Mark Byron

Liberal Virtues

I just got back from a funeral for the mom of my friend and frequent commenter Anne Wolfe. The chapel in the Methodist church I grew up was SRO; there were so many folding chairs needed, that I told Eileen they needed to bribe the fire marshal to look the other way.

Anne's a smart, good-hearted liberal librarian, and her apple seems to have fallen very close to her mom's tree. She was eulogized as a loving, good-hearted mom, worker and church lady who had a heart for the least of these and saw the good side of folks. Add a healthy dose of feminism (the empowering women type rather than the man-hating "feminazi" stereotype) and a nature-loving streak and I can see where Anne's liberalism came from.

Those are liberal virtues, but they are also virtues, period. We're supposed to care for the needy. We're supposed to treat gals in the workforce as equals rather than second-class creatures. We're supposed to look after God's creation rather than trash it. 

How you apply those virtues is a point of contention. Government programs that look after the needy can be wasteful and stifle initiative, anti-discrimination laws can go awry in having every position mirroring the population to a T, and environmental laws if poorly done can stifle development and freedom that are not seemingly worth the modest gains for Mother Nature.

That conservative caveat said, those laws are generally done from virtuous desires. There can be a bit of jealousy and envy in some of the "afflict the comfortable" vibes, but by and large, liberal's hearts are often in the right place.

Mrs. Wolfe would have probably voted for Clinton had she gotten her absentee ballot in before she passed on. Not everyone voting for Hillary is a devil-worshiping, communist SOB, as a lot of folks are voting for her for virtuous reasons. Likewise, a lot of good, God-fearing, salt-of-the-earth folks are voting for Trump for noble reasons, feeling that despite his many flaws, he'd be better for the country than Clinton.

In short, there are a lot of good people voting for the "bad guy" whoever you think the bad guy is. 

Also, it's worth remembering that people by and large have good sides. Whatever the negative stereotype of a group is, the average member of that group will be good parents, hard workers and generally get along with their neighbors. Only a handful of Muslims are terrorists and only a small percentage of black guys are trouble-makers. However, quite a few folks are afraid of Muslims and black youth due to those stereotypes.

Yes, we do have a sin nature. However, we're also made in the image of God. It wouldn't hurt to see the latter a bit more often.

To Serve

I'm in an odd spot right now. I'm looking for a way to best serve God.

That seems a bit idealistic and self-serving rather than God-serving, but I'm hitting a wall in my life. It has been almost seven years since I had a full-time job and a year since I left the part-time tutoring job that was my primary outlet since losing that college teaching job in 2009.

I'd like to help in church, but have few good outlets available. My nerves don't deal with noise and hyperactivity well, so children's ministry isn't a good fit, especially if Children's Church is more high-octane and high volume than not. I'm not a church elder, so teaching adults isn't an option, and I don't have any significant musical talent to be a part of their music team. I'm not a handyman. My office skills don't have any significant outlets given that they have a church secretary, and as a guy, I would likely have not been considered for such a position.

I might be able to do something small, like usher or help with the sound system, but the greeter-types that do that already are more jovial than I and I would be starting from scratch with sound.

What can I do in the church? Not too much, at least not in the church I'm attending currently.

What can I do outside the church? Not too much, either. 

I'm blocked from college teaching for the time being, given that anxiety attacks drove me out of the classroom in 2009. I'm learning how to handle those better, but the trend towards wanting practitioner-teachers precludes me, since I've not had a chance to have a non-academic position in finance and am unlikely to get a chance to have one at age 55. I'd have to find a school that is cool with no finance experience and will give me a third chance to get back into the classroom after being found wanting twice before.

I wouldn't mind teaching at the K-12 level, but lack both experience and a education degree. Some states let you teach without a ed degree, but Michigan is not one of them. I jumped through the hoops to get Florida certification a decade ago, but failed to convince a school to hire me after a dozen interviews.

I could try subbing, but that won't provide a living wage sufficient to get out of my parent's house. It could be an avenue of service if I want to kiss having a place of my own goodbye and I could manage to handle a bunch of unruly kids who love to terrorize subs (or any authority figure, for that matter, my classmates were death to subs 40 years ago and today's kids are likely no better if not worse).

I have an accounting degree. That at least has gotten me some nibbles. I've had two interviews in the last month, one that turned me down and one that I'm waiting to here back from. Those two interviews for accounting jobs are the first since coming back to Midland in early 2010.

I have accounting experience, but none that fits a normal accounting subset. I did the books for my own computer store and ran herd over a variety of Medicare and Medicaid issues for a hospital for three years, but not the "3 years of payroll/2 years of accounts receivable/2 years of adjusting entries" niches that employers are looking for. Entry-level jobs are few and far between and are most often reserved for new college grads rather than misfit former college professors with a PhD in Finance trying to earn a living.

Thus, when we get sermons pushing us to use our talents and serve, I ask "where?"

I'm not adverse to hard work, but I'm not in great shape to do manual labor or work that would keep me on my feet for hours on end. I've gone through stress tests at the hospital this week as a prologue to getting an exercise regime going, but it will take months to get to a point where I can keep up with an on-your-feet job. Then, I'd have to find someplace who could actually use me as opposed to some teenager with less experience and less scruples.

I took a stab at insurance sales, but I'm too honest to be a telemarketer; it just didn't work for my spirit.

I can write. Facebook might not me linking to this since I don't have a following for the page and don't want to make it a capital F Facebook Page quite yet, but I can write. Is that my service?

Or is merely being an example of perseverance, of not giving up and looking for some pills to expedite meeting my Maker? There are times where I feel of such little use that the idea (very briefly) comes to mind, only to be banished with the idea that I am of value and I am of use. What that use is is very elusive.

