%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
| Spray Painting It is not unusual for someone to spend $10K on a paint job for a Hot Rod or a Street Rod or a restoration… Can you imagine spending that much? I can’t, not in a million years. The last truck I restored I painted with a roller brush, one of those white spongy ones. It turned out OK. I followed the directions in Hot Rod Magazine and it worked. I’m surprised they even printed the article because they have paint advertisers who charge big bucks for their products. Now that was a real act of courage if you ask me… I bet the editor caught hell from the accounting office. Anyway the editor is at it again….This time he explains how to use Rust-Oleum to apply a flat black primer finish followed by a clear coat. I am going to try this with the $15 dollar sprayer and $10 dollar installation hardware I had to purchase to hook up the air hose. Imagine that… $25 total and I am up and running with a portable sprayer that works. I tested it with some water from the rain barrel and it made spray… I think I will practice first on some old fenders I have been working on and a couple of hoods out in the machine shed. I need to practice a little before I try it out on the Studebaker. Can you imagine that the sprayer equipment and the paint will be less that $50. Before you warn me about wearing a respirator be advised I know all about that and will make sure I’m wearing the proper safety equipment. Today Linda and I went to Madison and had lunch and went to Barnes and Noble and Gander Mountain and Wall Mart. It was a nice day. When we got back I went and got a hair cut and worked on my flathead engine. There is one I just put on a test stand and forgot how the cylinders were numbered and what the firing order was. So I went out to the pole shed where I have a truck with a flathead that runs and wrote it down with a paint pencil on a scrap piece of sheet metal. The cylinders are numbered… oriented from the drivers seat beginning on the right cast iron head, front to back, 1,2,3,4 and on the left 5,6,7,8. On the distributor cap I wrote the firing order also in white marking paint. This is always a bit confusing to me and I can attest that it gives others problems as well. Several years ago I got an engine back from a professional builder and the firing sequence was out of order. The motor ran and I didn’t notice but a friend of mine did and got things straightened out. When I get my tractor back with the log loader I will lift the body of the ‘40 Ford Tudor Sedan onto the frame. Once I have all the stations marked on body and frame I will begin work on replacing the floor. I’ve never done the procedure before and it should be high adventure. Maybe I’ll ask Linda to give me a hand….then again maybe I won’t. Everybody seems to especially like the blogs about her… I don’t understand people’s tastes all that well, but interest has been high on the last couple of entries. This one should cool things back down. |
| Good enough for me and Linda Barkley Today I worked on my ‘40 Ford Tudor Sedan. My neighbor Mark came over and talked about cars. Then I went over to Brooks to see how the work on the Log Loader was coming. Brian had the dray almost finished. I had to go to Portage and get a new hydraulic hose. On Monday I plan to take it over to Lakeside Farms which is an implement dealer who takes farm equipment on consignment. I have decided to get rid of all the equipment I haven’t used in the past two years. Most of my friends think they are going to live forever and never get rid of anything. I am amazed by the number of farm auctions and all the good items that go for next to nothing. Linda and I talked about that and have decided if our daughters don’t want the stuff we are going to slowly get rid of items that have outlived their utility and interest in our lives. Recently I went to an auction and the old folks were still in the house peering out the window as their possessions were being sold. I saw myself in that situation in a few years hence and found the thought unsettling. There was a box full of costume jewelry from the 1930s and I bought it for my daughters… They like those old gaudy pins and flapper beads. If that box could talk, what a story it could tell… If I could read your mind babe, Oh what a story I could tell Just like an old time movie, or a face from a wishing well. Or a chateau….. That’s all I can seem to remember right now. Those are lyrics from a song that came to mind thinking about that auction. I don’t know who to attribute them to but be advised I didn’t write them. When I think about things the thread of a melody like that will often waft through my mind… I bet it happens to most everyone. When I was in elementary school we used to have music one day a week. The music teacher would come in and teach us a song. It is amazing how many of those songs come back to me at the oddest times. One of them was Sweet Betsy from Pike. Whenever we sang it I thought about the pioneers crossing the plains in their wagons and making the songs up and singing them around the campfire. Did you ever hear of Sweet Betsy from Pike Who crossed the wide prairie with her husband Ike With two yoke of cattle and one spotted hog An old shanghai rooster and an ole yeller dog Chorus Sing tu rallie tu rallie tu rallie aye Sing tu rallie tu rallie tu rallie aye The Apennine Desert was burning and bare And Ike cried in fear, we’re lost I declare My dear old Pike Country, I’ll go back to you. Said Betsy, “You’ll go by yourself if you do.” They crossed the broad rivers, they scaled the tall peaks The fought with the Indians for weeks upon weeks They answered the arrows with muskets and ball And reached California in spite of it all. What a great song. All that happened not so long ago… Wisconsin was settled in the 1800s. The home where my Great-grandfathers homesteaded… (Actually he was the second owner) is where my house now sits. I like it here on 5 Car a Day road. It's good enough for me and Linda Barkley. |
