Last night’s snow looked like spray-on flock, the kind you can buy at Christmas to add a wintry touch to decorations. But it had little time to celebrate as the morning sun melted it away, giving a long drink to tulips and redbuds.
What a great day for a walk so I laced on my sneakers and headed outside. This time of year, everything looks brighter, more detailed than in winter. In winter, everything looks smudged, devoid of color except for the usual earthy browns, cold grays, stark blacks. Maybe it’s the angle of the sun, maybe it’s just that color is returning to the world again, but everything looked clearer, more vivid than it did just a few weeks ago.
The wind harbored a hint of winter chill but the sun was warm on my face. It reminded me of growing up in Indiana this time of year. Actually, this time of year in Indiana comes a few weeks later than it does here in the Ozarks so it really reminded me of Indiana in mid-April. That’s when it felt as though the long stretch of short days and overcast skies had finally passed, that it was time to oil baseball gloves, shove winter coats to the back of the closet and reacquaint ourselves with t-shirts and shorts. School days would pass soon enough though never soon enough for a student and we would find ourselves at the uphill end of another warm summer full of play, adventure, bike rides, swings and completely void of the stress, the strain of learning.
Early spring was a period of time-lapse photography because the world seemed to have suddenly picked up steam. We saw it happen then as we do now. Trees that were nothing more than sticks arranged to look like branches overnight grew buds that blossomed then produced leaves in no more time than they did in the documentaries we watched in class. Bare earth one morning gave way to jonquils then hyacinths then tulips all in a matter of seconds, or so it seemed in the early part of spring. Lawns greened and people started coming out of their houses again to look at them, and to soak in the color that had been so lacking in their winter solitude.
And finally, a day like today, a day so full of promise that winter had passed and spring was with us at last.
This is the best time of year, and a time of year we are blessed to see in all the seasons of our own lives, a time when we bear witness to the rebirth of nature.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Hidden Brook
Water had furrowed the rocks the way time etches an old man's face. The flow was steady, patient, and the water had clearly expended much of its efforts either carving pathways to follow or sanding smooth the stone beneath it in a time honored journey to the sea.
Ignoring rocks it had befriended eons earlier, the brook disappeared below the surface only to find its path again a few yards later, a trickle then a stream and finally, a shallow pool which refused to impede progress as water softly fell like streams of spring rain over a terrace of stone built with the loving, artistic hands of someone far more patient and with far more time than man.
Ignoring rocks it had befriended eons earlier, the brook disappeared below the surface only to find its path again a few yards later, a trickle then a stream and finally, a shallow pool which refused to impede progress as water softly fell like streams of spring rain over a terrace of stone built with the loving, artistic hands of someone far more patient and with far more time than man.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Beware the Ides
March, cruelest of months
Teases with warmth, buds, blooms
Scorns with sleet, snow, wind.
Jonquils, maples, forsythia smile
When the days reach sixty or seventy
Only to be slapped with an icy fury
When the days struggle even for twenty.
Used to bitter betrayals
The blossoms have learned
Do not trust this month
Do not plan to flourish
Just be there to sentinel
For the ones in April.
March, cruelest of months
Forever making promises
It never intends to keep.
Teases with warmth, buds, blooms
Scorns with sleet, snow, wind.
Jonquils, maples, forsythia smile
When the days reach sixty or seventy
Only to be slapped with an icy fury
When the days struggle even for twenty.
Used to bitter betrayals
The blossoms have learned
Do not trust this month
Do not plan to flourish
Just be there to sentinel
For the ones in April.
March, cruelest of months
Forever making promises
It never intends to keep.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Saving the Economy
Two administrations and I think we still missed it on saving the economy. While everyone is focused on doling out billions, even a trillion or more to banks, financial institutions, car companies and any other organizations that are big, boisterous and failing, I think we are handing checks to the wrong sort of people.
To illustrate my point, think about what makes our economy run. The numbers vary by pundit, but something like 80 percent of new jobs are created by small businesses, well over half of all Americans are employed by small companies and 70 percent of our economy is consumer driven.
As human beings, we tend to be in a rush to put a bandage where we see bleeding without looking at what caused the bleeding in the first place or what consequences could occur from our treatments. We focus on the symptoms and try to stop them. If credit has dried up and credit is necessary for the economy to move, we throw billions of band-aids at those institutions that supply credit. If people stop buying cars, we throw billions more band-aids so that car companies can do … well whatever it is they plan to do to get people to buy cars again. What are the Big 3 auto makers doing with all that money, anyway?
President Obama is proposing a trillion dollars be spent on rescuing the economy and former-President Bush got Congress to appropriate 700 billion dollars to do the same thing. So that’s $1.7 trillion worth of band-aids being thrown in all kinds of different directions from infrastructure to big businesses to schools to green energy companies.