Center City...Not So Central Anymore

Urban demographic stats point to the suburbs and exurbs growing while the central part of big cities are stagnant at best. This New Geography piece points to changes in the early 2010s continuing in that direction, contrary to urban planners' dreams of luring millennials and others into the urban core. Other than New York, not so much for the 2013-2014 timeframe.

Midland is far from a major urban area, but I'm seeing that dynamic play out of South Saginaw Road in Midland. That's our baby-boomer era business district just north of Dow Chemical skein of plants on the south side of town and just west of Dow's corporate HQ. The fast food restaurants and our K-Mart are still there, but other, more upscale businesses have deplanted and move on the north side of town by Midland Mall that went in about a quarter-century ago.

The Waldenbooks is now a pawn shop. The Sweet Onion (a nice-but-affordable restaurant) was town down and replaced by an auto-parts store. Ponderosa was turned into a CVS just recently, also knocking out the old Baskin-Robbins building that had turned into a Papa Johns as of late. The Chrysler dealership just north of the Dow complex relocated a few years ago to the north edge of the mall quadrant; the old site has yet to be repurposed.

As I was driving up Saginaw this morning, I did a double-take at the vacant lot that was Midland Ford, in the center of the South Saginaw district just south of Midland High. They had moved to the east edge of the mall quadrant, just down the street from the soccer complex marking the eastern edge of that area, late this summer. Once the move was made, they turned to tearing down the old building, which appears to have finished in the last week or so.

That evolution of towns isn't unique to Midland. When I was in Winter Haven, I recall being told of the older mall south of downtown getting torn down and replaced by free-standing big-boxers. Lexington's Turfland mall is awaiting that same fate, while Lexington Mall has been repurposed as a satellite site for a megachurch in town; an older mall in Lakeland had the same fate. Midland's old Circle Mall (too small to be a destination, as it turned out) got repurposed as the police station a quarter century ago.

The new (at least new to this older-timer) mall has brought a lot standard mall-quadrant stores and restaurants, giving a lot of new choices that we would have had to drive to Fashion Square Mall's quadrant in Saginaw to get in my younger years. However, seeing the South Saginaw area (rechristened "Center City" by our city fathers) deteriorate and degrade is a bit unnerving.

Goodbye, Dow Corning

...at least as a separate entity. It had been a corporate partnership (a "joint venture" with the company 50% owned by each) between Dow Chemical and Corning "glass", specializing in ceramics and other silicone-based products. Its fifteen minutes of infamy came when their silicone breast implants had issues, forcing it into Chapter 11 for a time.

Amidst the news of the merger with DuPont came news that Dow was buying out Corning's share of Dow Corning.

Both companies have been a part of the joint venture for more than 70 years, and the announcement illustrates Dow’s commitment to its company-wide goal of cleaning up joint ventures, Liveris said.

Dow Corning has a separate HQ building just southeast of Midland. My high school best-buddy's dad worked at Dow Corning as a research chemist, so I wound up getting a refresher course in the fact that Dow Corning was it's own critter, and one shouldn't get slopping and refer to DC employees as "working at Dow."

That distinction will be moot once this goes through, as Dow Corning will be a full subsidiary of Dow (and eventually DowDuPont if their deal goes through).

DowDuPont's deal will likely get the white-glove treatment from the FTC, as merging two sixty-billion-dollar companies (rounding to the nearest 10 billion, Dow's a bit over and DuPont's a bit under) in the same industry should wave a big enough red flag to have a herd of bulls charging towards Midland and Wilmington; VP Biden's commute home might look like Pamplona.

However, the Dow Corning buyout should raise few red flags if any. It might reduce the number of folks who work at Fort Matrix (what my friend called their HQ between Midland and Auburn), but it might well morph into HQ for one of the DowDuPont spin-off companies.

Two-For-One-For-Three Split

DowDuPont. That is a news item that will resonate here in Midland, Dow Chemical's HQ town.

The proposed name is a good sign for the town that has two high schools, the Midland High Chemics and the dreaded Dow High Doughboys Chargers. Dow is actually slightly larger, with a market cap of 63 billion versus 59 billion for DuPont as we go to press; the financial markets aren't all that happy with the news, as both stocks are down a bit for the day.

That means we have a merger of rough equals, with Dow having the first name on the masthead. The first fear I had when I heard of the merger is that it would cost Midland jobs, as the merged company might have some of jobs done at the Pink Palace here in town migrate to DuPont HQ. Seeing Dow as first among equals helps mitigate that fear.

However, DuPont's CEO will be the CEO for DowDuPont with Dow's CEO settling for chairman of the board. That would indicate that HQ might not be in Midland.

However, the new company won't stay in one piece for long...

DowDuPont says it will spin off (tax free!) an agriculture company, a material sciences company and a specialty products company.

That adds to the intellectual indigestion. Will one of those spin-offs have their HQ here? Two? None? The plants here, mostly on the south edge of town, will likely not be affected much, but the HQ jobs will be in flux until we see how the merging and spinning shakes out.

Too Young For Medicare and Too Old For People to Care

I'm borrowing an old Kinky Friedman line; he had himself "...too old for women to care" as the ending. It eerily fit this story I heard on NPR on Monday night.

A decades-long decline in the death rate of middle-aged white Americans has reversed in recent years, according to a surprising new analysis released Monday.

The cause of the reversal remains unclear. Researchers speculate it might be the result of the bad economy fueling a rise in suicides, plus overdoses from prescription painkillers and illegal drugs like heroin, and alcohol abuse.

...

The mortality rate among whites ages 45 to 54 had increased by a half-percent a year from 381.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 415.4 in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available, the researchers found.