| My wife Linda, episode 3 After Linda and I got engaged I was at her parents and her mother told me the following story. When I was a little girl I was staying with my grandparents and one night I heard arguing in the kitchen. I snuck to the door and peered in just in time to see my grandfather backhand poor sweet grandma. To make sure he’d made his point, he ordered her out to the barn to get him a glass of cold milk. Granny ran from the house holding her swollen eye and I followed. I wanted to say something consoling but in the barn she was ranting and saying some awful swear words, so I watched her from behind the stall. She went over to the well and drew out the milk can and ladled out a glass, still carrying on with her tirade. Then she paused, looking up and spotted the bottle of strychnine, used to kill the rats. She dumped out some of the milk and poured in the poison and walked back into the house. That night grandpa died. “Oh my Gawd!” I remember thinking… "What kind of family am I marrying into?” I looked over at Linda expecting her to be aghast but instead she was smiling. My mother-in-law continued… “Killed that no good SOB, she did….”, and clapped her hands in delight. My future wife smiled even broader…. "That’s one of Linda’s favorite stories… Now Linda and I had two daughters and they are a couple of awesome, no nonsense girls. They raised five grandsons and both run a tight ship. They're very principled and each insisted that their fiancées ask for their hand in marriage. So when that moment came… As their husbands to be shuffled their feet, cleared their throats and made the required request, I told them both the story that Linda's mom had related to me, those many years before. When I finished, each had a quizzical look like…. What’s the point to all this?" "The reason I’m telling you this Eric (Tommy) is because even the best of marriages have their road bumps. Now pay attention…. This is extremely important….should you ever get in an argument with my daughter and she brings you a glass of milk….DON’T DRINK IT!” |
| My Wife Linda, Installment 2 My wife and I are a good team but when we do things together the tension runs high. We lack the ability to work harmoniously and would never make it on dancing with the stars. But she is one smart broad and if you could see us in action you’d be amazed. For example last year the outdoor wood stove quit working. Specifically it was the pump. The pump quit pumping the water that circulates through the floor, the heat exchanger and the Modine (ceiling blower). I was afraid something like this was going to happen as soon as I heard the contractor who sold and installed it had gone out of business. We have a backup gas heat system that came with the house but after we built the extension and the shop, the furnace strained to keep us at thirty-two degrees. Here is how the situation developed… Honey, I’m freezing… when you gonna fix the stove…? I’m thinking about it, dear, and a plan is forming in my mind. You want me to call around and find somebody to fix it? Don’t think we can do it…do you? What’s this “We” stuff? If you can find someone go for it, but I don’t think you’ll find anyone and if you do… it’ll cost us a couple hundred dollars. What’s your plan? I’m thinking we can take the pump off and you can write down where the wires connect and we can buy and install a new one. You want me to be your secretary? That’s the idea. You sure you know which one of those devices in the stove is the pump…? Yes dear… But you don’t know which wires go where and what they do…? We just wire it back up the way we take it out… You write the diagram and I do the installation… So you can blame me if it doesn’t work… You got a better idea…? My father would know what the wires do… Your father is in Georgia. So we’re gonna play monkey see, monkey do and hope when it goes back together, it works. You got it babes…. That, or we sit around and shiver… I guess it’s worth a try. |
| My Wife Linda My wife and I are very different. She is the only woman I have ever been seriously interested in and she claims that I was the only man that ever gave her a second glance…except her Uncle who she won’t talk about. Anyway there is the “Chick Magnet” gene in my family that fortunately skipped me but landed square on my father, my brother and many of my cousins. They have the “Twinkle” which I envy in a sense but mostly thank God I don’t have. It is easier to be a decent and upstanding sort of person if you don’t have the chronic temptations the men in my family have faced…. Last night I had a dream that I was a cave man and was confronted by a bear. I was very nervous (Like Vietnam) but under control and swinging my club back and forth, maintaining eye to eye, as the Bear postured, growled and made threatening advances. Behind me was my wife Linda… She is smarter than me but our personalities are very different. She was very excited by the confrontation. To really appreciate the dream you have to imagine how the scene must have appeared from the Bear’s point of view. In frame 1 Linda stands on her tiptoes, and hollers an obscenity over my shoulder. In frame 2 she darts her head to the other side, shaking her fist, while telling me to be more aggressive. In frame 3 she picks up a rock and throws it at the bear… In frame 4 she peers around the other side, and makes a taunting gesture. In frame 5 I look back at her and say, “Honey, stop it….that’s enough.” If you want to know what living with her is like, this vision typifies how we face life’s challenges and interact with one together. |
| Synergism I picked up the ‘40 Ford Tudor Sedan from Pfeiffer’s and brought it home. My rod buddy, Terry Hogan, helped me do an assessment and said to order some new floor panels on line and put them in. I’m not sure whether to do it that way or go buy the sheet metal and do it. If I order the components it will wind up costing me ten times as much and I will still have to do the fitting. To use a sewing analogy it would be like using a pattern for an item of apparel or buying one ready made and altering it. There is enough of the old rusted floor to see how it once went all together and replicating that should not be too hard. What I need to do is weld in some braces to make sure the body doesn’t shift when I cut the rotten floor out. What remains is still providing some structural integrity. Yesterday I went to the Dentist and he took final impressions on a crown he is putting in… I have a dentist who is a good tooth fixer. My grandfather used to get more boozed up than usual and do his own extractions…. Can you imagine that? Pulling a molar with a pair of vice grips? Ouch! Then again there is nothing worse than tooth pain in my opinion. Kidney stones come in a poor second and as the years go by and half a dozen big ones rip through, they must widen the orifice because they don’t hurt as much now as they used to. I found that Motrin works best… Narcotics, not so good. I remember one night banging my head into the wall… Sometimes when I come into the house I get hooked