The pieces are coming together

Enough about IRS witch hunts and phone intercepts.

The house, the lake, the woodchipper, the riding lawn mower, the well, the dock, the lift, the boat... the pieces of our escape out of the city are coming together.

This was the weekend I was on the boat almost everyday and caught the first fish on the Lake, a couple of small-mid size northern pike. A good start.

It was also a weekend of family gathering with my brother in town, who likes to stay off the grid and shall remain nameless. He found us breakfast in Waconia when the power went out and also was full of some sound boating advice. Power was out for about three hours, not too bad. In any event that would not have affected the smoking plans. I must admit they turned out pretty good. Ribs and pork shoulder on the smoker, its getting where I can almost do this blindfolded.

Regarding bbq, this year I began using a rack for the ribs to stand them sideways. Boy does that make a difference. Not sure what it is but i think it has to do with a more even cooking. Nice and tender. 5-6 hours at around 225. No fancy rubs on the ribs or shoulder. Just salt and pepper. 

One last note. The shoulder and ribs had been frozen for about a month. I have smoked both fresh meat and the frozen then thawed. I cannot tell the difference. I guess I'd need to have them side by side. I'll keep freezing so I dont have to run to Costco every weekend.  

Thank you, IRS

Thank you IRS for checking up on the various organizations that want non-profit status. I work with non-profits every day. The overwhelming majority are wonderful groups of caring, dedicated people committed to improving society. But every once in a while one or two of them have me scratching my head.

I always wondered if anyone checked to verify the validity of 501(C)3 applications. I'm glad to find that the IRS does. They asked the kinds of questions I would ask; when do you meet?, who are your members?, what do you discuss?, explain how this is educational, can I have a sample of your material?, your meeting minutes?, donor records? These are all legitimate questions that help verify that someone isnt carrying on a taxable enterprise under the guise of a charity.

And if conservatives were targeted more than liberals, well my gosh folks, grow up! The liberals are in charge. They own the joint. Doesnt it make sense that everything would tilt in their favor? Things will change in an election or two. Political pestering, certainly. Political persecution, hardly.

He can listen to my phone calls as much as he wants

I did not care if the last president listened, and I do not care if the new guy does. There is nothing illegal going on in my life, as far as I know. You'll find it somewhat boring. Have at it. Here's what you'll find out that you might not otherwise know. If this helps sniff out the bad guys, i'm all for it.

1) I"m not very nice to people at 800# call centers (not something i'm proud of, I'm very rude at times)
2) I call my mom every Friday.
3) I do not answer the phone.

Bring it on, Mr. President, and this goes for the next guy too.

High speed trains, convention centers, stadiums, and other fiascos

Every place I have ever lived wants to build a high speed rail somewhere. Anywhere. Pine Bluff to Little Rock, Little Rock to Memphis, St. Louis to Kansas City, Minneapolis to (giggle) Rochester. Fortunately none of them were ever built.

Just like stadiums and other centers of secular worship, these things are almost free. The logic is the same for all of them. Sure there are a few tax dollars involved but Oh the jobs they create. Follow the logic and we can eliminate every social ill by just building more stuff.


ZIP RAIL – Rochester-Twin Cities


The Southeast Minnesota Rail Alliance proposes the construction of a true high-speed ZIP Rail line travelling at speeds of 150-220 mph between Rochester and the Twin Cities. Preliminary studies estimate that the construction of this corridor will cost $973 million. A study by the Rochester Area Economic Development Inc. estimated this project would inject nearly an additional $1 billion into the Minnesota economy each year.

I-40 Blues

I was in Knoxville on Tuesday. Drove up from Columbia, SC where I spent mothers day. Wonderful day. The drive through the mountains was very nice. Had a lunch that my mother packed at a rest stop in Tennessee. In your fifties you rarely get to eat a sack lunch packed by mom. They are always a treasure.

There is something about East Tennessee that just haunts me. In a good way. I just never can get it out of my head. It has a certain smell and feel that is distinctive. Whenever I am there I feel like I shouldnt leave. Like the very ground is calling out to me, reminding me that it was here that I drew my first breath and here I am bound to.

While on I-40 I had this feeling I should stay in my rental car and go either east or far west, but not go home to Minnesota. East would take me toward I-81, Johnson City, Elizabethton and other familial grounds. Go west to the end of the highway and I'd be in St. Louis, with my son and daughter in law. For a moment both seemed better than home and both seemed like home. I calculated in my head went I would arrive at either place.

Chicago-a view from the ground

Midway airport 8pm

I want to be hot

More snow is on the way this week. I am ready to be miserably hot.

T-shirt sticking to the back hot, sand in the wallet hot, walking on the sides of your bare feet hot, can't hold the steering wheel hot, 5am with sweat beads on your forehead hot, sunburn on the top of the head hot, bramble and stickers on your jeans hot, dust devils on a dirt road hot, asphalt melting/trout killing/blister raising hot. Yeah, nice and toasty.

I want to get burned by nails in my deck, I want to see roses shriveled up and brown in my back yard, I want birds to flock to my sprinkler, I want to need mosquito spray, I want to see flies around old watermelon rinds, I want to see blood mixed with sweat when i do yard work, I want to run out of cigars, i want bandaids to not be able to stick to me, I want to look like I just got out of the shower when I walk across a parking lot.

I want to cut the grass, clean out the garage, smoke a pork roast, slap a bloody mosquito onto the side of my neck, I want to sit in my back yard in shorts and a t-shirt and listen to baseball.

