The Mangy Fox

While I was in DC, excitement was happenin' at home. Early in the week the dogs started a fox, near the business storage sheds across the street. They hared off after him, naturally. Suzanne was walking them, and they didn't respond to her recall at first. But they didn't chase him far, I guess, before they came back. As Suzanne tells it, the fox ran into our own yard, and stopped at the top of the hill, just outside the dog fence. And then just stood there and surveyed the yard, as if it were his own.

As she described the fox, he was mangy, and thin, with a rat tail (no hair on his tail). Definitely not looking good. So she kept the cats in. The fox seemed to be hanging about, and she was worried about the cats - that he might be stalking them.

End of the week, and I come home. I'm willing to let the dogs out to seek fox. I have enough faith they will come home, and we don't want this guy hanging about. The cats are more outdoor than indoor, even though we make sure they are inside at night. Tommy cat is not happy staying inside, and Trina is more nervous than usual. Kept inside they would bug us. Too much nervous energy.

So, Thursday evening, and I take the dogs out fox hunting. We circle the edges of the back yard, then head across the street to the business sheds and the patch of woods behind them. Our usual run route passes directly behind this small patch of trees and shrubs. We see nothing.

Friday morning, and Tommy is jumping on all the bookshelves and whatnot with energy to spare. Trina I let outside, in the dog yard. She is reliable, and generally stays in the yard, and shows cautious fear appropriately, like for traffic, or strange dogs. Tommy, I know, will go across the street soon after he is let out. His territory is larger, and one of his fav hangouts is exactly where the dogs first flushed the fox. I take the dogs out, to "scope" the area. No sooner do I get outside, then Klinger sights something across the front yard and bolts. He is in full-on visual chase acceleration. Sara follows him, close behind. They have flushed the fox from the front yard - very near the side entrance to the dog yard, where Trina is.

I see a red blur escape across the road, in full flight, with the dogs close behind. I go to the dog yard and check on Trina. She is in quiet, cautious, attentive pose, keeping a small profile - so I know she had seen the fox. The dogs are stalled across the street, milling about. I get my bike so I can follow, and head across the street.

I don't get far. The dogs had lost the fox at the first storage building. They don't seem to have any idea where to head from here. But that is fine with me. My intent is not to catch the fox, but just to chase him away so he goes somewhere else to live.

Saturday evening, and we run another check, at dusk. Back yard, clear. Cross the street, and the dogs head straight for that first shed. I can see no likely entry or exit, no foxhole. The smell around and explore, eagerly. As I move farther down towards the other end of the shed row, I see a brown blur heading around the other end of the building. The dogs haven't seen a thing, so I round them up and go to the other side of the building and the big field there. They mill about again, very interested, but not really finding anything. I am quite sure the blur was the fox - it was the right size, but the light is failing. It is almost dark, and it is too dark to see color. Finding nothing, we head home.

On Sunday, we head out for our usual run, which, as I said, passes these places where the fox was spotted. I take the dogs around the back yard before we go, to run a fox check. We check the other places as we pass them, but turn up nothing.

On the way home from our run, a walker flags me down. He is eager to warn me of the "mangy fox, with a ratty tail" that he, and other guests at the hostel next door saw on Saturday. One hostel guest even left out a bit of hot dog for the fox to eat (oh, lord, some people are idiots about wild critters). He describes the fox as odd in appearance, unusually bold and calm ("like it was a pet"), and mangy. The description fits with Suzanne's. I haven't seen enough besides a blur to know anything myself.

So, all week I go out at least once a day on a "fox hunt". No further sightings, but the dogs are "critter alerting" in the middle of the night, every single night. I get up and let them out - no critters spotted. The cats stay in, mostly. I let Trina out, but she stays out a couple of hours, then comes back inside for the day.

If the fox is rabid, as he might be from the "bold" description of his behavior, he shouldn't last much longer than a week. So, on Friday, a week after I got in this, I run a fox check in the morning, then I let Tommy out. He'll come in for a midday snack, and we will close the door then. We follow this pattern through the weekend. On Sunday morning, I'm running the morning fox check, and I meet a neighbor who is about to walk her dog. She lives farther down the road, about half a mile from my house.

