Dumb, dumb, dumb!

No pictures in this post.  Who cares to look at a bunch of outraged union members or smug politicians.

The Governor and Legislature of Wisconsin passed a new law that eliminates collective bargaining for government employees.  This was done by a combination of voting and parliamentary maneuvers.  Even though Democrat senators left the state to try stalling the legislation, it passed.

So why dumb?

First a little background on yours truly: I'm politically conservative.  I voted for John McCain.  I also vote for the man, not the party.  I was a member of management for most of my working life.  But after I retired and began writing, I joined the National Writer's Union... mostly for health benefits.

When I was working, I had several contacts with unions.  With one exception they were cordial and ended by helping the company and the workers.  I'll deal with the exception at the end of this essay.

I discovered that working with unions shortened and simplified discussions of pay and benefits for the people working for our company.  But in order for discussions to be productive, it was absolutely necessary for both sides to enter negotiations as members of a team, not as adversaries.  Both the business managers for the unions and the company team were conscious of two important facts:  1) without skilled work, the business could not continue; and 2) if the company went broke, everyone lost.

As managers, we approached negotiations with the desire to make sure our employees maintained a comfortable, sustainable standard of living.   Sometimes the economy or market dictated that raises could not be given, or had to be delayed.  We were luckily not working under the conditions of today.  Never-the-less, there was a year we had to not only not raise our worker's pay, but ask them to pay a larger percentage of their medical benefits.  We backed up our requests (notice, not demands) with audited balance sheets and profit/loss statements.  The business managers worked with us to both find a happy medium and to explain the problem to our unionized employees.

While I was in Japan, I was amazed to see a story reporting that at least one union had told their employing company that they would take a pay decrease for the year.  That was while the Japanese economy was still expanding, but the workers decided their employers need extra margin for operations.

Now let's get back to the one exception to my cordial relations with unions.  I was supervising a job in West Virginia.  The job market there was dismal.  Large numbers of miners and other workers were unemployed.  The task was to sandblast and line a large deionized water tank.  Chicago Bridge and Iron was doing the actual work.

Local rules indicated that at least two of the local union members should be employed on the job.  CB&I had no problem with this.  They hired three helpers at the rate that the national union had recently negotiated with most of the large painting contractors.  We assumed that there was no problem.

Alas, the local business manager showed up and informed us that his people would be paid a much higher hourly rate.  The CB&I foreman told him that was not an option.  The BM stalked off the job threatening both a strike and picket line.

I showed up early the next morning to do some paper work and make a couple of phone calls (this was long before cell phones and my motel was in a very small town.)  The BM was in the parking lot, unloading signs for the picket line.  As a I walked into the office, the workers began to arrive.  The CB&I painters stood aside.  The local guys walked up to the car, talked to the  BM for a couple of seconds, then grabbed the signs and started hitting the BM with them.  He got into his car and drove off while the local painter's helpers broke up the signs.

Not everyone is reasonable.  But breaking up organizations just because you can is not only wrong, it's stupid.

My holiday vacation

Good grief!!! It has been six months since I posted here. How the time has flown by.

To any regular readers, my apology for the delay.

This holiday season was spent with our daughter and grandchildren. They are quite grown now. Granddaughter is in her sophomore year in university and gransdon is ready to graduate high school. Before Christmas, we drove to Telluride. We spent a week skiing and snowboarding there. The photos I am posting are from that time. I took a few. My grandson and his friends took the rest.

The skiing was the best I ever had. It had been almost 25 years since I had skied. It took a few days to get my feet under me. I took some lessons.

Vlad took this photo of me as we wondered which of the peaks at the top of the lift was the most photographed.

After a great week in Telluride, we drove south to Los Alamos on Christmas day. My voice remained in Colorado and is, I suppose, walking home. By the time we reached daughter's home, it was well and truly gone and my cold had come to stay a while.