into the Fox Business Channel. Linda always has the TV blaring, in addition to the cellphone, IPAD, magazines, and Kindel which are all being used concurrently. My wife is an extremely bright multitasker with a broad range of interests, one of which is the business news. I make the investment decisions and she follows the averages reporting to me what is happening… It is like she is watching a baseball game and when her batter strikes out she groans and when he hit’s a home run she rushes out into the shop to share the good news. Linda is not exactly your “typical” woman, whatever the heck that is.... but she makes funny faces, is a teriffic mime and belongs on Saturday Night Live. Anyway I get frustrated listening to the commentators who are extremely smart reporting on the myriad of factors and criteria that drive fluctuations in the market and for each one they show very keen insight, for the most part. What they don’t seem to do well is connect the dots… For example when one stock or commodity goes up there is a corollary that usually goes down. That an investor should not just have a diversified portfolio but holdings that run counter to one another…. So when one is going down another is going up. Duh! It sounds so simple but many really smart people are incapable of thinking in these terms. They can take a single criteria and worry it to death, but can’t see the synergism of everything working at the same time. For example take the definition of "Leadership." Some will define it as "Charisma," while others would define it as consistently knowing the best way to do something and still others as power to influence others through fear or incentives... Actually it is one of those words easily defined but one involving multiple criteria. I define it as... Knowing best and getting others to do it. There are elements like a crankshaft and a piston working together and if you don't see the dynamic you are missing the point. Often I imagine myself being interviewed by the commentator and what I would say about the "Market" is almost the direct opposite of the advice they are providing… not that I would ever advise people on investments because I would feel bad it they turned out in the short term to be poor performers. |
| Aw Shucks! Today was that kind of day. When I wrote this blog I couldn’t spell to save my butt… It was frustrating . Then I signed a check and dated it 2012. Was that stupid or what….? Then I kept flashing back over all the thoughtless things I have said in my lifetime and the people I have hurt. Each time I suffered one of these incongruities I cringed and said “Aw Shucks!“ I suspect that I am not alone in having these moments… as a matter of fact my wife is even worse than I am. She obsesses all the time on hateful things that have been said or done to her and all the little examples where I have been something less than a stellar husband. She remembers each and every instance and when she gets on a rant can rattle them off for hours without repeating herself. Suffering these is part of the dues of being a husband but at a certain point enough is enough and we go at each other. My daughters sometimes needed someone to fight with and I often was chosen for the role... They get this honestly from their mother who got it honestly from her mother and mine for that matter. It is a thread of violence that from time to time animates their entire being. I call it the “Killer Instinct” and it is a powerful and sometimes frightening aspect of a woman’s character. In a sense it is a bad thing and in a sense it isn’t. It is what drives them to make a family function almost to the point of obsession. Am I boring my readers? Is this a trait that is unique to my family? Is this some sort of a manic energy that takes performance to the next level or is it the dark side of the force that everyone must contend with? There is a wonderful woman who is the minister in our church who is the “Real Deal.” God loves her because she walks the walk. Not particularly charismatic but good to the core. I recruited her a number of years ago when I had the job to find temporarily “Lay Ministers” to fill in while the Conference was supposedly looking for someone to fill our pulpit. I got her on the phone and the first thing I heard was a screaming baby and pandemonium in the background…. I offered to call back and she said “No, things were just a bit Hectic.” Anyway on Sunday we got to talking and she told me what a mean and hateful SOB her grandfather had been and how he abused her Grandmother who was a sweet and gentle soul….How he was involved in illegal activities during prohibition and would come home, get her pregnant and go back on the road never leaving a penny to support the family. It sounded like my Grandfather… It amazes me sometimes how there are any offspring at all given the men and women I often see married to one another. I won’t go there because it is depressing to see the existence that many live and yet you have to wonder that despite all the appearance of anguish and suffering there weren’t some redeeming and joyful moments. Maybe not many but maybe a few sprinkled here and there… and these too soon forgotten. I have been fortunate to have had more than my share of happiness and a whole lot more than perhaps I deserved. So when I have too many “Aw Shucks!” moments I try and chase them away with some of those that were truly memorable and full of the warm and fuzzies. It works for me. |
| Too much of a good thing I designed a coffee-cup/ McDonalds Styrofoam Sweet tea cup holder and pop-riveted it to the dashboard of the Studebaker. Actually it looks “Rat Rod Cool” and is practical but the reason I designed it was to have something useful to show for all the welding practice I have been doing. I mean just welding two rectangular coupons together is boring so instead I weld up these cup holders. If I ever try selling welders at car shows, I’ll have something to souvenir the customers. In addition I designed a gage fixture that fit’s the hole on the Studebaker dash where I think the heater controls or Radio used to go. The dash board curves and it had to follow the contour and I wanted it canted to make the gages more visible to the driver. I used too heavy a gage of steel but the prototype is coming along and will soon be finished. (When you screw up fabricating something you call it a “prototype.”) Then I will make one out of thinner gage or “aluminum.” Have you ever noticed the pronunciation of that metal by North American speakers of English versus the