Sounds interesting, except that very little of that money is going to any of the large job creating and spending sectors of our economy – small businesses and individuals.
So here is what I think should have happened:
$700 billion from the Bush administration’s plan should have been made available to small businesses across the country in the form of low and no interest loans and in some cases outright grants. The portion served up as low and no interest loans would have ensured that a big part of that stimulus package got paid back to the Treasury instead of ending up as nothing more than give-aways to banks. The part that would have been available as grants could have been used for companies planning to embark on green energy businesses, school repairs and infrastructure repairs, thereby placing a high emphasis on the new direction we want to take the country.
A caveat to obtaining the funding would have been that new jobs had to be created or layoffs avoided. Instead of money given away to financial firms that have yet to thaw a frozen credit system and instead spent the billions they were given on buying up weaker banks (a la Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch), or simply hoarding the money for future use of what we are not certain, the money would have immediately hit the economy, spent to drive GDP and to create jobs. Instead of waiting to see whether banks would ever loan again, we would be seeing unemployment dropping and goods and services being purchased.
$1 trillion proposed by the Obama administration should be placed where it would do the most good to drive an economy that is 70 percent consumer driven – with the consumers themselves.
Consider if you will that $1 trillion and around 300 million Americans amounts to about $3,300 per citizen. Imagine handing a tax-free check to each American in the amount of $3,300. A family of four would get $13,200. A family of ten, $33,000. Tax free.
More progressive businesses have learned to give employees the resources they need to get their jobs done, then stay out of their way while they do it. This is the same train of thought. Now, will all 300 million Americans do the right thing with all that cash? Certainly not. But neither are all of the banks and car companies that were trusted with huge checks.
A few people, no doubt, would save some of their new found cash. Some would catch up bills and others would make purchases for themselves and their families. Probably buy a few things they really do not need but always wanted. And a lot of people would go out and just blow the whole wad.
But think what that means. Savers and bill payers are placing money back into the financial sector. Banks, lenders and credit card companies get a cash infusion. If only ten percent of the money goes into savings or paying off credit card bills, $100 billion reaches financial institutions almost as soon as the ink dries on those printed checks.
Whether to buy a few necessities, pick up some items that were once out of reach or simply blow the whole three grand, that’s instant money spent in the economy on goods and services. Companies sell, consumers buy, profits go up.
The study of economics teaches that consumers “vote” with their dollars by purchasing from organizations they favor and avoiding ones they do not. Purchases, then, are the most democratic way to honor trusted companies and let the poorer ones die off.
If we are going to spend this volume of tax payer dollars anyway, should we not spend it where we get the biggest bang? And, at the same time, have an opportunity to recover some of that money and place it back into the U.S. Treasury as loan payments are made by small businesses?
And, here’s another plus: state and local governments stand to benefit as well. The $3,300 checks would have to be given out free from state and federal income taxes. But sales taxes will be collected when purchases are made. If we assume the average state sales tax is five percent, just to make my math easier, and we assume that 90 percent of the $1 trillion stimulus money described here would be spent rather than saved, that’s $45 billion into state coffers in the form of sales tax revenues. Close to a billion dollars average per state.
We are living in economic times that are unprecedented since the Great Depression. It is time to think outside the box of band-aids and inject capital deeper into the economy than where we first see symptoms. To heal the problem, we need to do something bold and dramatic. Something that has never been tried before.
To illustrate my point, think about what makes our economy run. The numbers vary by pundit, but something like 80 percent of new jobs are created by small businesses, well over half of all Americans are employed by small companies and 70 percent of our economy is consumer driven.
As human beings, we tend to be in a rush to put a bandage where we see bleeding without looking at what caused the bleeding in the first place or what consequences could occur from our treatments. We focus on the symptoms and try to stop them. If credit has dried up and credit is necessary for the economy to move, we throw billions of band-aids at those institutions that supply credit. If people stop buying cars, we throw billions more band-aids so that car companies can do … well whatever it is they plan to do to get people to buy cars again. What are the Big 3 auto makers doing with all that money, anyway?
President Obama is proposing a trillion dollars be spent on rescuing the economy and former-President Bush got Congress to appropriate 700 billion dollars to do the same thing. So that’s $1.7 trillion worth of band-aids being thrown in all kinds of different directions from infrastructure to big businesses to schools to green energy companies.
Sounds interesting, except that very little of that money is going to any of the large job creating and spending sectors of our economy – small businesses and individuals.