I resemble that demographic, being on the high end of it at present. That is the most un-PC demographic possible. They are men, not old enough to cater to as senior citizens nor young enough to cater to as youth fresh out of school. They're also often hard to fit into a new job if they lose theirs, as younger workers are seen as cheaper, more malleable and projecting to be with the firm longer.

Any affirmative action is going against this group, unless they have some sort of disability that gives them downtrodden status. They're the ones who are expected to check their privilege, but that privilege and $2.50 gets you a latte at McDonalds, maybe a little less if the cashier thinks you get a senior discount.

It takes older workers more time to find a new job, and not finding a job quickly makes it even harder to get one, creating a nasty feedback loop of despair that can depress folks. Obamacare might make it easier to see a psychiatrist than at the turn of the millennium, but the stagnant economy makes it more likely to need to see one.

That could well be driving this uptick in deaths. The person who's too young to retire and too old to start from scratch with a new career falls between the cracks in the marketplace and gets little extra help from Uncle Sam since they're supposed to be the ones who don't need any help.

Church-wise, there is not much in the way of tools to minister to these folks. Men's ministries seem to be targeted to questions of being a better husband and father rather than trying to find a place in the economy. Networking to get them hooked up with an employer willing to take a chance on a retread might help, but that doesn't fit an evangelistic paradigm on the right side or helping the least of these on the left side; plus, you have the issue of finding someone who is willing to help someone rather than just getting "the best person for the job" which might be a younger and less needy person.

Self medicating such problems, especially for macho types who don't want to admit to depression issues, becomes a problem. That can be doubly true for conservative Christians who are often in a worldview that emotional issues are a character flaw that should be dealt with with faith and prayer. Add a victorious-living vibe and even admitting you have issues can be problematic.

I don't see a good way to change this trend, other than making it a bit easier to ask for help both financially and culturally. From a church standpoint, it would require a person-to-person touch that falls through the programmatic cracks, more ministering to a particular person than a capital-m Ministry.

When the Reaper Comes in Slow-Motion

It's been a while since I've blogged. Eileen's mom passed away three weeks ago come Monday after spending a week in hospice-style "transitional care" at the Longmont, CO hospital. She had gone in a week and a half earlier to have a stent put in her esophagus where a nasty tumor was at; however, she was so weakened from not being able to eat or drink much that the added trauma pushed her over the edge.

She needed to be able to eat and drink to be able to recover, and that wasn't happening.

I've had family members die, but not this way, where you could see it coming. However, my grandparent's generation was dying off in the 80s and 90s before hospice became more common. Eileen's grandma managed to make it to 2005, but that's the exception to the rule on that front.

After a few days of pain and struggle and with the doctors not seeing a way to fix her digestive issues, Eileen's family was faced with the rough decision to move towards "palliative care", the five-dollar term for hospice-style pain-only treatment. You really don't want to "pull the plug" and give up hope of recovery, but there are points where, barring a miracle, recovery ain't happening.

People can transition out of palliative mode, but when you're not getting any water or nourishment, you don't last long. Folks who have some other type of terminal illness might regain strength enough to start tackling their issues in hospice mode, but not when your not eating or drinking. Thus, we were basically watching her mom die, with pain medication softening the blows for her, but dying nonetheless.

It was early in that process when I did a Facebook post saying cryptically that it wasn't a good day to ask me "how'ya doin?" The answer that I didn't post at the time was "Not too well. My mother-in-law is dying in the hospital."

It took a week for her to finally pass on. Eileen's dad was at her side when she passed, and Eileen and her sister were also overnighting at the hospital frequently. It was a long week.

I will give the Longmont hospital some props. Their Transitional Care Unit (a Horned Frog joke was required) treated the family members well, with a "nutrition room" with pop and healthy snacks along with a nice lounge area and comfy chairs in the rooms. Also, the pastor at Westview Pres (Eileen's sister's church) was very helpful; I can't vouch for his theology (probably a notch or two to my left), but he had the chaplain thing covered rather well, with a good bedside manner.

The week after her death wasn't any easier. Miracle Max wasn't quite on when he said that the only thing you can do with an all-dead person is search their clothes for loose change. You have to dispose of the body (cremation in her case), let a bunch of people know that she's passed (including a surreal call to Verizon to cancel her iPhone service just before her memorial service) and go through much, much more than her pockets.

I'm still processing the whole thing. It's the first time I've lost a family member of my parents' generation. Eileen's lost the person that she'd call when she needs a second listening ear. It moves the Grim Reaper a notch closer to your generation when the generation ahead of you starts dropping.

That's heavy.

 

Cap-A-Cola, Let's Get Scola... or Draymond Green

We've been spending a lot of time at the Longmont hospital this week. We found a recommended sandwich joint for lunch, Snarf's, which is right next to the hospital. A bit pricy vis-a-vis Subway, but worth it, especially when you've got other heavy things going down.

Their basic Italian sub, which was very good, included capicola. I've seen that ham-variant mentioned on a number of food shows as a favored cold-cut, but I think that's the first time I've had it one a sandwich. There was enough of a meat medley there that I couldn't break out how it added to the mix, but the mix was good.

Anyways, from capicola to salary caps ... I've had time to check on the kickoff of NBA free agent season, and the Pistons fans were unhappy when their two targets, Danny Green and DeMarre Carroll, turned them down, as Green re-upped with the Spurs and Carroll headed to the Great White North.

That's not a bad thing...if you trust the Pistons judgement on Stanley Johnson. You don't spend a #8 pick on a backup, which is what he would likely be if Danny Green or Carroll were reeled in, although I could see both Johnson and Danny Green starting, with Green at the 2 and KCP playing sixth (or seventh) man spelling both of them.