British? I won’t even attempt to write it phonetically. I have to take my log dray over to a guy who works on them in the Town of Brooks. A log dray is a huge old device that tows behind a farm tractor and has hydraulic features that allows a boom to swing, grab a log and lift it into the bed. Mine was in the pole shed that collapsed a couple winters ago and I finally found someone with the knowledge and will to fix it. Then this afternoon I need to go to Pfeiffer’s and pick up my ‘40 Ford Sedan…No it isn’t finished but I have a couple of months I can be working on it and the progress has slowed to a trickle. Summer is the busy time and I fear I will be dead and in the grave if I don’t intervene and speed the process along. This winter I will take it back when he has some slack time and doesn’t want to lay off employees. Last night before dozing off I got to thinking about how everything seems to be tied together and how despite all the shortcomings I have cognitively how I have a “Connectional Mind.” When I go along through life my interests seem to connect even if they are dissimilar. It happens a lot with me and I can only wonder how many things pass that don’t connect…duh! Have you ever wondered about all the things you missed because you were too focused on what you thought was important? It’s like my life has been a walk through the desert on a moon less night with a key chain pen light, stumbling into cactus…ouch! And groping about trying to get a sense for where I’m going and oblivious to what might be passing unnoticed and unrealized just a few feet away. When I was in the Military I had a high tempo job and I caught a lot of things that smarter people missed and sort of got by playing clean-up hitter. When I was processing out of the Army they warned about the change in OPTEMPO that would characterize the retired lifestyle. Sure enough things slowed down but it gave me a chance to pay a bit more attention to the wonder that surrounds us all, that rushes past almost unnoticed. Unfortunately, that was the story as my children grew up and I might have spent more time with them if I had it to do over again….Then again, they turned out OK and I might have screwed them up trying to live my expectations vicariously. My parents loved me but gave me a whole lot of room to grow up. On the one hand there was almost zero parental supervision and I suffered at times as a result, but on the other learned how to manage freedom and impose my own style of self-discipline, such as it was. I’ll quit rambling…Have to get going on the log dray. |
| High Tempo on the Farm Someone out there who is a logical thinker needs to help me. This wrought iron arch I installed has a gate. Now the gate can go to the inside (House Side) or it can go to the outside (Barnyard side.) Further the doors can be installed on either side…. Simply by turning it around. Now here is the perplexing part… on one side of the doors is a locking bolt and on the other are two wrought iron handles. Now my question is should the handles go to the inside or to the outside or vice/versa? Should they be for the homeowner to go out into the barnyard or for a person on the yardside wanting to get in? In most of the stories I have read about walled gardens it seems the handles were on the outside with the lock on the inside. Somebody out there help me. I find this sort of conundrum worrisome and it will nag at me all day. Well I discovered that the # 1 tip won’t weld 13 gage steel. Simply not enough heat… You have to go up to the 1.5 or 2 tip. I know all my female readers are overjoyed to learn this arcane and useful fact. I learned something else interesting. If you have a newer car… One that has fuel injection, you start it without your foot on the accelerator. On older cars the procedure was to push it to the floor to make the manual clutch work and before that there was a pull out choke. Now, I’m told you turn the key and simply wait for the engine to catch. I flooded the Stude this weekend by pushing down on the gas trying to start it…. “Dumb Ass!“ my friend commented…”Don’t you know nuthin?” Sometimes my Stude revs and the accelerator sticks between shifts. He showed me how to hook up a bungee- cord to the return spring on the carburetor…. Said I needed to swap it out every year on account of moisture… looses it’s “snot” he claims. Every evening I take the dogs for a walk down “Five Car a Day Road.” That is what I named it when we first moved here, even though now the traffic has become much heavier….(Twenty-Five cars a day) Anyway I head off down the road and the dogs and cats follow me….I’m a veritable pied piper. My Golden Doodle likes to play with the cats (Harass) and she runs towards them and slams on the brakes at the last instant or moves elusively behind and gives them a “Goose.“ Needless to say the cats hate this game except for Felix (The Female). She loves it and spins and swipes with her paw and chases that rather large Doodle all over the road. When on occasion a car comes the dogs are trained to come to my wife and I and the cats run for cover…Ever since mad Alice Malarkey (The woman who had her husband buried under the power lines) squashed Dark Vader….(The maternal grandmother of most of the felines and my favorite cat ever) Everybody seems to have a healthy respect for cars…. Everyone that is but the dogs. I don’t know what it is with dogs, deer and pheasants…. Are they dumb or what? Even the turkey’s scuttle out of the way. |
The White Bat Karen had an idea and that is that we blog about something we had written that struck our fancy. I wrote this poem and I like it. When I was young and foolish, My girlfriend said to me… I’ll be with you darling through all eternity. Now I’m old and wiser, And it’s plain to see, Eternity’s not half as long as it’s cracked up to be. This poem expresses the whacked out humor I love… that used to make my daughter’s groan. They tell me my grandson’s inherited the same corn-ball, whacked out gene. The more fractured and disjointed the reach, the more it makes me chuckle. Today I had a good day… I bought an hour meter so I know when to change oil in the Studebaker. For those who are not familiar with this type of gage it is common to farm tractors where it is used to schedule periodic maintenance. Miles are not as good a measure because it takes a tractor longer to go one and it is usually pulling a load. Anyway an hour meter gage is easy to install. You find a switched power wire and hook one end to the input tab and the other to a ground and voila, when you turn the ignition on it starts recording and when you turn it off, it stops. How simple is that? Underneath where I have my volt, hot water, and oil pressure gage there is a panel intended for some obscure purpose and I intend to use the space for a speedometer, tachometer and my newly acquired hour meter. I’m building the bracket and making it so it’s canted for better visibility behind the wheel. Linda bought me a bronze of a girl leaning forward on her elbow that I think I will use for the hood ornament. It's really a nice piece and it lends some over stated elegance to the old farm truck. You know that famous painting of the girl on the side of a hill, (Whistler?) sitting in the grass, looking back at a farmhouse in the distance….you do?