So here is what I think should have happened:
$700 billion from the Bush administration’s plan should have been made available to small businesses across the country in the form of low and no interest loans and in some cases outright grants. The portion served up as low and no interest loans would have ensured that a big part of that stimulus package got paid back to the Treasury instead of ending up as nothing more than give-aways to banks. The part that would have been available as grants could have been used for companies planning to embark on green energy businesses, school repairs and infrastructure repairs, thereby placing a high emphasis on the new direction we want to take the country.
A caveat to obtaining the funding would have been that new jobs had to be created or layoffs avoided. Instead of money given away to financial firms that have yet to thaw a frozen credit system and instead spent the billions they were given on buying up weaker banks (a la Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch), or simply hoarding the money for future use of what we are not certain, the money would have immediately hit the economy, spent to drive GDP and to create jobs. Instead of waiting to see whether banks would ever loan again, we would be seeing unemployment dropping and goods and services being purchased.
$1 trillion proposed by the Obama administration should be placed where it would do the most good to drive an economy that is 70 percent consumer driven – with the consumers themselves.
Consider if you will that $1 trillion and around 300 million Americans amounts to about $3,300 per citizen. Imagine handing a tax-free check to each American in the amount of $3,300. A family of four would get $13,200. A family of ten, $33,000. Tax free.
More progressive businesses have learned to give employees the resources they need to get their jobs done, then stay out of their way while they do it. This is the same train of thought. Now, will all 300 million Americans do the right thing with all that cash? Certainly not. But neither are all of the banks and car companies that were trusted with huge checks.
A few people, no doubt, would save some of their new found cash. Some would catch up bills and others would make purchases for themselves and their families. Probably buy a few things they really do not need but always wanted. And a lot of people would go out and just blow the whole wad.
But think what that means. Savers and bill payers are placing money back into the financial sector. Banks, lenders and credit card companies get a cash infusion. If only ten percent of the money goes into savings or paying off credit card bills, $100 billion reaches financial institutions almost as soon as the ink dries on those printed checks.
Whether to buy a few necessities, pick up some items that were once out of reach or simply blow the whole three grand, that’s instant money spent in the economy on goods and services. Companies sell, consumers buy, profits go up.
The study of economics teaches that consumers “vote” with their dollars by purchasing from organizations they favor and avoiding ones they do not. Purchases, then, are the most democratic way to honor trusted companies and let the poorer ones die off.
If we are going to spend this volume of tax payer dollars anyway, should we not spend it where we get the biggest bang? And, at the same time, have an opportunity to recover some of that money and place it back into the U.S. Treasury as loan payments are made by small businesses?
And, here’s another plus: state and local governments stand to benefit as well. The $3,300 checks would have to be given out free from state and federal income taxes. But sales taxes will be collected when purchases are made. If we assume the average state sales tax is five percent, just to make my math easier, and we assume that 90 percent of the $1 trillion stimulus money described here would be spent rather than saved, that’s $45 billion into state coffers in the form of sales tax revenues. Close to a billion dollars average per state.
We are living in economic times that are unprecedented since the Great Depression. It is time to think outside the box of band-aids and inject capital deeper into the economy than where we first see symptoms. To heal the problem, we need to do something bold and dramatic. Something that has never been tried before.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Christmas Eve 1959
In the days before
America lost its innocence,
And before Blackberry, PC, PS2 and Wii,
When the world seemed young and fresh
War a fading memory
Post war prosperity a reality.
We gathered all at grandma's house
Parents, cousins, uncles, aunts,
For fish and peirogis, homemade bread and pies,
Laughter, broken English, singing and presents.
Oh, so many presents -
More than my imagination could ever conjure.
Cheesy aluminum tree,
Gaudy ornaments, rotating color wheel.
Now so commercialized,
Then simply advertising
The stack of packages beneath
Holding inside what only Santa knew.
And the old guy showed up
In spite of his hectic night.
My cousins in fear,
But I wasn't afraid of the red suit and beard
The laughing eyes, the shiny boots.
He had a watch just like my Dad's.
In the eternity between
Dinner clean up and passing of presents,
We busied ourselves guessing
And watching TV,
Everything then in black and white
Three channels and rabbit ears.
But the next year
Grandma bedridden and ill
Could only smile and have each one of us sing
"Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"
As she closed her eyes
Savoring the song, the moments, the passing.
And the moment did pass
Into another time, another era.
My own children, now their children.
But Christmas Eve, 1959
Will always live in my memory
And be played back like a DVD.
America lost its innocence,
And before Blackberry, PC, PS2 and Wii,
When the world seemed young and fresh
War a fading memory
Post war prosperity a reality.
We gathered all at grandma's house
Parents, cousins, uncles, aunts,
For fish and peirogis, homemade bread and pies,
Laughter, broken English, singing and presents.
Oh, so many presents -
More than my imagination could ever conjure.