The Pistons would be better off getting a second-tier small forward, one that would be a passable starter but open to coming off the bench if Johnson does pan out as hoped. Tayshawn Prince would be close to ideal as a veteran who can show the new kid the ropes and move on once he's ready, except that he wants to play on a contender and is looking to be LeBron's backup at the other end of Lake Erie.

The Pistons also need a backup big, given that Greg Monroe looks bound for elsewhere. Realistically, they need two bigs, for you'd like to go three-deep with people who can play bumper tag with the big uglies.  New acquisition Ersan Ilyasova is a solid stretch four, but not someone I'd want to sic on Dwight Howard or Zach Randolph.

It's unlikely that they're going to land any of the big-name free agents, so looking at some second-tier talent might be prudent. Two names among the unrestricted free agents that hit me (no word on their availability or whether the Piston brass is interested) were Luis Scola of Indiana and Kevin Seraphin of Washington.

Scola is not quite a full stretch four (no three-point range to speak of), but he can rebound as well as hit an open mid-range jumper. He did 9 points and 6.5 boards in 20 minutes last year. At 35, he's not a long-term proposition, but would be a good bench contributor.

Seraphin is no angel. He's a 6'10 banger who looks like Central Casting's take on a power forward. He'd be a fourth option rather than a third, but he'd be the kind of guy you would want to have around if you had an opposing low-post big you needed some muscle for. He seemed to find his way to be glass against the Pistons far too often

However, those are plans C and D (if not deeper). The plan A just seemed to pop open, as it seems that Golden State might have low-balled Draymond Green. With their A-list choices off the board, Detroit might take a flier at Green; as a MSU grad and Saginaw native, Detroit has something of a inside track if he's going to change locales.

As a restricted free agent, Golden State can match a deal for Green, so a team that puts an offer on the table has to wait five days for the old team to match; that runs the risk of other free agents of interest being snapped up while the cap space for the RFA is in limbo.

However, if the Pistons have more second-tier targets to go after, they might be in position to take a run at Green and still have time to get less-trendy free agents like Seraphin or Scola, or use the cap room to take on other teams' salary dumps, like Atlanta did taking on Tiago Splitter as San Antonio clears room to go after LaMarcus Aldridge.

Interesting times in the Air Conditioner League; with the temperature in the 90s, you can't call it the Hot Stove League.

A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Week

A lot's gone under the bridge since I was starting back blogging earlier in the week. We've had the Supreme Court sign off on the Obamacare subsidies (bad policy but good for our pocketbook, since we're one of the folks who'd be 18-months-of-subsidies in hock had they made a face-value reading) and on nationalizing same-sex marriage (very-to-the-nth-power bad policy and worse legal logic). Both deserve a post (or for on the latter) but not right now.

We're also staring down the barrel of a Greek default. The ECB/IMF folks aren't blinking and the Greek PM is asking for a few extra days to run the deal past the voters, calling a July 5th national vote. The problem is that the clock runs out at the end of this month when a big payment is due, unless the powers that be over there give them the extra time, or some sugar daddy (Russia, maybe) lends them the €1.6B (had to cut-and-paste that Euro sign from the BBC piece) needed to tide them over to the referendum.

We're also seeing the bad guys having good days on the terror front, with ISIS making inroads in Kobane (likely with Turkey looking the other way) and allies of theirs in Tunisia shooting up a bunch of Europeans in a resort there as well as a Shia mosque in Kuwait.

None of those are great news. Only the Obamacare thing is mixed, but you could make the case that the "Grexit" scenario would be a path-of-least-resistance to getting Greece out of an untenable financial mess.

However, I'm not in a great place to expound on all that beyond bullet-point form. I'm blogging from the third floor of the Longmont, CO hospital. My mother-in-law is in very rough shape. I'm not comfortable sharing much more right now, except that some heavy decisions are in the pipeline.

I've blogged my way through the loss of two professor jobs, a bankruptcy and some other heavy stuff in the 13 years I've been blogging. Facing the mortality of a close family member is well up that list if not topping it.

Prayers for Eileen's family are an order right now.  I may be doing a lot of blogging to mitigate the heaviness of the hour, but the radio-silence that has marked the last few months may well return if it is too heavy to write through.

 

Not That Bad Roads Worse than Bad Roads

It's not been a good day on Michigan roads. A massive pile-up closed I-94 near Kalamazoo, a smaller one closed I-75 north of Flint, US-23 (effectively a I-75 Detroit bypass from Toledo to Flint) got shut down between Ann Arbor and Toledo and a stunt-man special saw a van dragged 16 miles in the northern parts of I-75 about an hour north of us after hitting and sticking under the back of a semi.

The weather wasn't that bad (we got 2-3 inches worth overnight in Midland), but it was bad enough, with blowing snow making driving change from OK to blinding in short order. If the snow was really bad, folks would be off the road, but this not-that-bad weather coupled with high winds proved to be a nasty package.

Flint, Saginaw and Bay City all had their schools closed today, while Midland schools soldiered on. I can see why the others opted to pack it in.

 

I Don't Fit in the Offering Plate

I've been struggling for a long time trying to figure out how I fit into this world, this economy.

I have gifts and talents, but all I'm using them for for the last four years has been a part-time finance tutor, without any hope in site for anything more to come from the conventional economy. My anxiety issues make getting back in the classroom problematic and my salable skills in accounting, finance and spreadsheet-slinging run into a resume brick wall, where folks aren't interested in using a PhD former college finance professor for an entry-level position. While I have some non-academic experience (hospital accountant for Medicare and Medicaid reporting, computer store owner-operator), they don't fit into a slot that qualifies me for a non-entry-level position.