I tell her I've got the dogs out on a "fox check". She reports seeing a fox a few days earlier. The description is the same: mangy. I ask "rat tail?", and she answers "Yeah!". But this is farther down the road, so that is probably good.

On Sunday night, as Graeme is driving to work, he sights the fox - or one of a similar description: a mangy fox with a rat tail. By the way, a fox's fur is frequently poor in the summer, but a healthy fox would still have a good coat, and a full bushy tail. A hairless, ratty tail is unusual. Where Graeme has spotted the fox is closer to where the neighbor lives and spotted him. It is a little further down the road, but the road turns up the hill there, so through the woods it is about the same distance as the neighbor's house. Still less than a mile away, or maybe a mile. But it is a little ways, and hopefully enough. I'll continue to run fox checks before we let the cats out. There is a good side to the additional sighting: the fox is likely not rabid. There is a bad side, as well. He isn't that far away that he might not be at our house hunting. "Danger, Will Robinson, danger!"

Next week: Wild Concord grapes - an excellent year!

Pick a Peck of Poison Ivy


I start with the pre-exposure stuff, spreading it on my forearms and calves. I think about putting some on my face and neck - but I don't like having stuff on my face or neck, so I don't put any there. But it is designed to stop the poison ivy sap from getting to the skin. Long pants are next, and a long-sleeved t-shirt. No belt, nothing in any pockets. When I am done, the clothes will get stripped off in the laundry room and put straight into the washing machine. I set out two special soap formulas in the bathroom, ready for the washup after.

I continue gathering what I will use. The heavy-duty rubber gloves, the latex gloves to use as a glove liner, a second long-sleeved t-shirt to wear as a top layer, a cloth to tie around my head and cover my scalp, and to absorb the sweat. As I put my shoes on, I tuck my pants into the tops of the socks.

First, we have to do a small digression: the fox hunt for the morning. I'll post a bit about this in a few days. I take the dogs out to check the area around our house to make sure there is no fox close by. The cats want to go outside, and we don't trust the fox who was spotted recently.

The day is getting warm now. Back at the house, I put on the 2nd shirt. I make sure I've drunk some extra water, as I won't be able to do so as long as I work. On with the first gloves, and the 2nd pair. I tie on my headcloth, and I am ready to start:

picking poison ivy.

My European friends probably don't know what this is, but my American friends will know - this is nasty stuff. Not the plant itself, as poison ivy is simply an averagely aggressive vine, and rather pretty to look at. Nope, not the plant. It is the rash you get from touching it that is the pain in the ass. The vine releases plant oils when touched, and those cause severe rashes. Sensitivity varies between individuals, but the more you are exposed to it, the MORE sensitive you become. I get regular cases, usually mild, just from the animals strolling through the borders and hedges where the ivy thrives, and then coming home for me to pick up or pet. A couple of weeks ago I had a patch on my face, just in time to go down to D.C for a big trade show. Yucka.

Poison ivy loves the environment around here, and this has been a bumper year. I didn't get out early with the Roundup, so I have to pick it out of the flowerbeds and yard borders. Even when I go after it with the Roundup, I usually dress up something like today, although perhaps not quite so prepared. But even prepared, I may get some rash. We won't know for 3 days if I have managed to avoid it or not. It can take up to 3 days to start showing.

But I get a full bushel of ivy plants by the time I am done. It takes me over an hour, more like two. I am hot and sweaty before I am done. I have to avoid wiping the sweat off my face so I don't spread any of the plant sap on my face or get it in my scalp. I have to carefully pull up the vines by the roots, to get as much as possible so it does not just grow back when I am done.

I feel good when I am done, as I have a good haul of vines in the basket, and that means they aren't in the yard. It was hard work, but worth it. I did this the first year we were in this house, and I had kept it pretty clean with a little maintenance since, but for some reason, the ivy came back strong this year.

I pull off the heavy rubber gloves, and hang them on a fence. I set my digging tool next to them, and turn the sprinkler on them. (For those of you who don't know poison ivy, water dissolves the oil that causes the rash, but you have to wash for a good while. The latex gloves go in the garbage, and I strip down in the laundry room. The clothes go in the wash, and I head to the shower. The first wash is an application designed for poison ivy. It goes on without water, full strength, to help dissolve the oils. On top of that I use a paint-cleaning soap, which is also good at cutting oily stuff on skin. Then the shower. I spend a full twenty minutes in the shower, and hope that I've done enough to cut whatever plant oils got through all my protection! I've done this before, and still ended up with a rash! But, this year I was more thorough than usual, so we will see.