Cheesy aluminum tree,
Gaudy ornaments, rotating color wheel.
Now so commercialized,
Then simply advertising
The stack of packages beneath
Holding inside what only Santa knew.
And the old guy showed up
In spite of his hectic night.
My cousins in fear,
But I wasn't afraid of the red suit and beard
The laughing eyes, the shiny boots.
He had a watch just like my Dad's.
In the eternity between
Dinner clean up and passing of presents,
We busied ourselves guessing
And watching TV,
Everything then in black and white
Three channels and rabbit ears.
But the next year
Grandma bedridden and ill
Could only smile and have each one of us sing
"Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"
As she closed her eyes
Savoring the song, the moments, the passing.
And the moment did pass
Into another time, another era.
My own children, now their children.
But Christmas Eve, 1959
Will always live in my memory
And be played back like a DVD.
Monday, January 05, 2009
I Resolve
I'm usually not much of one for New Year's resolutions and here is my only one for 2009: I plan to write more. Throughout last year, all my writing appeared only on my Ozarks outdoors website, freshare.net, and on a few article sites. But I have missed blogging and resolve to do more of that in 2009. Here, on Amblin Cafe and for a soon to be developed outdoors blog on freshare.
If you check this blog and Abbozzare, I'll save you a trip today because the same post you are reading appears on Abbozzare, too.
If you check this blog and Abbozzare, I'll save you a trip today because the same post you are reading appears on Abbozzare, too.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Price Fixing Frustration
I read recently that Canadian and U.S. officials are investigating chocolate manufacturers on charges of price fixing. All the big guys are involved: Hershey, Nestle, Cadbury, Mars. And it seems the firms are admitting that, "Yeah, you caught us with our hands in the chocolate chip cookie jar all right. We discussed pricing together for years."
Which explains why candy bars are all pretty much the same price. Sure, Wal-Mart will sell some cheaper as a loss leader or just to make a few more pennies at the impulse aisle, but for the most part candy bars are all priced about the same. Check it out next time you indulge at the vending machine.
Price fixing is bad. It's collusion. A few big companies command the lion's share of a market so they quickly figure out that working together to set prices beats price wars anytime. Why beat each other up when there is money enough to be made for all?
Doesn't it seem strange then that gasoline prices all move at the same time at all stations and in just about the same amount? I don't think this is because we have such a tight grasp on inventory levels or oil prices, refining costs and delivery fees that we know, right down to the penny, how much a gallon of gasoline will cost consumers.
Adding to the frustration is that all the convenience stores, self-serve stations and anybody else selling gas in a given area raise (occasionally lower) gasoline prices at the same time and for the same amount consistently no matter which oil company they represent. But then, this is an industry dominated by a few large companies who probably figured out a long time ago what chocolatiers have only recently discovered: it's better to play together in the sandbox rather than compete for the toys.
Curious, though, that neither Washington nor Ottawa nor anyone else has sought to investigate this little phenomenon. It seems an obvious place to look.
I concede I may be wrong about all this. Manufacturing and distribution costs may be exactly the same for everyone who produces gasoline from crude oil, and those who set pump prices are so skilled at the task that it is by sheer coincidence alone that prices move all at once, in the same direction and at the same rate.
I was born at night. But it wasn't last night.
Which explains why candy bars are all pretty much the same price. Sure, Wal-Mart will sell some cheaper as a loss leader or just to make a few more pennies at the impulse aisle, but for the most part candy bars are all priced about the same. Check it out next time you indulge at the vending machine.
Price fixing is bad. It's collusion. A few big companies command the lion's share of a market so they quickly figure out that working together to set prices beats price wars anytime. Why beat each other up when there is money enough to be made for all?
Doesn't it seem strange then that gasoline prices all move at the same time at all stations and in just about the same amount? I don't think this is because we have such a tight grasp on inventory levels or oil prices, refining costs and delivery fees that we know, right down to the penny, how much a gallon of gasoline will cost consumers.
Adding to the frustration is that all the convenience stores, self-serve stations and anybody else selling gas in a given area raise (occasionally lower) gasoline prices at the same time and for the same amount consistently no matter which oil company they represent. But then, this is an industry dominated by a few large companies who probably figured out a long time ago what chocolatiers have only recently discovered: it's better to play together in the sandbox rather than compete for the toys.
Curious, though, that neither Washington nor Ottawa nor anyone else has sought to investigate this little phenomenon. It seems an obvious place to look.
I concede I may be wrong about all this. Manufacturing and distribution costs may be exactly the same for everyone who produces gasoline from crude oil, and those who set pump prices are so skilled at the task that it is by sheer coincidence alone that prices move all at once, in the same direction and at the same rate.
I was born at night. But it wasn't last night.
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