….you don’t…. anyway this bronze looks like that girl in that painting. While I was in town I stopped at the flea market and what to my surprise… (No, I didn't discover a BOOM ba BOOM! right before my eyes) A guy had a craftsman compressor and a spray unit for $15. It actually runs and makes pressure. Now I need a fitting to hook the plastic air hose to the gun. Did I tell you about spraying painting the outhouse and there was a bat inside and for the next month we had a white bat flying around? Luckily it was water soluable paint and I’m sure the first rain he returned to normal bat color... but even Linda chuckled about that one. Please don’t report me to PETA…it was an accident. On Thursday I went with Linda to Marshfield and we bought a wrought iron archway that will go through the hedge into the barnyard. It has swinging doors and a locking bolt. Whoever built it did a whole lot of work on it and what we purchased it for was half of what I expected. It was rusty and some clear coat had been applied over it. Today I took a wire brush on a drill and cleaned it up and spray painted it flat black with a rattle can. I wish I had that sprayer this morning … it would have been a good test of whether or not it works. |
| Scene 3: Cookie monster pops up his head and begins to sing… The big brass wheel went round and round The big iron shaft went up and down, Up and down and round and round Enough! Enough! ... President’s Chief of staff walks up Was that who I think it was? Yes… I wonder if that moron remembered to pay his taxes this year? He might be dumb but he’s the only economic adviser I have left. You are in a bit of a bind there, sir. It was appoint him or a Republican… I know, I know…. Why have you called me here…? Because I’m embarrassed… Why Mr. President? They’ve started calling me stupid again… That’s absurd… you are the most brilliant President in history. You think so? I know so. And what makes you say that? Well you promised a redistribution of wealth and you really delivered there… How so…? Well first of all you wrecked the CD Market…All those old codgers who were hoarding all cash….We really stuck it to them….running the presses day and night redistributed the hell out of their nest eggs.... Out of their pockets straight into the treasury. Shhhh, Not so loud. And don’t forget how you pushed spending to over three trillion and sold bonds like there was no tomorrow… That money has really come in handy for all the social programs we doubled down on. And…. Well if that doesn't get you reelected nothing will.... The more people on welfare and food stamps the more addicted voters come election day. Good point... And there's more Mr. President..., I just got this year's assessment on my house and the value of my property has dropped by ten percent… It did? You betcha.... You have engineered the greatest shakedown of Middle America since the Great Depression. Don't give me all the credit.... Barney deserves some of the praise. He's not a pimple on your butt, Mr. President. Yeah, but look what we did to the Local Governments… Mr. President, Really! have you forgotten how the Mil-Rate works…? That's right.... A decimal point here and there and the States are back in business. And who would have dreamed our policies would set the Stock market on it’s ear and let us shake down everybody's 401 K? That was brilliant! Still, nobody likes being called “Stupid,” even if it is a case of pot calling the kettle black. It’s all the Tea Party's fault, Mr.President. They were the ones were behind the SP downgrade, It was all politics....but we 're retaliating… How? We've put them on the top of our Weekly Slur List….Every loyal Democrat is speaking with a single voice.... mouthing the exact same words. We're calling it the "Tea Party Downgrade." Don't forget last month’s slur... where everybody referred to the Tea Party as “Terrorists.“ …What happened to bi-partisanship and toning down the rhetoric? They have a lot of nerve questioning our policies. The people can’t have it both ways. It’s either Big Government or rule by a bunch of Capitalists. The voters wanted change and we gave it to them… They wanted hope and got paid as dumbasses always are. They’re calling me a Socialist and all I did was get a health care law passed. You Keep telling yourself that Mr. President. They're jealous that you accomplished what no other President could. I always feel better after talking to you Chief. How’s my vacation schedule looking? |
| One Act Play, Garbage Cans Scene 2: Cookie Monster sticks his head out of can # 1 and sings. All the Gold we had in Fort Knox Is in a vault in the Middle of New York City In some other countries name…. Mr. B: Head of the Federal Reserve Good grief was that Jonesey….? sure looked like him…wonder what brought him into this rundown part of the city.? But the message was plain and this is the spot. What could the President want this time? Second Can opens and President stands up. Mr. B: Whoa! I called you here ole buddy to get your thoughts on a certain meddling presidential hopeful who will go unnamed. Which one is that…? The one who wants to put us back on the Gold Standard. Oh yeah... The one who wants to do an audit of Fort Knox, showing metric tons over the past 20 years. I hope you gave him an emphatic, "No!" What business do the American People have knowing what's in their bank? My sentiments exactly. Geese! Can you imagine what would happen if that cat got out of the bag? Let's not go there.