But I tell ya, there's a happy moment for the day! Picking a peck of poison ivy! Done!

Mon Sep-02-2013. Update. The preventitive measures were almost completely successful. I got a spot of blisters and rash in a few places, but in all cases quite small - like a small streak of blisters on my scalp, and a pencil eraser size blister on my ankle. So, no misery, (sigh of relief)!

The perfect days of winter

We are in the perfect days of winter. There is no time, in my mind, when winter is more beautiful.

A few days ago, we had a perfect snow. We got 6-8 inches of powdery, dry, fluffy, beautiful white stuff. Enough to cover everything in beautiful, pristine, white. But dry and powdery enough so that clearing the driveway in the morning was not super hard. We got the beautiful looks, but not so much work.

Add to that, we are in the days when we can see the daylight growing. Equinox was way back on Dec 21 or 22. We get a little more daylight every day. We have had about 50% sunny days, so I notice, very much, the longer days.

Additionally, the temps have been low enough to freeze the ponds, and keep the snow on the ground, but not so cold that it is a life threatening exercise to walk down the street. We've gotten some wind, which has added to the beauty of the winter. We don't have much snow, but it is cold enough that what snow we have is blowing and drifting with the wind.

Since we don't have so much, what we do have can be packed easily. The dogs and I went to a local trailhead today, and the trails were all packed for walking. Lovely!

Like I said: the MOST beautiful days of winter. Some sun, some snow, days getting longers, temps tolerable - not severe. Lovely!

A restaurant review for New Year's. I actually was at this restaurant about a month or two past. But, I needed to write a review for them, as they were awesome. And, VERY few restaurants make it into my "awesome" category. This was posted to Yelp.

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There are VERY few restaurants in the world that get 5 stars from me. And, they won't necessarily coincide with your Michelin ratings. I look for exceptional quality, excellent taste, freshness, good quantity for the dollar, and a certain adventuresome quality. I like spicy, but simple flavors are good, too.

So, for instance, Marina's on Overton in Memphis, who specialized in a rotating Mediterannean cuisine (menu changed monthly) always did well. Under the original owners, they never served me a dish I did not like. Then there was a cinder-block crab bar in Maryland - where nothing was more than utterly blue collar plastic plate except the crab, in many glorious forms. By the bucket, or crab cakes, it was marvelous, and I could have it with a Yuengling, which is a very respectable beer, even for a lover of craft brewing like myself.

The exterior of "The Local Table" is unremarkable. What got my attention was a signboard outside that said "Local Beer Friday" - or something like that. I had a free Friday night, so I figured what the heck. Things had been going well the past month, and I deserved a reward. And, I got it, in spades.

The architecture and interior design of The Local Table struck me as a little odd at first - but it is what they could make out of converting a building from one purpose to another. You enter a narrow hall space, which opens up into a surprisingly large dining area and bar. While I prefer my space a little more personal and cozy, once seated, I realized the interior designer had done their job well. I was comfortable, and the lighting was good (not harsh, no glare, etc.).

The menu offers a good selection - some safer offerings along with stuff for the more adventurous. I picked the "Mini Crab Cakes" for an appetizer, and a pint of something from the tap. I think that first pint was a summer wheat offering. It was decent, but the crab cakes were a shocker. The crab cakes were small, but not "mini", and they were every bit on a par with that cinder-block bar in Maryland. Firm crab was the main ingredient, and I was a happy man!

For dinner, I had an old, old favorite of mine - Chicken Piccata. Now, keep in mind, I cut my culinary teeth on Chicken Piccata, at the feet of a teaching chef from Original Joe's in San Francisco. More than a couple decades ago, mind you. I have, since that time, usually avoided Chicken Piccata, as it is usually a disappointment to me. But, tonight, I was AGAIN pleased, and satisfied! Just the right amount of capers, only the very lightest breading, all made a pleasing lemony, LIGHT presentation where I could still taste the chicken. And, it was cooked properly, just enough, not overcooked and rubbery.

