentioned efforts to keep the world’s people free from oppression, searches for oil supplies, and the greed of a few huge businesses and people. Almost everybody is paying a price. The amount of taxes paid by earners has been lowered, but now roads and governmental efforts need to be improved, but no one wants to pay more taxes. I delighted in the homestead tax relief Indiana offered, even though my six acres was homesteaded almost centuries ago by some unrelated wonderful person.
Now some people admit that tax relief should be given to low and middle income people, but not the wealthy, “because they will invest and rebuild America!” My father was not rich, I don’t know what George Washington earned, and I haven’t been offered a paying job for 25 years, but I and I believe all of them, really tried hard to help our country grow. I am not smart enough to try to cheat on income tax, but I believe my tax accountant would not allow my income tax statement to be inaccurate, or remain unpaid.
When the extremely wealthy pay the same percentage of earnings as the working class, they have an awful amount of dollars left for more gracious, more comfortable, and more wider locations, of homes, servants, luxuries, insurance, medical aid, and children’s educations, than those who are not extremely, or didn’t inherit extreme wealth.
I hope some of my grand or great-grandchildren accomplish that, but I am extremely well pleased with what this country has allowed me to earn and keep – but – I will vote for the candidates whom I feel most likely to continue to offer the opportunity to earn, and produce, and enjoy the results of living a good life. . . good gardening by Bob Smith Hi there. Back years ago, when my hair was not white, and I was a travelling salesman, away from my family most of the time, but making a decent living for them, I had a few extremely wealthy customers. Almost universally, they refused to let me buy a meal we shared, saying, we don’t want your money, we just want you to help us make this new business profitable.
|
|
Wednesday, 06 October 2010 21:29 |
|
Hi there.
I grew up believing America was founded, among other wonderful ideas, offering freedom of religion. I grew up a in a Protestant family and neighborhood, became a Catholic while a Marine (the priest, a celibate, thought of us troops as his family!) in WW2, have known good members of many religions and races, from many levels of wealth, and respected and liked nearly everyone. Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque is a place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of their Mecca. One of the first mosques in American history was in Maryland; Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Salomon, a cattle driver, would steal away to the woods for his and his friends prayers.
The temples or mosques of the Nation of Islam, - an indigenous forum led by Elijah Muhammad from 1934 to 1975 – were often converted store fronts and churches. In 1970 mosques numbered slightly more than 100 nationwide. In the last three decades of the twentieth century, more than a million new Muslim immigrants came to the United States, and opened hundreds more mosques. Today there are more than 2,000 places of Muslim prayer, most of them mosques, here in the United States.
According to recent Pew and Gallup polls, about 40 percent of Muslim Americans say they pray in a mosque at least once weekly, nearly the same percentage of Americans who say they attend church weekly, and contrary to the popular belief that mosques are male-only spaces, Gallup found that women attend as regularly as men.
Most mosques don’t teach Islamic law for a simple reason: it’s too complicated. Islamic law includes not only the Koran and the traditions of the prophet Muhammad, which the mosques teach, and how those sacred texts apply to everyday life, but also great bodies of arcane legal rulings and pedantic scholarly interpretretations.
The vast majority of mosques are supported by Muslim Americans themselves, as are Protestant, Christian, and Jewish churches, which were also brought here by people from foreign lands. I think our proud Native American Indians enjoyed joining in our predecessors Thanksgiving feasts, but mostly resented the greed and lethal guns and military attacks that we foreigners brought to their shores - but for the most part, our country today lives in peaceful accord.
If the anti-Muslim prejudice increases – as shown in the recent reaction to the proposed community center near ground zero, I wouldn’t be surprised if feeling alienated, young Muslims will turn away from the peaceful paths advocated by their elders - and we have seen how effective really mad or insane young Muslims can be.
So far, this has not happened on a large scale. I believe we should continue to offer a choice of religious practices here in America, under a government of and by all the people, who, hopefully include each of you and your families, and I hope every one of us will vote for the candidates of their individual choice for elected government officials very soon.
I will look for you on Election Day, I will be working at the Churubusco Town Hall as a clerk, and pray to my God that all will continue to hope to live in happiness, hoping for security, prosperity, good fellowship and understanding - while seeking peace throughout the world and especially at home!
Because I like Black Labs, I called all of them Black Dog, until Doc Welch told me I shouldn’t. When I asked why, he said it confused his records. When I got my last, I named him “Bob”, thinking that if I thought I heard Judy holler, it would at him, and I could keep on working. He ran away 13 times, when I got him back because of the chip in his shoulder, I renamed him “Bob, COME HERE”. Now, when I want them both to get fed, and I holler “COME HERE” – Black Dog don’t think I am talking to him, so he just lies back down”. . . . good gardening Hi there. I grew up believing America was founded, among other wonderful ideas, offering freedom of religion. I grew up a in a Protestant family and neighborhood, became a Catholic while a Marine (the priest, a celibate, thought of us troops as his family!) in WW2, have known good members of many religions and races, from many levels of wealth, and respected and liked nearly everyone. Mosques have been here since the colonial era. A mosque is a place where Muslims make salat, the prayer performed in the direction of their Mecca. One of the first mosques in American history was in Maryland; Muslim slave and Islamic scholar Job Ben Salomon, a cattle driver, would steal away to the woods for his and his friends prayers.
|
|
Wednesday, 29 September 2010 16:33 |
|
by Bob Smith
Hi there.
My father was a farmer, and when I was young, marketed eggs, or was a chicken farmer. I hated gathering eggs, because the hens seemed to resent some kid stealing their beloved children, and would attack me, so I settled on keeping the chicken houses and pens clean. Chickens do not create as much wet, heavy, detritus, leavings, or whatever as four-legged creatures, and it was a job I thrived at. I was paid $0.25 per week (plus, of course, room and board).