… You think the debate over treasury bonds, tax deficits and uncontrolled spending was bad..., Let the word get out that we've been quietly selling off the gold reserves and the crapola will really hit the fan. It would not bode well... That's an under statement. It would be a political and market meltdown. We couldn't get the Chinese to sell us a fortune cookie. How were we supposed to know gold was going to reemerge as a world currency? Should have left it quietly buried at Fort Knox…. Now we've uncorked the bottle and the genie is out. Shot ourselves in the foot we did….We had a corner on the market and the dollar was whatever we said it was. It's all Nixon's fault. The Good Ole Days are over Mr. President… People have quit thinking of gold as a commodity and are seeing it now as a currency. The dollar no longer defines gold..., gold defines the dollar. What are we going to do when people realize that the definition of inflation is: The Price of GOLD... relative to what it was a year ago? That will be a sad day indeed... How about when they realize the gold being traded today was once in our reserves…. That we frittered most of it away like we did the Social Security Trust Fund? We can’t let them find out Mr. President, that’s all there is to it. The Federal Reserve must remain the most closely guarded of national secrets. See to it that “You Know Who” doesn't get into Fort Knox. I'm on it. |
| One Act Play: Garbage Cans Scene 1: Two trashcans in an alley in New York City. The lid to the first tilts up and Cookie Monster rears his head. He begins to sing. He’s got a ticket to ride, He’s got a ticket to ride, He’s got a ticket to ride and he don’t care. Someone approaches and the lid closes. It’s Mr. Jones, Head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Mr. Jones: This can’t be the place but the instructions were very clear. Other Trash can opens and the President stands up brushing off his suit. Mr. President, is that you? Who the hell do you think it is…You’re late…. It wasn’t my fault the ferry pilot took three tries to get into the slip…. There you go blaming others.... I hate that. Sorry Mr. President… It won’t happen again. The reason I called you here Mr. Jones is because I am concerned about this Quarter's Consumer Price Index… I was afraid you were going to say that. We’ve had some tough economic times and those Republicans are acting like its all my fault. All I need now are some bad numbers on inflation. Fancy you should ask Mr. President, because I just previewed the numbers and they show around six percent. Geeeze! What is driving the index so high? Well the big driver is fuel costs this summer…they really went out off the chart…Up about forty percent. I was afraid of that, what else? Well food is up six percent as well. Hmmmm What kind of index were you expecting? I was hoping for half a percent. You know what Mr. President? What? If we ignore the criteria of energy and food we come up with a fifth of a percent. Why didn’t you say so to begin with…. Those abnormal spikes skew the data every time. Driving cars and eating food.... can you believe that? I was thinking the same thing Mr. President. You’re doing a good job over in the BLS, Jones… Thank you sir… |
| How much Gold is Left in Fort Knox? I have been sitting here thinking about how much gold is really left in Fort Knox. I suspect it is a whole lot less than most people think. I was going to explain why when I remembered that most who read my blog could care less. What we don’t know can hurt us and we sat idly by as the government quietly raided the Social Security Trust fund, leaving it stuffed with IOU’s signed by a long list of presidents from both parties. If this doesn’t hit close to home I don’t know what will. If they can do it with the Social Security Trust fund what keeps the government from slowly selling off the nation’s gold reserves to finance shortfalls in food stamps, unemployment or give it to Freddie and Fanny to buy up worthless mortgages. College kids on food stamps….can you imagine that? Then I paused and remembered my blog ratings. They plummet when I begin writing about these things even though the average citizen should be aware of what is going on and the certainty that it will directly effect our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren. The “Tea Partiers” are being much maligned by the media for all that is wrong with the fiscal policies of our huge and out of control government. They are the messenger of sanity, a voice of the prophet crying out in the wilderness, proclaiming the word that printing paper, not backed up by anything but the unsupported word of the Government is not a good idea. That the Government needs to reign in the presses and begin to live within a budget. Failure to do so they warn will soon will bring the card castle, down about the heads of everyone. Much of the controversy has centered around the debt crisis which is the issue of bonds to finance shortfalls in tax revenues. It hasn’t really dawned on the taxpayers what the steam rising from the printing presses really means. Or what the steadily increasing rate of exchange between the dollar and gold truly signifies. Yes we are trying to get the bond issue under control but that is but the tip of the iceberg. The unconstrained printing of currency with little to back it up is the behemoth that stands in the background. The federal Reserve won’t tell you how much gold is left in Fort Knox. It is probably best that they don’t. The Stock market is too fragile to withstand the shock of what the truth really is. That statistic is no doubt locked up in one of the empty vaults that used to be stacked high with the precious metal. Finally the breaks are beginning to be applied and questions being asked. One political leader wants to go back onto the gold standard and threatens to visit Fort Knox…. I hope he takes some auditors and insists on being taken beyond what is being “Show Cased” in the central vault. All this gold that is currently being purchased by the Ton, on the world market has to be coming from somewhere. The trickle being produced through mining these days can’t begin to approach what is being moved on the International scene from one bank vault to the next. It would appear that we are already on the Gold Standard and the value of the dollar is being expressed by the rate of exchange. If that is true and we have seen a substantial change in the rate over the past two years. What was selling for a thousand dollars an ounce when the current administration came to office is now selling for Seventeen-fifty. That is a much better indicator of inflation than the point five percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last quarter. After they adjusted it to ignore food and energy costs. I guess if you don’t like the numbers and don’t want to pay cost of living increases you simply ignore the criteria that are harbingers of the truth. |