I'm not suited to sales work (insurance and financial firms often like my resume, but wouldn't like me much when I have an anxiety attack in a client's driveway or on the phone trying to cold-call) and minimum-wage service-sector jobs aren't going to help my situation, as a part-time professional tutoring job working from my comfy chair works better logistically than manning the grill at Burger Doodle; at least this way, I can give Eileen a ride to and from work and take that stressor off of her.

I'd be interested in some sort of small-m ministry work, but I'm not sure what it would be. My office skills could be useful to church and parachurch offices, but I'm not the seasoned business guy they'd hire to be a professional administrator nor the church lady they'd hire to be the church secretary.

I was at a point yesterday where when the offering plate came my way, I walked along with it until I got to the usher and said "I don't fit in the offering plate." I had hit my limit of waiting for God's plan to unfold, feeling like a 21st-century leper who rings a bell and calls "Unemployable! Unemployable"!" rather than "Unclean!"

There isn't a place where you can just walk up and get a job. If you don't fit the paradigm, or your resume doesn't, there isn't much you can do.  Biblical models don't help, since gleaning the fields isn't a 21st-century option and living with my folks takes care of the basic needs, while Eileen's teacher's-aid job and my tutoring work pay our cash bills.

However, I want to serve. I want to do more than tutor ten hours a week and wait around for the next 30 years to die.

This blog is something of a service, but blogs have become somewhat passe, and my depression and anxiety has made my writing abilities atrophy as of late, where writing once or twice a week rather than multiple times a day has been an accomplishment.

I have low tolerance for platitudes right now.

I know I am supposed to be patient and wait on God's timing. I know that my worth in God's eyes is not a function of my paycheck or the number of visitors to the blog.

I have a wife who loves me to pieces, parents who are willing to have us under their roof (my dad sees caring for Eileen and I as a ministry) and friends and churchmates who come along side, like the children's pastor who relates to my anxiety issues from experience.

This isn't going to help with a conventional employer who might Google my name if I happen to pass an initial screen and wonder what a mess he'd be taking on. But their might be an unconventional employer who might have mercy and take a chance on bringing on a talented, God-fearing guy who could help their organization.

Frostbite Falls, MI

The car thermometer read -3 (⁰F for readers elsewhere in the Anglosphere). All the schools in the area (at least all the public schools in slow-to-close Midland County and just about everyone else; I don't have a color-coded map of school districts handy to back up the "all") are packing it in for tomorrow in anticipation of -25⁰F wind chill factors by tomorrow morning.

I don't recall schools closing for cold that much in the past. Snow and ice, yes, but not freeze-the-[kiester]-off-a-brass-monkey cold alone. We don't deal with negative temperatures in mid-Michigan too often, maybe once or twice a year in a bad cold snap, but we've gotten those quite a bit this winter.

The more macho and old-school folks among us might be of the school that if we went to school in zero-degree temperatures uphill...both ways...so can our kids. It gives them character...

...not to mention frostbite and damaged lungs. We might have had protective parents who made sure we had hats and scarves and mittens and thermal underwear (a.k.a long-johns) to brave those bitter-cold days; the modern kid is much more likely to ditch everything but the undies when he's out of sight of his folks.... if the parents are around to see them off at all.

Calling school off is a bit more protective that I'm use to, but so is the new rules in football and other sports on concussions. We know more than to just write it off as "getting your bell rung" and throw them back into the fray; we know the damage that concussions can do to folks, and the NFL is getting hit with a nine-heading-towards-ten-figure tab for past concussion damage.

We're also more aware of the damages of things like hypothermia and frostbite; in the old days, Frostbite was the first part of the name of the mythical town that Rocky and Bullwinkle lived in, not something to worry about while playing in the snow.

The kids might have a makeup day in mid-June that has them sweating in 85-degree heat. However, you can manage sunburn better than you can frostbite.

Have Yourself a Viral Christmas

I'm chilling out in the den after our family Christmas gift-giving orgy but before dinner; Eileen and I and my sister's family were at my folks for the event.

One of the perennial gag gifts is a Christmas-singing Billy Bigmouth Bass that has been getting gifted back and forth between my brother-in-law and my dad for over a decade. This year, my 11-year-old nephew Tyler got it rather than his dad, which tickled him...

...and his folks. Both posted pictures of the event on Facebook...in real time. I get back to the den, not being possessed of a smartphone, and am already an hour behind the viral curve.

Calvinball and Lowballs

I sat down and waded through a slightly glitchy Healthcare.gov site and got Eileen and I signed up for subsidized health care coverage. I've yet to get confirmation from Blue Cross that the sign-up went through (24 hours or so before it registers, call back after Christmas), but we're in, having coverage for the first time since my post-Sullivan U COBRA ran out almost three years ago.

I'm feeling somewhat guilty about getting a very generous subsidy, given our relatively low incomes, but I'm not sure where that is any more disreputable than using the tax laws in your favor. We'll hopefully be able to save the difference and start to get back on our feet financially.

The roll-out of "Obamacare" has been the government version of New Coke, an object lesion on how not to do things. In order to help folks like us, far too many folks are getting hosed with canceled insurance plans, raised premiums on the plans they can get, abortion riders getting crammed down everyone's throats (if the administration has their way) and a web-site that 2.7 months in is still far glitchier than any business website of any magnitude would ever dream of being.

The payment interface was fubared, so I will have to be on that aspect of things going forward. The scrambling nature of the rollout has made Calvinball look static; the deadline for getting checks to the insurance companies keeps changing by the hour.

One interesting aspect of the web site is that incomes were self-reported; "what do you expect to make in 2014?" Lowballing the number gives you a bigger subsidy. The plan is to have your final subsidy based on your actual 2014 income, then settling up in April 2015 for the difference between what Uncle Sam did pay the insurance company and what they should have paid based on your actual income.