Eskimo Pies came on the market, available for a nickel, and I fell in love with them. Payday was Saturday at noon. We grocery shopped in the afternoon, and I would buy and eat five Eskimo Pies while parents bought the week’s groceries. One Wednesday, Johnny Duggan, the store owner, saw me watching someone else eating one of my favorites, and said. “You love those pies – do you know you could have one today and pay for it Saturday?”
Without notice on my part, I soon had a $2.50 bill, and instead of speaking to me, he called my Father, who drove immediately to school, took me out of class, led me to his car, said with his Scottish burr – “GET IN!”. He drove out into the country, stopped in the middle of a deserted one lane dirt road, and said “GET OUT!” And, as I remember, knocked me across the hood into the ditch, and spent a long time explaining “How much better it is to PAY FOR SOMETHING BEFORE YOU GET IT THAN AFTER!!”
It took me quite a few years to realize that was the best lesson I ever learned, and later how much better off this country’s people would be had he been the father of us all! Of, he didn’t have the time. And I don’t think I ever told him my current view of that few minutes teaching, and what it has meant to me and my children.
In my opinion, the weak lending standards, serving the political interest of affording housing for all, are the main reason for the nation’s financial and employment downfall. Well, the fact that Chinese companies and employees are out producing and under pricing many products developed here in earlier years has a big effect – and didn’t we sort of do that to established European countries?
In 1929, when any investor could buy stocks on margin with as little as 10% down, wasn’t that followed by a huge financial CRASH? A recession so heavy that Roosevelt started something called Works Progress Administration to build needed roads, parks, and entertainment facilities? Spending money that was in short supply even to the government that prints the money, and temporarily losing the support of many American voters, even a few of his own party?
Small wonder that after the crash, the government instituted a margin requirement of 50 percent down: I am glad that my father taught me to pay for it before I got it. Of course, when this recession occurred, my holdings were devalued, but I didn’t still owe somebody for part of my purchase! If you don’t follow me, do you believe a combination of political deregulation, and insufficient enforcement, accompanied by GREED of a few put us in harm’s way.
I started investing in the late 1970’s. I did not inherit wealth, I worked for it. My investments grew rapidly until the mid 1990’s, when, in my opinion, regulators worked with weakening lending policies as mandated by Congress (politicians, more lawyers than economists, farmers, businessmen, or truckowners), systematically dismantled a housing-finance system based on the common-sense principles of 1. Adequate down payment, 2. Good credit, and 3. Ability to handle the mortgage payment.
These policies led to we taxpayers having to foot the bill for bailout after bailout, and I think no one political party is responsible for all, nor is one party able to fix it all! Do try to know EACH person’s thinking WHEN YOU VOTE IN OUR NEXT GOVERNMENT – AND PLEASE DO! . . . good gardening by Bob Smith Hi there. My father was a farmer, and when I was young, marketed eggs, or was a chicken farmer. I hated gathering eggs, because the hens seemed to resent some kid stealing their beloved children, and would attack me, so I settled on keeping the chicken houses and pens clean. Chickens do not create as much wet, heavy, detritus, leavings, or whatever as four-legged creatures, and it was a job I thrived at. I was paid $0.25 per week (plus, of course, room and board).
|
|
Tuesday, 21 September 2010 19:46 |
|
by Bob Smith
Hi there.
The pictures above were displayed in color at the Columbia City State Bureau of Motor Vehicles when I visited last week, and they said that person was in prison for identity theft. Apparently it is easier for people to steal another’s identity than it is for plants! It is good to know the identity of weeds, and plants, if we are going to succeed at gardening, or weeding. There are published ‘keys to plant identification’ that I value, own, and highly recommend to you.
The cheapest one I have bought is ‘The Tree Book’, published by Arbor Day Foundation, Nebraska City, Ne., 68410, or arborday.org. It includes pictures of mature trees, planting, care, and pruning instructions, and prices (cheaper if you are a member $15/year). The books are cheapest in volume – I bought one for each member of a wood turning club, and they were enthusiastic!
The most expensive one I own cost $7.00, and is “Weeds of the North Central United States,” bulletin772, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Agricultural Experiment Station. Public libraries may have weed books available, County Extension offices have weed publications, so much weed information is available, and I consider it beneficial to know whether you are treating a plant nicely or killing it, so identity is just as important as identity theft is dangerous.
A key is a device for identifying plants. It is an outline consisting of alternative (2) Statements; you choose the one that best identifies the plant you are identifying. After you choose the one that applies to the plant you are trying to identify, you choose from the next two choices subordinate to the first, and so on, until you come to the name of the plant.
As an example, a short key to identify well-known legumes is given here. First, look at the two headings labeled “1”. If the plant to be identified has a rounded head of flowers, it will be found under the second 1, and you will ignore everything under the second “1”, since all the plants under that heading have flowers in slender spikes.
Next, you look at flowers which are white, and you choose the second “3”. Under the second 3 is a pair of “4’s,” and if your plant is seeming roots at the nodes, it is white clover. It looks more complicated than it is, but once available and used, I think you would find it very useful. I believe in weed control, from yanking them out by the roots, to “hoe, hoe, hoe,” and use of proper chemicals, CAREFULLY reading and following the instructions EVERY TIME USED! And I hope you protect your identity better than the identity of the people whose identity was stolen by the Indiana resident pictured above! . . . good gardening by Bob Smith Hi there. There were pictures displayed in color at the Columbia City State Bureau of Motor Vehicles when I visited last week, and they said the person was in prison for identity theft. Apparently it is easier for people to steal another’s identity than it is for plants!
|
|