| Water over the “Damn“ When I saw Karen’s prompt a fire-hose of thoughts came to mind. Basically I concluded that some people really struggle to express themselves and for others it seems effortless. Most of what I read reflects the struggle taking place but sometimes you read a price in which the mind of the author is crystal. When you read the latter it makes the writing appear so easy when exactly the opposite is true. Fuzzy writing is easy…. Lucid writing is hard. Those who can write lucidly deserved all the credit they get. I was distracted by the need to do some practice on my welding and a good example of fuzzy thinking set to words took place before my very eyes. I have been trying for two weeks to weld these coupons of sheet metal and not met with very much success. Suddenly it dawned on me that the material was too thin for the process I was using. In a convoluted sense this was a great example of the prompt….that words mean different things to different people and what is written is not always readily absorbed into a readers mind. In retrospect I have been real dumb ass. I was using sheet metal I had laying around the shop and the thickest was less that one sixteenth of an inch which is the minimum recommended with the gas tips I have. I used a thickness gage to stumble upon this revelation but even then the understanding was not self evident. Yes, I could stick the coupon into the slot but the information provided told me the gage of the metal on one side or the thickness in thousands on the other. For a dyslexic converting thousands of an inch into a common fractions is an agony. Perhaps you are no doubt unaware that the larger the gage of a metal the less the thickness. Is that backward or what? Who thought that one up? Finally when all else failed I went to the operating instructions in the manual for the torch. Shown below is the information it provided. Now if you really study that the information is there to show what I was doing wrong but it is not what I would call the greatest chart in the world and it bounces all over the place in what it is trying to say. Like a lot of the instructions I read in How to Do it Books #00 Tip: 24-28 gage steel #0 Tip: 1.5mm, 1/16in, 20-22 gage steel #0.5 Tip: 1/16in, 20 gage #1 Tip: 1.5mm-3mm, 1/16-1/8 #1.5 Tip: 1/8-3/16in #2 Tip: 3/16-1/4in. It would have been nice to have a chart that showed a picture of the tip and the drill size of the hole coming out of it. Then for those who are metrically inclined a millimeter equivalent, the thickness expressed as a common fraction, then the gage, and finally the value expressed in thousandths of an inch. Instead I have 4 different measures of the same thing. If you could have seen me with a calculator trying to convert thousandths into simple fractions that were being referred to in the manual, you would have been amused. It was like watching a bear attempt needlepoint. What is simple to many normal people is not so simple to me. Eventually I figured it out and discovered my problem. The material I was trying to weld was way too thin. It wasn’t my skill, stifle that thought it was the wafer like thickness of the coupons I was trying to weld. It wasn’t my fault…. Got that? It was the materials. I think this is a dimension of what the quote in the prompt is trying to say….not exactly but sort of. To one person thickness is expressed in gage. To someone not familiar with this word it has little meaning and when the number gets larger as the thickness decreases that seems to defy logic. When someone talks about thickness some equate that to gage, others to millimeters, others to fractional inches, and others to thousands of an inch. So it is with words. They have many connotations that change shades of meaning and the manner in which they are articulated and the tone add a whole bunch more. It is no wonder that readers often find it difficult to understand what is being said. Even a simple word like “No” can be misunderstood. In the popular song the singer asks…”What part of No don’t you understand.” Parents often start off by saying “No” but that is only taken by an adolescent to signify a beginning point for negotiations. Then there is how the word is used in context or maybe how a word isn’t used at all when it should be. Like “Excuse Me.” Sometimes word choice garbles the message and sometimes what might have been better stated only dawns on us later. On reflection what we might have said becomes abundantly clear while at the time we responded inappropriately; or appeared stupid at a complete loss for words. It all comes down to communications and words are only a part. Saying the right thing at the right time is an art and that is why some people are good writers and talkers and others sit there with wide eyes and slack jaws. |
| OK, I’ll stop harping on Economics I think I’m boring my readers with all this talk about half-baked economic theories. What is interesting to me is not always interesting to others and if you can’t afford to pay for groceries, rent and the credit cards then discussions about precious metals are probably the furthest thing from your mind. The only thing that bores my readers less than economics are my blogs on my automotive hobby and welding hobbies. When my numbers plummet I find that I can always go back to writing about writing. That always leads to a resurgence in readers…. I wonder why….Is WDC not about writing? Duh! I have read that great writers routinely write 4000 words a day or more. This seems a lot to me however on a good day I approach this standard. Not every day mind you but occasionally. If I am writing a novel or short story for example and get on a roll I resist stopping even when I begin to grow tired. There are muses and there are muses and sometimes you get visited by one that is so exciting you don’t want to walk away, knowing that when you come back she will be gone and you will be back to churning out the same old dreary stuff draped in the cobwebs of your mind. This raises an interesting point. Interesting to me anyway. That is does what we write originate in our minds or do we sort of stumble upon in in a distracted stupor and catch it by the skirt? I think it happens both ways. If there is not muse present, at least one with something worth repeating then we have to plumb the depths of our mind to come up with a topic. Often during such a process I hear the door rattle and one enters my mind and says….”What are you working on today, Percy, you frackin moron?” And I reply, “This or that or something I’m just playing around with….” And my muse answers, “Seems I have heard that topic discussed elsewhere in my travels by minds far above your pay grade….