For folks whose 2014 will turn out rosier than they thought when they were wading through Healthcare.gov, there will be a rude awakening when they file their taxes in early 2015. There's room for quite a bit of fraud here as well as a mini-crisis of folks whose lowball income estimates (either honestly low or strategically so) will make for some headlines as March Madness winds down 15 months from now.

Polly Styrene Gets Her Due

NYC's making the current crew in Washington look like Cato fellows, debating a ban on polystyrene containers. The AP writer understands that there is no such thing as a Styrofoam cup, unless you molded some insulation to protect the jewels in a pinch.

There's no date yet for a council vote, but the hearing marked an effort to move the issue forward before the year ends. Environmentally minded Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who proposed banning the containers in February and backs the council proposal, leaves office at the end of the year. Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio said Monday he also supports it.

Street vendors and some eateries prize lightweight, heat-keeping containers made from expanded polystyrene foam. While people often call it Styrofoam, that brand isn't used in food packaging, manufacturer Dow Chemical Co. says.

MLK said a half-century ago that folks in New York had nothing to vote for. That's still true. At least the AP got their terms right.

Cloudy With A Chance of Sausage... Midland Gets the Wurst of It.

We took a quick ride around the northern side of Midland after lunch to see who did and didn't have lights. A large swath between Wheeler and Wackerly was down for the count; including all the lights on Saginaw west of Eastlawn and even the Wackerly-Eastman corner; that's the south edge our mall quadrant right at the US-10 expressway exit, so that was a major mess.

One friend who lives just south of Wheeler is staying at a hotel and another friend who lives just north of Wheeler is staying with friends; both of them are without power at home, and temperatures in the 30s aren't conducive to roughing it out at home.

Oddly, it's the upscale part of town that got hit hardest, so those folks can largely afford to find a nearby hotel; some of those folks are in apartments and might not have the cash on hand to spring for multiple days in a hotel, so we might wind up seeing some shelters opened up.

Delta College's Midland campus was deserted; it is in the old Regina High building on Wheeler right in the heart of outage territory, so my niece won't be taking her night class there (she's taking some classes at Delta as a high school senior; time really flies).

A number of poles were either down or tilting; tilting polls along Wackerly just east of the 555 medical building shut down the road. Another poll by the North Saginaw fire station seemed to be looking like he had a few too many.

 Here's an interesting ap from our local power company showing the outages; lots of red in Midland.

At least it wasn't a tornado; other areas further south got hit far worse, and our side of town got off with just a few downed tree limbs.

Habitat for Michi-ganders

I was running errands in the mall quadrant of Midland this morning.  When I was a kid, the area was largely unused wilderness, but the Midland Mall went in in the late 80s. First, the folks in the exurban township where the mall was going in fought it and the traffic it would bring, then the environmentalists tied things up for a couple of years.

The plan that wound up placating the greens was to create replacement wetlands for the stuff that would get malled. That sounded like another does of anti-progress monkey-wrenching at the time...

...but it has its benefits. I saw a flock of geese coming overhead over the Wal-Mart parking lot in their classic V formation, then slowly descend like paratroopers landing at a stadium in a pre-game ceremony, landing in a pond across the street.

This might well have been a pit stop for the geese heading south for the winter. They'd have had to have found a new place somewhere in the increasingly suburbanized Larkin Township area north of US-10 were it not for the foresight of their wingless friends.

So, I'll give the greens a nod.... this time.

Pollen Nation

I don't think AAA has "pollen-covered and slippery" in their traffic-report jargon, but it would work today. The trees are in bloom in early May and that means pollen getting washed onto the pavement during a good soaking rain like we're having today.

I just got back from giving Eileen a ride to work and the road was frequently covered in yellow pollen that looked like someone had a truck full of Indian rice (heavy on the turmeric) and was shoveling it out onto the street sporadically. A few pieces of that good naan bread would have been nice, but it wasn't on the agenda.

Wheeler Road looked like it was ready to call itself Pollen Nation.

You Might be a Presbyterian Jedi if....

You reply to "May the 4th be with you" with "And also with you."

This is also the 43th anniversary of the Kent State shootings; what the rest of the world calls "Kent State" KSU folks call "May 4th." Strangly, I spent six years as a grad student at KSU in the 90s and had my first office a stone's throw away, but didn't get to the memorial site until seven years after I graduated and Eileen and I were back in the area for a job interview.

Tridge Over Doubled Water

We've had a rather wet April, and all that water has to go somewhere.

September 1986 was the gold standard for flooding on the Tittabawassee River that flows through Midland. I recall looking down from Main Street (which is on the top of a hill overlooking the flood plain) towards the Tridge (a three-legged pedestrian bridge straddling the Tittabawassee and Chippewa Rivers that merge there) as network satellite trucks were parked downtown covering the flood.

The old railroad that ran downtown has been since turned into a "rail trail", but was still there in 1986. The Ashman Street crossing was a couple feet under water, and the weight of the water had triggered the crossing lights. The buzz of folks checking things out on a warm September evening was complemented with a incessant "Ding...ding...ding....ding...ding...ding" of the crossing alarm and flashing red lights.

That was a "100 year flood" as the hydrologists would term it. Our house is in the highest part of Midland and was bone dry. Most of the rest of town wasn't so lucky; flooded basements were the norm elsewhere.

Midland's old money lives in Valley Drive between downtown and the hospital; even if folks had no mortgage, they were under water. Police had to keep looters from scubaing into the houses to retrieve valuables from Sparkle City's 1%ers; the police couldn't keep the other 99% from having a serious dose of schadenfruede.

That 100-year flood is about to be a 27-year flood.

The NWS projects a river level of 33.7 feet at 2 a.m. Saturday, 34 feet at 8 a.m. Saturday, 33.8 feet at 2 p.m. Saturday and receding after that time.