Oddly enough, it was when I tried the vegetable accompaniment that I realized the chef knew what he was doing - and wasn't just lucky with a couple of good recipes. I had spinach. It was simple, no fancy spices, just good flavor. It was only cooked JUST past the wilting point, and the stems still had firm and crunchy bits. It was perfect.

The real trial for me will be how well the other dishes do when I return. It is reliable quality that gets my all-time 5 stars, but the impression of this dinner could not have been better. Wonderful job, kudos to the chef, the owner, and the staff.

Oh - I only have one complaint, and one bit of advice. The thing that got me in? "Local Beers"? We need a little more variety. What was offered was good, and top quality, but not exactly my taste. Hmmm, pretty petty, in retrospect!  The chef is from the minimalist school of presentation, where beauty is more important than quantity. He still provides a decent quantity, though, and I like to be full when I leave a restaurant. He provided excellent and more than excellent presentation in the dishes I ordered, and respectable quantity. For my sake, I hope they continue to be mindful that quantity is more important to at least some diners, such as myself!

Tue Dec-25-2012

'Tis the season - and there were some good messages in 2012.

Just a little while ago I ran across a link to a blog that rated the "5 Best Ads of 2012". And, I'm glad the author went to the trouble to post this - some of these ads are worth revisiting. For moral reasons.

For instance, the first ad listed (btw the page is best-ads-of-2012)
is a P&G ad. Now, P&G is probably one of the biggest, least personal conglomerates in the world. Yet, they DO make products that are aimed at our personal use - and for our use as families. So their ad, which is a tear-jerker, finding glory in Mom-hood, is definitely noteworthy. They do well to remind us of the importance of moms, and therefore, of our families. This 2 minute ad spans the trials and rewards of motherhood from 2 to 16. And does an amazing job of capturing same. Definitely worth watching.


The next 3 adverts listed, are, in my mind, ho-hum in the big picture. But the last ad listed brings us to my reason for this post. He lists Nike's "Greatness" series of ads, and notes the "Jogger" ad as his "best" Greatness - the jogger. And, once you get over laughing at this obese kid jogging, the morality of this ad - and the rest of the series is truly remarkable. It is a state of thinking that we all: zen, Christian, Jew, Muslim, and scientific, hold to be honorable and moral, attainable, and worthy of emulation. Greatness is one attempting to achieve what they are capable of. A person stretching, not the limits of the larger culture, but the limits of their own life. Stretching to a point that is not measured by what other people achieve.

And I think every one of us will agree that this is a wonderful objective, and a wonderful guiding light for our lives. Now, if I could just get over the fact that these wonderful and sentimental sermonettes have been delivered by a company I consider to be one of the premier examples of amoral corporate culture and greed, all would be well with the world. But, just like the African slum city pictured in some of the "Greatness" series (the bmx ad was one), such warts on life are with us. We are richer for having these ads.

Whether we are richer in total, for having these ads in the same world that their amoral parent lives in, I do not know.

Btw - very few of you will know what my gripe is against Nike. Way back, I felt they did dirt to Bill Bowerman, who invented the waffle sole, and "co-founded" Nike - but I'm not sure the relationship was all as good as the title "co-founder" suggests. I was friends, for a time, with one of his children - and that person was a guiding light in my life to this day. Bill Bowerman, even though we never met, changed my life (for the better, of course!), because of the child he raised.  The wiki on the life of this famous coach is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bowerman.

By itself, I suppose this doesn't mean much. But, when I realize the same company sells hugely overpriced glitz sportshoes, and when I consider the markets that buy them, or steal them, I find little that is admirable. When I see that their ads, and their posturing, do not represent moral beliefs, but corporate profiteering, I find little there that I want to take home.

Sure, and you know I call myself an economist, which means that profit is the #1 goal, right? Yeah to all that, but that doesn't mean it has to be your ONLY goal. In the nature of economics, it is natural that companies with the strongest profit motive will become the biggest companies out there. This is why, as a society, we have regulations on companies and people in business. Having profit as the predominant goal is fine. Having profit as the goal so preeminent that other goals are interchangeable and complete malleable is not fine. The ultimate result of profit being too dominant is a world that is NOT beneficial to the most people.