Daughter and one of grandson's friends trying out skis. Daughter taught skiing on the hill at Pacific, MO while she was in college. Most of the kids had only been on snowboards.

Snowboarding seems to be about aerial stunts, going very fast while barely maintaining control

jumping

and sitting down.

Telluride is a beautiful valley town, surrounded by mountains. The sky is magnificent.

Some of the snow melted, then refroze on the aspens and pines in the area. There are more photos in my file. They will be posted, perhaps, in a later blog.

For now, gentle readers, Happy New Year. May the coming year be filled with all good things for you.

Rio di Janeiro, Brazil

For longer than I've been alive, Rio has been known as a happy city, filled with good restaurants and marvelous night clubs. But there has been a problem growing in all large Brazilian cities for over 30 years. That problem is population!

The countryside has been shipping poor to the cities. Most of them end up in shanty towns called "favelas". 35 years ago, the favela was a place to go and hear spontaneous street music, look at and buy simple art and speak to people who had lived in places the tour groups don't go. The population of these adjuncts has been growing much faster than the city infrastructure. Even in the 1970's the police, fire and medical services were stretched thin.

Let's face it, it takes much less time to make a baby than it does to train a service worker. In a Catholic country, big families are the norm, especially when the family is poor. The fact that there is not food enough, or even space enough does not enter into the calculus of making love and babies. So where do the babies go when they are grown and there is no room at home, no school available and food is sparse? Ask any big city in the United States and you'll have the same answer that you get in Brazil.

Into the street they go. When there are more people than resources to support them, the answer for survival is to join a gang. There, at least, you have protection from other, bigger kids, food to share and, if the gang is so inclined, money for luxuries. As it is in the States, many gangs sell drugs to get that money. They get arms to protect their drugs and money from other gangs. The spiral into random violence and armed police actions descends while the majority of the city's people are unaware that there is a problem.

Now, things have become bad enough to be front page news... If you're in Brazil. It won't be long before the violence is sufficient to get headlines in the United States.

Alas, Rio, that delightful city of Samba and fey jouada has become unsafe. Is there an answer?

I don't know it. But happy Thanksgiving all.

Allergies

Sammi, a neighborhood cat's face

There are plenty of people with allergies. Quite a few of us are allergic to "cats". Actually, people allergic to cats usually have problems with cat dander and saliva. Like most mammals, cats have some dandruff. Some have more than others. A couple of breeds have no dander at all. These are the rarities.

The problem allergen is a glyco protein ( fel d1). This is a molecule consisting of two polypeptide chains. Cats lick themselves clean and leave the saliva on their fur. This dries to an aerosol powder. Of course, petting the cat picks up the fel d1 on your hands.

Neutered male cats produce less fel d1 than those left "intact". In fact there is a possible link between the allergen and kitty testosterone. It may even play some in scent markers.

There are a few things you can do if you want cats at home and have that particular allergy. You can, of course, head for the doctor's office and get shots to deal with your allergy. You can keep an artificial cat, like one of those cute Japanese robot toys.

Another way to reduce allergic symptoms is washing. Wash your hands after playing with the cat. Certainly do not touch your face before washing up. But that is a little one sided, don't you think? Why not democratize the washing process?

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis discovered that washing a cat with distilled water markedly reduced the amount of fel d1 and subsequent allergic symptoms. I wouldn't suggest that you immerse kitty in water unless you are a masochist or have access to full body armor and armored gloves. But using a wash cloth soaked in distilled water to bathe your cat works too. My cats don't seem to mind that kind of washing so long as the cloth is not too wet.

Be nice. Be respectful. Remember that your cats are related to an Egyptian goddess. (Her name is Bast or Bastet. She has a second aspect as a lion, so that respect is not only for her, but a little self serving.)

statue of Bast by Trent Talley

Farmville

Zynga has sent me another offer. I'm posting this one here.