The river level measured at 23.72 feet at 11:15 a.m. today. It has been rising as Boyce Hydro, which operates the Sanford Lake and Wixom Lake dams, draws down the lakes to increase their water holding capacity for the upcoming storm.

The river’s flood stage is 24 feet, the 100-year flood stage is 33 feet and the record water level was measured in 1986 at 33.94 feet.

Needless to say, prayers are an order for my fellow Midlanders and other folks downriver.

[Update 8AM-To add a bit of accuracy; the water flow has increased five times normal. 3440 cubic feet per second is the mean and 16600 is flowing through at present. However, "Tridge over Quintupled Water" doesn't invoke Art Garfunkel's voice nearly as much."]

Losing Nemo

Normally, Midland gets rather light snow fall compared to the rest of the area. Our brush with Nemo was an exception; we got a foot's worth, closing schools today. Thankfully, the folks to our south weren't as badly hit, allowing the Pistons to get in their game against the Spurs, coming up with a surprising 119-109 win despite only using a eight-man rotation. The Pistons went with a three-guard lineup when Kyle Singer needed a breather and only used three bigs, rotating Charlie V in for Maxiell and Monroe.

That doesn't say much for Jonas Jerebko, who can play both forwards positions yet got a DNP tonight.

Breaking Radio Silence

I've been under the weather a bit over the weekend. Bloggy goodness should be returning to a normal schedule.

________________

Good news for space buffs-SpaceX's Falcon is in the air and headed for the ISS after a false start over the weekend; an irony is that we have a privately-owned rocket doing work for the most statist administration in recent memory.

The advantage of such privatization of space is that it's not tied up in politics; the disadvantage is that it's dependent on either (a) making money or (b) living on donations or patient investors. However, that disadvantage may well be a feature in that (c) living off tax dollars is an untenable option in a tough economy.

______________

Two obits for the price of one. When I saw the passing of Bill Stewart, recently run out of WVU as football coach last summer, the old BeeGees tune How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (Robin Gibb passed on as well this weekend) came to mind. Stewart was put out to pasture prematurely after he tried to kneecap his successor with bad press.

At 59, Stewart's career had run his course, and he may well have had little to live for. That brings back the old Bear Bryant quip of "croak[ing] in a week" after retirment; Bryant actually almost lasted through January of his retirement. Stewart almost made it a year, more than JoePa did after his ugly axing.

____________

The president's latest salvo reminds me of an old DL Moody quip, where Moody liked the way he did evangeliize better than his crittic didn't do is. I like how Romney worked in the private sector better than how Obama didn't work there.

His more prominent gig outside of a government job was as that well-documented community orginizer, who then gets government and donors to cough up funds. The funds have to be made somewhere; the organizer just gets to spend them.

Yes, people need to be laid off in some businesses, but unless you're going to have government subsidize red-ink firms, that's the nature of the beast.

Day One, Decade Two

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my first blog post. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. In 2002, a blog was cutting-edge on the Web, while it is a few years behind the curve today.

I tend to express myself in paragraphs more than sentences, so Twitter isn't my strongest suit, nor is Facebook. I have a Twitter account that mostly serves to cross-post links to this blog, and I have an inactive Facebook account that I am toying with reopening, since that is the vehicle of choice for a lot of people at present.

I have the free-time to write these days, being underemployed. Hopefully, that will bear fruit in some way as I go forward, as I try to put my psychological problems behind me and move forward.

If you have something you'd like me to write on, let me know. I'm here to serve as well as to have a place to express my thoughts to a friendly audience around the world.

I Want a New Drug

I've been walking wounded (or sittlng-in-comfy-chair wounded) for almost two weeks with a sinus infection that morphed into bronchitis. Early on, I took a week's worth of amoxicillin, the most common antibiotic; it was somewhat bootleg, left over from a family member who fought off an infection quickly and left the lion share of their dose for the next person to get a bug.

Needless to say, it didn't work. That means it was either a viral infection (which doctors can't do much about save treating symptoms) or a Moxy-resistant bacteria. I figured the former until today, when my bronchitis got bad enough to get into my allergist, who doubles as a GP for his allergy patients.

Turns out it was the latter. Moxy has the advantage of being cheap; some places (like the Meijer chain here in the Great Lakes region) will give it away as a loss leader. However, that means that critters have had a chance to develop a tolerance for it; according to my allergist, it only works on about half of modern-day bacterial infections. Bringing out the heavy artillery from the get go might be more expensive, but it heads off a second trip to the doctor when Moxy doesn't hunt and be a better buy over the long haul.

We'll see if the better drugs work.

Trip Two in the Books

I'm back in my comfy chair in the den after a second South U weekend, this one in Savannah. They have a nice main campus which reminds me a bit of Warner U (nee Warner Southern) and a bit of Florida Southern's Frank Lloyd Wright layout.

Of course, I had to fly through Atlanta and have a 5.5 hour layover; my scheduled flight got postponed than canceled, creating a mass exodus over to the ticket counter of Savannah-bound folks scrambling for alternatives.

I was this close to staying in Atlanta and doing the class from there (we do a teleconference with Atlanta, Columbia and Savannah and the first Saturday was in Atlanta), but the Delta ticket gal pulled a rabbit out of a hat and got me a ticket on the 8:30 flight... first class, no less. A guy who I was talking to got a similar bump-up, to seat 1D; I invoked the old Bob Eucker ad "Looks like I'm in the front rooooow." and he harmonized on "front rooooow".