2012 has been a banner year for examples. We have seen an athlete, so driven by the desire to win, that the desire came in front of any ideas of fair play and honest competition, we have seen that athlete exposed, and it has rocked the world.  Lance Armstrong was driven to win. And, he was so driven that he forgot any other rules or morals along the way. Now we know that Lance Armstrong used illegal techniques to win, to give himself an unfair advantage. He cheated. And it worked.

Nike is remarkable for having been a company with a strong profit motive. They wanted to make a mark on the running shoe world. They have done that. They are the #1 running shoe manufacturer. To what degree is their #1 position, and the #1 position of Lance Armstrong similar? All I can attest to is what I see - and what I see seems to me that the profit motive for Nike is like the desire to win for Lance. Worth anything, anything at all.

You know, I started this post with the idea of saying "these are wonderful ads, and we should keep stuff like this in mind, every day, and every moment of every day." But it has kinda devolved, because of my beliefs about the company that made those ads.

Well, the ads are a good example of positive thinking, and positive living. We need to do that. All of us. The crap that comes with, we have to take in stride, and figure out how best to live with the shitty neighbor. Metaphorically. The ads are nice. And we SHOULD all remember to find our greatness. I just think I'll try and find mine without the brand that made the commercials.

Cheers!

Last time I wrote about different kinds of falsehoods, and how they applied to the politics in this country for the past 40 years. A lot of people believe what Romney and Ryan are saying - and I am appalled. I was more appalled by Bush 2, but I didn't have this blog then - and speaking out back then was certain to get me labeled anti-American (at the least, as I recall, Cheney and others were bandying the "traitor" label about a little), a reversion to the divisiveness of Vietnam.

As a cyclist, I have been following developments in the Armstrong saga. In this article: by David Walsh, about Lance  Armstrong, Walsh describes a press conference where we now have irrefutable proof that Armstrong was lying through his teeth. Yet he was so convincing and reassuring. He said exactly the right things - "we will fight against doping with all our strength" - "I have done no doping, now or ever". All the people speaking out back then were just bitter, ugly, losers. And he said it so we would believe it.

Every politician has to lie sometime. It comes with the territory. The objective, at least for me, is to find the ones who manage to lie the least, and to live up to general Christian principles of society.

I haven't seen a Republican do that since Barry Goldwater. Nixon surely didn't - he intentionally kept the Vietnam war going, and got our soldiers killed - so he could get re-elected. Reagan had people swapping dope for arms. Not to mention his huge debt, when he had gotten elected on a smaller government platform. Reagan was a two-edged sword, I will say that. He did try to do something about the debt by using sleight-of-hand to raise taxes. But his changes made the rich richer, and the poor poorer. Bush 2 was a disaster. He took something that was working and ran it into a tree, head-on. And he got us into two wars. I think one was justifiable - Afghanistan. But he abandoned the Afghan front to go to Iraq, and the consequence was that the Taliban stepped in and took over, in large part because of the power vacuum WE left. We are still in Afghanistan because of the mess he left us.

Just like Lance Armstrong. They have lied, but they have done it so well, many of us are believing them.

Liars, fools, fanatics, and the ignorant. Subtitle: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. -- Mark Twain
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We can put all of our untruths in 3 baskets. The first basket is for liars - it isn't true, and they know it isn't true.

The second basket is for when folly is involved. Folly is when a person ignores some basic part of reality that tells them something isn't true. We either call these people foolish, or a fanatic.

The third basket is for ignorance. I think that speaks for itself. So, we have liars, fools, fanatics, and the ignorant.

Now I want to show you a graph I ran into for the first time in the early 1990's, in economics classes. It made it instantly obvious to me that a whole class of politicians fit into one of the above labels. 

 




  You see, we had politicians pointing fingers at one side, shouting slogans like "Tax and Spend!" Easy to remember and repeat. But, it wasn't true. They fooled a lot of people with it, and their inheritors are still trying to use the same formulas. Let's take a look. The graph above is for a 50 year period, starting near the end of WW2. Obviously, Truman brought the deficit war-time spending right down. Things were pretty steady, until LBJ, and he has a little blip caused by Vietnam. Then we have Nixon, and he triples LBJ's deficit spending. Ford doubled what Nixon did! Carter kept things on an even keel, and even brought in a slight decrease. But Reagan looks like the Himalayas compared to everything in the history of the US up till then, except WW2. (We'll look at WW2 in the next graph.) Bush1 piles it on, and it climbs higher, until Clinton.  And Clinton got the bus running again. In the first graph, we only see the start of what Clinton did. On to the 2nd graph.