"...there has been much throwing about of brains."

In October of 2010 I decided to read the complete works of William Shakespeare. Every play, every sonnet. I have had it on my ipad. Almost all of the reading has been while on the bus, commuting from home to downtown Minneapolis.

For the first year or so I was reading Shakespeare and the KJV of the Bible side by side. When I finished the Bible, I picked up speed with Will. This project required a deeper level of concentration than I am accustomed to.

Today's snowstorm gave me a two hour bus ride. I knocked off the last fifty pages.

I don't feel smarter, just a wee bit more refined.

While most of it was terribly boring, there were a few times when a passage grabbed me with its beauty and compexity. Like this, from The Twelth Night. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have said about you...

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,
His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

Goodbye Mr. Shakespeare.

A time to move

Tomorrow we close on the sale of our old house. How quickly the place we called "home" for over ten years has become relegated to status as "the old house".

I am sitting on the steps to the kitchen, trying to put a few thoughts together. Collect the memories.

I lived here for almost a year by myself. From August 2003 to June 2004. While Rob finished high school, while Rachel rebuilt her life after a Peace Corp tour was cut short by war, while pre-teen Caroline dealt with the trauma of leaving the street where she learned to walk and talk, while Robin prepared for one more move, I was here alone. After 24 years of marriage, one year of relative solitude was not what I was expecting from my life. But it came and it went and it was good and it was bad. I would recommend it to others. It reminded me of how much my wife is part of me, and I of her.

I had little furniture. What I had Rachel had helped me move with a UHaul. A bed, a dresser, a treadmill, a lazyboy, a recliner. A coffeepot.

We moved the family here on June 16, 2004. Our 25th wedding anniversary.

This was Caroline's home more than any of the other children. I remember her shaking in fear as a first epileptic seizure gripped her on the stairs. The helplessness of parents who could only hold her and pray. But it was also in this house she met much of the wonder and trial of junior high and high school. Birthday parties, sleepovers, helping me put up Christmas lights and smoke the perfect pork shoulder.

It was a good place for a man and wife to enter their fifties, and be confronted with their own mortality. There were health scares, big and small, that reminded us of how much we need and love each other, and how limited is our time together in this place.

I remember Rob bringing his future wife, Laura, to this home for the first time.

I remember  Rachel screaming "I passed" and leaping in the yard, when bar exam results came in the mail.

I remember watching my wife sit quietly at the dining table, reading her Bible, taking notes. Pausing to stir a pot, start a load of wash, say a prayer.

I remember our loyal friend Rocko. He who was oblivious to the move from St. Louis, and was always happy to see any of us. How he aged so, and how the walk around the block eventually turned into a walk to the end of the street. He's still here, under a rock that is under a tree that borders our back yard.

I remember special meals shared with those we love so much and special visits from family members Judy Jarrett, Betty Walker, Kristin Walker, Hannah Izard, Emily Izard, Rodney Welch, Kevin Welch, Audrey Welch, Barbara VanAntwerp, Becky Amos, Shelby Campbell, Katie Welch, Audrey Welch, Laura Welch.

I remember the joy on Robin's face when her big sister Betty showed up for a surprise weekend visit.

I remember long drives to see our children, drives that started and ended in this driveway. To Chicago, to St. Louis, to New Orleans, to Waco.

I remember winter snows that seemed they would never end, as the drifts piled higher and higher. I remember learning how not to plow when the wind is blowing.

I remember watching our team win a couple of World Series from this place, how we all called or skyped each other as the last pitch of the last game was thrown.

Thank you Lord for a home where prayers were answered. For jobs, for relationships, for guidance in the big and little decisions of life, for physical healing. Lord, our prayers of thanksgiving from this place were lifted often it seems, but never ever enough.

The March Lion prowls my bus stop

The winter that will not end

It is mid-March. My thermometer refuses to move above freezing. 

The white Christmas blanket covers my world well into Lent.

Winter now just lingers, past the anticipation of October, past the appreciation of December, deep into the disgust of March.

Like the last guest on a boring evening
Like the last chapter of a dull novel
Like the swill at the bottom of a child's soda bottle
Like tennis elbow
Like leftover cabbage



 

14164 and 14254

The DJIA closed today at 14254, an all time high, finally taking out the 14164 set on October 9, 2007. On that day I was in Philadelphia for a client meeting. I took the train that afternoon to DC and had dinner with a friend and his wife. He also happened to be a member of Congress. It was a good day. I spent the rest of the week in DC at an investment industry conference.

I don't recall discussing the new high that day with anyone, though I may have. We might have had a sense that it was a false high, an undeserved one, for we were in the early days of the housing market collapse. At that point we were probably just calling it a normal downturn. Don't remember.

This one will get a lot of attention, as it should. We've waited a long time. A bit of a victory for capitalism, though one that could have come much sooner had it not been for interference by the United States.

One group will be glad and think the credit is theirs for keeping the government at bay. Wrong. Another group will try and use it to justify giving some of that wealth to an imagined class of victims. Also wrong.

Anyway, most of the time the stock market should be near its all time high. That is the normal condition. We've been off track for a few years. Still, the market is twenty times the level it was when I first started in this business in the early 80s. Lot of wealth created, a lot of it destroyed. Creative destruction. Many more winners than losers.

Today is an uneventful day. No meetings, just catching up on previous projects. Like last time, if there is anything bad just around the corner, it is not on my mind. Later, i will think it was.