We almost didn't get out of Atlanta, as the nasty stormfront that was item two on the BBC site just now was just about to hit. We were seeing those nasty red and orange shades on the radar heading our way and things were getting very dark (cue the "does that have a Hemi in it?" guy-"That caint be good"); we took off in the rain, but not yet thundery enough to shut things down. One of my Atlanta students, who was 15 minutes late, mentioned that a lot of power lines were down there once the storm did hit later Friday and early Saturday.

Disraeli said that there were three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics (I was teaching the latter yesterday). Disraeli never had to fly through Hartsfield, or he'd have a fourth- Atlanta airport schedules... at least in the afternoon and evening where weather and mechanical delays can create a game of musical gates. My morning flight back to Flint went just fine and on time other than returning to a sleety, windy mess.

Class proper went very well, better than any of the Saturday double-headers I had at Warner U. So, things are looking up.

Nine Candles

The first post on this blog (or at least the Blogger version of it) went up nine years ago today.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. I've gotten married, lived in three new states, been Dr. Byron at three colleges, and met a truckload of people online.

A lot of the people that were part of things nine years ago have moved on, while others have become part of the Peanut Gallery. Things are slower than they were in their prime back in 2003, but there are more people writing online these days (who isn't?) and things like Facebook and Twitter have snagged some of the blog eyeball market, as has a lot of professional reporters and pundits blogging as part of their job.

Even if the readership is 40 a day rather than 160, I'm still a blogger. I'm a bit verbose to fit a thought into a tweet and don't have a book in me, so the short-essay format that fits blogging to a T is my natural home.

I'm going to strive to write more in the weeks and months to come. I've brought the Edifiers back; the last few years have been a spiritual dry time, and bringing them back has lifted my spirit. Many readers have apprecated them in the past, and I want to keep them up.

Also, with some free time on my hands as a part-time tutor, I hope to use that time to put my ecclective thoughts in print and see what the Blogosphere and the Web thinks of them. I don't know if I can get things to a point where this can be self-supporting, but I can at least put my $0.02 out there in areas of my interest and expertise.

Here's to year ten's start.

The Suggestion Box/ Tip Box

I'm going to try hanging out a shingle here. If there is anything you'd like me to write on that isn't illegal, immoral or fattening, here's the spot to put in your request.

I've also put in a PayPal tip jar below if you want to contribute to keeping things going here.

I haven't done this before as a writer, but if you'd like me to write on something, here's the spot. There are a lot of web sites that put writers and clients together, but I'm trying to cut out the middle-man here.

Even if you don't want to chip in but have topics you'd like me to write about, please fire away. I'm trying to get the readership back up to the 150-day level that I had in my early 00s heyday (or more, God willing) and want to give people reason to come here.

A Pair of Depressions

Hopefully, I'm getting my writing muse back. The first half of 2010 has not been good.

On the political and economic front, politics is like Jackie Chan splattering a fly in the movie trailer-"That's nasty!" The economy is staggering out of the cratering it took in late 08 and most of 09 and Washington isn't helping much; the finance bill that's working its way through Congress will likely hogtie the banking industry and cut the flow of capital into small business and we have at least 2.5 more years of that old man who's a day older than me in the White House.

Meanwhile, the GOP is shooting their own; when the scene is set for major gains, they act like the Chinese in WWII who can't stop their civil war long enough to run off the Japanese. When voting for TARP (signed by Dubya, lest we forget) is grounds for excommunication from the Church of Don't Tread on Me, things aren't looking all that chipmunk friendly on the politics page. Gerson's Ugly Party is large and in charge. 

My personal life is in tatters. I'm only semi-employed, tutoring 16 hours a week online and doing some free-lance writing, and have had to file for bankruptcy this April. To my credit, I was able to do all the paperwork for a Chapter 7 filing myself (it's easier than you'd think, if doing a tax return cubed sounds like fun), saving about $1000 on lawyer bills in the process; when they had my hearing last month, I was the only one their who filed pro se and got far fewer questions on my paperwork than the other people who were going before me who had lawyers.

Working part time, living with my parents and having Eileen work all of a half-hour in the last six months (a temp-gig to gather information on contract bids that went quickly; she got paid for 4 hours) has not left me in the best of spirits. Resume don't get responded to, since a PhD with no experience that neatly plugs into a standard business flow-chart is a tough sell even in a good economy. Thus, I work on writing on the side and have too much time to think.

Nor has struggling to find a church home helped. A nice Baptist church that we started going to started to turn authoritarian and legalistic, so we're back at the Vineyard church we got married at. It's not perfect, for the pastor often tries a bit too hard to be relevant (without watering down the Gospel, mind you) and has brain-burps like the Trunk Monkey ads show up as a sermon prologue. However, the folks there are nice and its old-home week when we do go there.

That's why the first half of the year has been a blogging wasteland.

God is still on the throne. Better things lie ahead.... including a return to daily blogging.

I'm BAAAACK

Sorry for the long stretch between posts. It's been a very rough stretch... more on that later. However, things are working out and I hope to be getting chatty for the foreseeable future.

Random Acts of Generosity

We are back in Midland as of Monday. As it turned out, we stayed in Lexington over the weekend last weekend, as we couldn't quite get everything packed in time for a 4:30PM inspection on Friday. So, one of our friends sprung for an extended stay place for the weekend, since we had already sent out furniture to Habitat for Humanity; we had given them our old computer system, so if was something of a fair trade, but I wasn't expecting that level of unsolicited generosity.

Our Sunday School class at Tates Creek Christian gave us a Applebee's gift card as a going-away present. Another case of generosity.

We did get into Midland on Monday of last week, and my body took most of the week to recover from all the lugging down two flights of stairs and through a courtyard to get to the parking lot. The next place we get will be on the ground floor, right? Right?

Hopefully, I'll be returning to more regular blogging now that we're back in Midland and my householder duties have diminished.