In the past, their offers have been time wasters and they NEVER have made good on one to me. They don't even answer their e-mails.

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If this is typical of the site, I've played my last game with them.

Garden time

This is my sitting place. The rock at the left has a behind sized flat spot where I place mine and enjoy the garden.

It's close to the lower fall and I listen to the restful sound of the water falling. The fall is low enough so goldfish can migrate upstream to live under the rock arch.

Watching the little fellows congregate, chase each other around and munch on the algae covered rocks is relaxing. It's also amusing to count how many are in each favorite swimming spot. It can be a bit challenging since they do swim around and regroup constantly.

The rock arch has a fairly deep pool downstream and there is a little, stone bridge down from there. Both places, as well as the rocks along the sides offer adequate hiding places for the fish eaters that frequent our neighborhood.

But we do lose a few to the smarter ones.

The rock arch is downstream from the upper fall. We designed our little river so you can hear water falling and rushing everywhere along it. Both guest bedrooms open onto a fall.

My sitting place offers good views of the butterflies that come to munch on zinnia flowers or lay eggs on the dill.

I'm sorry to say that my sitting rock is also the hiding place of a local ground squirrel. He amscrays when I approach, but I'm working on a program of trust and greed (peanuts) to get him to stick around a little longer.

Even during the day, I have the moon and stars in view.

Nothing disturbs our sleeping dragon.

Hope you enjoyed this mini-tour of my garden.

various things

Yesterday, I spent most of my time in meetings. They were meetings about things that interest me, but they were meetings.

A purple cone flower blossom

But this morning, the weather was dry and out to the garden I hied meself. I yanked about a bushel of grass and trimmed lots of heads off our purple cone flowers (echinacea). This evening, I harvested the seeds and began to package them. If anyone would like some, send me a self addressed stamped envelope. Better make the postage for two ounces. I'll poke an envelope full of seeds with instructions for planting in yours and post it back.

Harvesting cone flower seeds is pleasant, mindless work. The cones dry and the petals fall off. What is left is a ball of seeds on a stem. When the seeds are ready for harvest, they displace easily and it is almost like stroking a stiffish puff ball. I let the seed fall into a sack, then repackage it in 3"x6" envelopes.

The cone flower is a native flower to the prairies of North America. It reseeds itself, so is considered a perennial. The nicest thing is that it blooms most of the summer, when the spring flowers have faded. Best time for planting is early fall. It is a light lover, so stick in places that get full sun.

While I was harvesting, I thought. A couple of recent news stories gave me pause. A man rammed a police car twice, then ran off into some fields. He was easily captured. He had firearms in his car. Since he was a convicted felon, that was charged against him as well as the traffic foolishness.

A woman was speeding frantically. When she was pulled over, her back seat was full of drugs.

A man set fire to the house he was renting. The fire department found drugs in the house, called the police and when they arrived, the man was found, sitting in his car, watching the fire.

These things reminded me that crooks are not the brightest bulbs in the box. Where oh where is Dr. Moriarty? Are there no more master minds of crime? Had Sherlock Holmes been around today, his client list would have been very slim indeed.

The political silly season has arrived. Each candidate vies for the title of most abusive and least substantial. I think Fran has the right idea. Don't vote for Democrats. Don't vote for Republicans. Don't vote for anyone who is already in office. If we do that enough times, maybe the people who run (you have to be a little off to want to be an elected official) will get the idea.

It amazes me how men and women who are so darned bright, head of their class in university, Eagle Scout, and all the rest can just let things go by them the way it is here. How many congress critters do you supposed read all 2,000 pages of that blasted health bill? Heck, the media are just now getting finished with the fine print and finding the little holes negotiated into the law. Perhaps we should insist that no elected official many voice an opinion or vote on a law unless he or she has read the whole thing and had the parts they don't understand explained to them by experts.

Okay, that's enough of that. Thanks for looking in. Please e-mail me if you don't have my snail mail.