These are the same numbers, but over an 80 year period. Clinton actually brought us back to historical spending patterns - a balanced budget, and paying off our debts properly. Even though the budget was in the positive, you see, we still had a lot of debt to get rid of. Bush 2 blew that away, inserting tax cuts that did not benefit the economy, and bank deregulation that DID affect the economy, just a few years later, but not in a way that most of us could benefit from. Bush2 sent spending and debt so high that the first graph looks like little pimples now. Which is why I showed this to you in 2 graphs. I just don't think you can see the significance of Nixon, Ford, and Reagan in the big graph.

Now I will show you graph 3.

This graph shows the income tax rate for the top 1% over the last 65 years. A slow decrease for the top folks, and a big jump down with Reagan. (Remember 'trickle-down' economics? It didn't work then, and it doesn't work now.) Now, let me tell you a couple of numbers to go with this. Reagan has long had a reputation as a tax cutter. On the other hand, some people have begun to point out that Reagan raised taxes by other methods. I offer two numbers, and I'll let you decide whether he raised taxes or lowered them. In 1981, when Reagan took office, the IRS took in 407 billion in income tax. In 1988, when Reagan left office, the US received 607 billion from income tax. That is a 50% increase. In 1981, the US had 228 million people. In 1988, that had only increased to 244 million. That is less than one percent increase.

If you ask me, that means that the middle class was poorer because of Reagan's tax adjustments, and the upper class was richer. I will say this, Reagan did see that it was important to balance the budget. The history shows us he did try to make that happen.



In 2001, when Bush 2 took office, we had finally set aside decades of mismanaged finances, and we were on the road to fiscal health. Clinton raised taxes slightly, and you can see that on graph #3. But I sure don't remember that it hurt! I DO remember the Reagan tax adjustments, and I DO remember that they DID hurt. I also remember the Bush2 tax CUTS, and I remember I did not notice them at all. And I'll bet you didn't either.

Remember what I said in the title? If it ain't broke, don't fix it? Well, I've watched what people have been telling me over the years. I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that one side fit real well into one of those baskets I talked about at the start.

In 1937, FDR was forced by his political opposition into cutting spending. And it showed. FDR took unemployment from MORE than 25% (that is one in every 4 people was unemployed), to 14%. In 1937, it shot back up. By 1939, the recovery was underway again, employment was up. It was still not healthy, as unemployment was still in the double digits, but it had improved. It took the massive spending of WW2 to put an end to the Great Depression.

But we can learn from this. FDR had no history of economic management to draw on. We do. The messages to reduce spending TODAY are the same ones FDR got in 1937. And, we also KNOW our recovery has not finished yet. That is obvious.

We can also see, that we have paid off seemingly insurmountable debt before. Truman did it. I don't know if you remember the end of the Reagan years - I do. Interest was high, and so was the debt. The pundits and experts were saying we could never pay it all off before 2050! And then only if we basically went on an anorexia level fiscal diet. Clinton did it, and we didn't suffer. And guess what? When all that debt freed up, and we had a better balance on the books? Business skyrocketed. Investment was everywhere. Which made everything even better, with MORE government income as a result.

So, I look around, and I see people who were NOT standing up and shouting about the spending and debt happening in 2002 and 2005, and they are shouting about it now. These are the same people, and their children, who were telling us lies about the economy before. Some of them are fanatics, some are fools, some are liars, and some are ignorant.

I'm going to trust the people whose actions have spoken for them. The same people who have consistently shown more responsibility towards fixing our economy and running a tight fiscal ship. The people who do less name-calling, and more doing. When it comes to politics, unfortunately, actions do not speak louder than words. I wish they did. We need first to take things back to where they were when they weren't broke. Start with taxes. Clinton found a good level. He was paying off our debt, and running a responsible government. We weren't hurting! People calling for more tax cuts, or even KEEPING the Bush tax cuts, acting like fools. HISTORY is there for us to read, and it is obvious that the constant tax cutting is not increasing our income.