A week ago, a winter storm dumped about 10 inches of snow on our fair city. Friday we got a couple more inches. Much to the delight of an early 90s one-hit-wonder Canadian reggae musician.
And much to my dismay.
I’m not a winter person. Never have been. Maybe it was growing up in Arkansas, which is warmer most of the time… combined with the fact when it DID get cold in the foothills of the Ozarks, our home’s only heat sources were three small propane heaters (one in the living room, one in the back bedroom, one in the bathroom). We couldn’t leave them on all night (for both safety and economic reasons) so when we got up in the morning, we had to strike a match, turn on the gas flow, light that sucker up and huddle around it.
Oh, and the bathroom only had a tub, not a shower. My dad paid a buddy to put one in, but it was installed in a different, uninsulated room at the very back of the house. Sometimes the water coming out of the shower head would turn to icicles (exaggerating a bit, but it sure felt chilly back there).
Never learned to ski. My few attempts were always on Midwestern hills with man-made snow, which turned to ice, which made falling a real treat. And I fell a lot!
But there’s a special place in hell reserved for those folks who say “If it’s already cold, it may as well snow. I like snow. It looks so pretty!”
Yes, it looks pretty for about an hour. Then you realize it’s all over your driveway. And the sidewalks. And the roads. And then turns into a gray, ugly mess that sticks around way too long. (BTW, “gray, ugly mess that sticks around way too long” is what Mrs. Dubbatrubba calls me.)
Yeah, snow in the winter is a real treat. The shoveling. The chance of busting your butt on a patch of ice with every step you take. With dogs, it’s even “prettier” when their pee turns half of your backyard yellow… and their poops are magically preserved in the snow. You never see that on anyone’s Instagram feed.
Oh, and you “just bundle up” people? You can join the “I wish it would snow” people in hell. Yes, layers help you stay warm. But it takes 20 minutes to gear up, and you wind up looking like the little brother in A Christmas Story.
I’ll take shorts, a t-shirt and flip-flops any day of the year. (Yes, I know, I live in the wrong city.)
But the top reason I hate snow is this:
That’s my friend Vinnie’s wife’s car. Or it was her car. She’s OK. They live in Maryland, on a country road. Without snow, it’s two lanes wide. But when snow falls, it turns into single track… and when you turn a corner and there’s a FedEx truck barreling down the 20 m.p.h. lane going 40, there’s not a whole lot you can do.
People don’t wreck nearly as much in plain old “cold.” Snow creates all sorts of extra traffic issues.
I know I shouldn’t complain. Most winters, Cincinnati is pretty unscathed by heavy snowfall. That said, if you’re one of those snow lovers, you’re welcome to come to our house and take as much as you’d like from our driveway and yard. We’ll even throw in the doggie “presents” free of charge!
If you need me, I’ll be hibernating until I can play pickleball again.
“Nobody can embargo sunlight. No cartel controls the sun. Its energy will not run out. It will not pollute the air. It will not poison our waters. It’s free from stench and smog. The sun’s power needs only to be collected, stored, and used.”
— President Jimmy Carter, May 3, 1978
L.A. is burning up.
Southern California has been experiencing a protracted dry spell. the rainy season, which generally starts in November, has yet to arrive — since May, just 0.16 inches of rain has fallen in Downtown Los Angeles. Additionally, LA experienced an unusually hot summer.
Droughts, hurricanes, and floods are more extreme.
“Drill, baby, drill” will only make it worse.
We squandered 46 years… we may not have another 46 to spare.
The funeral events for former President Jimmy Carter — who died Dec. 29th at the age of 100 — start today.
The “celebration of life” should continue for generations.
Because while his one-term presidency is largely regarded as ineffective, those four years don’t define him.
What should resonate is the way he lived his other 96 years, especially the 44 that followed his Presidential term. He helped cure diseases, helped make elections work, got on roofs and hammered and nailed, lived a 77-year marriage with Rosalynn that ended with her death in 2023 and taught a Sunday school class in Plains, Ga.
Three and a half million Africans were affected, hospitalized or killed by the Guinea worm in 1987. By 2023 there were 15 cases, total. Carter called it the most rewarding accomplishment of his life, and so was his work to minimize river blindness. He always found affairs of the soil more rewarding than pavement.
from the same post as above
Now let’s talk about those roofs, hammers, and nails.
The Carters demonstrated their commitment to social justice and basic human rights over and over again during their time in the White House. Their resolve only persisted since moving on, most notably through the Carter Center in Atlanta. They also worked on numerous Habitat builds both in the United States and around the world alongside passionate volunteers just like you.
Here is what Carter predicted at the dedication ceremony: “In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy…. A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.”
Would that we had listened to Jimmy. We’d be a lot better off today.
The Carter administration set a goal of deriving 20 percent of U.S. energy needs from such renewable sources by the turn of the century…
By 1986, the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies—recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers.
Yep, Ronald Reagan, the guy who trounced Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. He’s the former President who has a D.C. airport named after him, as well as countless schools, highways and streets.
Reagan’s policies also widened the racial wealth gap.
The history is clear: so-long as the basic architecture of Reagan’s economic vision — lower taxes on the wealthy, less regulation, less unionization — remains in place, closing the racial wealth gap will be hard.
BTW, ol’ Ronnie also had the solar panels taken down in 1986, even though they were working fine.
Curing disease. Providing a pathway to homeownership. Being an advocate for fair elections across the globe. Encouraging the use of renewable energy. Being a devoted husband for 77 years. Teaching Sunday school.
Or, helping the rich get richer at the expense of a social safety net.
Reagan’s tax changes had significant effects, increasing economic inequality across all metrics. These effects have continued to the present day, because Reagan’s tax changes have not come close to being counteracted.
You don’t even need a Mission Purse. You just need to take action.
Don’t take it from me, take it from my writing hero:
When you take action, you become the master of your universe.
“It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how bad… ” Damn straight! No one starts out as a master of their craft. It takes a lot of “bad” to get “good.” Don’t be paralyzed by the fear of “not good enough.”
“Action is hope”… and we could use more of that in our universe, to combat the Dark Side.
It’s time to sharpen our pencils, pull out the ledger and take account of the year we just lived through. How are you tracking on your personal wealth goals?
That’s something they never taught you in Accounting 101. But if you’re using any other measure, you’re doing it wrong.
On Monday (“Festivus!”), I met a couple of friends downtown for happy hour. Because I’m a cheapskate, I parked at a spot off the grid, where there are no parking meters.
When I came back to the car, I found out my “Secret Santa” had left me a lovely present:
“A free upgrade to my car’s air conditioning? You shouldn’t have!”
“And a lovely glass mosaic too! You’re too kind!”
There was absolutely nothing of value visible in the car… and nothing of value in the glove compartment either, as my new friends soon discovered.
(I can’t believe they didn’t want my tire pressure gauge. Or the owner’s manual for a 2009 Honda CR-V. They’ll regret that later.)
Apparently this is the latest m.o. for “window shoppers” (per my new friends in the auto glass replacement business). They don’t have to see anything of value in the car. They just smash a window, quickly fish for goodies, then move on to the next unsuspecting victim. The car thief equivalent of a scratch-off lottery ticket.
So I saved about $9 in parking fees… and am out $250 for a new window. But tbh, it just as easily could’ve happened if I’d parked at a meter. Downtown was pretty much a ghost town that evening. And I’m not going to beat myself up when it’s the would-be thieves who deserve the punishment.
I hope your holiday season wasn’t quite as smashing!
Seth Godin published the post below a couple of weeks ago. But it’s perfect for the gift-giving and gift-getting extravaganza that will happen in most homes tonight and tomorrow:
The things under the tree are just things. And what you already have — especially if you have family and friends — is more than enough.
It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?
“There is no purity for me, no absolute success or failure, and no room for the masterpiece. When I see artists who have made works that are recognized as masterpieces, I see them having to chase those works for the rest of their careers, and I just don’t want that axe to grind. I would rather be seen as an acceptable failure, as the guy that failed consistently and kept going, kept trying, kept exploring. I want to pivot and move and work on multiple things at once, and with that comes a lot of freedom. I think the whole mystery of making art is about choices that are bold.”
Our life can imitate his art. Most of us will never have a “masterpiece.” Which, as Rashid points out, is probably for the best, as having one traps us in a box constructed by others’ expectations.
But we sure as heck can be the person “that failed consistently and kept going, kept trying, kept exploring.”
It’s not the failure that defines us — unless we let it. It’s the keeping going…
Our “newest” car is 8 years old. Because I’m a cheapskate.
Our second newest was a 2014 VW Passat with nearly 110K miles.
For the past year or so, it’s been chugging oil like it was doing Valvoline keg stands at an Indy 500 frat party. Both the dealer and another VW repair shop told us we had two paths forward:
a. get a new engine (~$10K)
b. keep pouring oil down it’s gullet until we were doing it every week.
(So much for that vaunted German engineering… it’s pretty sad when repair shops say “yeah, that’s what happens with this model Passat at about 90,000 miles.”)
We chose Option B. But recently, it needed about $700 worth of repairs. I’ve been known to throw good money after bad before (never should’ve gotten swept up in that Beanie Baby mania…), but I do have my limits. This was the last straw. Time to dump the chump. But where? The thought of listing it on Facebook Marketplace made me break out in hives – I’m rarely on the Zuckerbook, I barely know how to use FB Messenger, and I didn’t want to spend every waking hour responding to queries. And I hate haggling.
I got on one of those “find out your car’s value” sites (Kelley Blue Book or Edmunds or ???) and plugged in the particulars. Given the car’s present state, it was probably worth about a grand. But the website also offered the opportunity to click a button and set up an instant appraisal with CarMax. I figured I had very little to lose, so I signed up.
Two days later, I was in their Cincinnati location. I sat down with a rep, answered a few questions, their tech took it for a test drive, and 20 minutes later I had an offer: $2,500. American!
I felt like this was the real-life version of Monopoly:
They did the paperwork, I signed over the title, and 10 minutes later I had a check in hand… and even though it was 17 degrees outside, I walked down the block to wait for my son to pick me up, as I was afraid they’d realize I’d sold them a lemon and want their money back. For once, I felt like the used car salesman, pulling one over on an unsuspecting customer.
I know CarMax isn’t in the charity business. I’m sure they’ve got some sort of algorithm that tells them they could sell our old hooptie (or, more likely, individual parts of it) for more than $2.5K. But when you go in hoping to squeeze a grand out of a beater, and wind up with 2.5 times that amount, it feels like winning the lottery. Especially when there was zero hassle, and it took less time than the last oil change.
Oh, and when I got home and was sifting through the detritus that I’d cleaned out of the car before I took it to CarMax, I realized I’d forgotten to remove my Band of Horses CD from the CD player. I called CarMax, they tracked the CD down, and my son picked it up on his way home from work later that week. Rock on!
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