“ and I query, “ And what did they have to say? And she replies, “Something like this…“ Whereupon I listen and begin to scribble furiously to get down the gist of what the newly arrived sprit is trying to tell me. The truth is that we don’t know very much about spirits and the clergy aren’t much that help either. As custodians of the sprit they have done a miserable job of developing our understanding of them which remains about where it was at the time of Christ. So anemic has been the effort that atheism has become rampant as many of these frauds are off chasing choir boys or trying to fondle some unsuspecting women…, so where does that leave us. It leaves us in a situation where we can’t separate the pepper from the rat poop. No doubt there are as many authentic spokespersons for the “Word” as there are sleazes but how do you really tell them apart…. Unless they try and squeeze your genitals. Still most writers have an intuitive belief at least in a spirit…. We call it a muse and when we get on a roll they seem to be the motive force behind it. How often have you had a “Flash” and wrote something you really thought was good and reading it again a few days later said “Wow! This is not half bad!“ I am sure it happens to most writers….I does to me and I am the most ordinary of men. |
| A Glitter of Gold, Beneath the Currency Mushroom I am not an economics professor and my take on what is happening in world financial markets is only an expression of my opinion. However, I have been around awhile and have been watching for some time what is going on. As an average citizen I know what I have seen and common sense tells me where I think all this is heading. Allow me to review the bidding of what has happened in my lifetime and what got us to where we currently are. During WW2 FDR found himself constrained by a Gold Standard. He wanted to be able to generate more money to sustain war effort and got Congress to relax some of the constraints that tied the dollar to gold. Notably was to take the coinage in Gold and replace it with coins of less intrinsic value and paper. The gold was called, in melted down and sent to Ft. Knox. This served to refocus the mindset of the public away from gold as a currency. Still the notion of gold’s value persisted and a more concerted effort needed to be made to get Americans to see gold as a commodity rather than a medium of exchange. Gold, we were told, is like a lump of coal, or a bushel of wheat…it is good for making jewelry and dental crowns but beyond its value as a commodity has no place as an instrument of modern finance. Still many remained skeptical, particularly overseas, and there remained legislation in place that tied the printing of dollars to the gold reserves that the country maintained. As time went on these legal limits on the unconstrained printing of money bumped up against the ever-growing needs for big government and they were further relaxed. It seems in the seventies most of the legislation that linked gold reserves to the amount of money that could be printed were set aside. Gold became just another commodity with restrictions of how it could be traded by citizens in the open market. Indulge me now while I pause briefly and show how a government raises money. 1. Through Taxes: Through taxes both direct and indirect. 2. Through fees for public services. 3. Through the issue of Bonds 4. Through the “Borrowing” from Trust Funds. 5. Through the printing of currency. Now most understand how the first four work but are a bit fuzzy on the last one. Once the gold standard was set aside our Government was at last free to print as much currency as it wanted. Over time they had discovered that most of this paper just sits around bank vaults. A dollar is an IOU for goods and services and if that IOU is not being used in exchange it does not really count fully against its circulated value. So how much of this paper is actually free value for our government? I submit that there is a whole lot sitting out there that has been sold and never been called upon in exchange. For example in Iraq we found several semi-trailers of US Currency that Saddam Hussein was trying to do something with. As the premier world currency the dollar is used to prop up foreign currencies and we have been huge beneficiaries over the years as a consequence. We get the value and it just sits somewhere not requiring any real form of repayment. It is like in Banking where only a portion of a depositor's checking account is being used at any given moment and the bank can use that percentage for loans always sitting idle. They lend this at ten percent and pay the check depositor less than one. Well this is the way it works with currency and one can only speculate on how much of the yearly issue of paper money sits idle. We have seen what the politicians did to the Social Security trust fund, how they continuously need to raise the debt ceiling on bonds, and we can only imagine how the insiders drool over the currency windfall. No longer constrained by Gold and its legislative limitations, they have gone into printing currency in a big sort of way and it is easy to see why. However, in the long run there is no free ride. If the Government thinks they are free of the Gold Standard they can think again. Look at Fox news and see in bold print what gold is selling for. At some point the mind set is swinging away from seeing gold as a commodity and back to seeing it again as a currency. How people see it is important. If you believe it is a commodity like a hula-hoop, a tulip bulb or a bushel of corn, and some investors no doubt still do, then it could be a bubble as they claim that will pop suddenly and comes crashing down. On the other hand if you see it as an alternative form of currency, then while it might fluctuate, you can expect it to remain more stable than the currencies which it measures. Standards are not bubbles...they are enduring. If this doesn’t tighten the spincter of Governements that print currencies, I don’t know what will. Overseas they buy gold by the ton to prop up their currencies and at only a fraction of the total, seems to do the job. Economies are reassurred when they see this shoring up of their currencies. Another possibility currently being advanced is that some country, with a lot of gold, will suddenly dump a huge amount on the market…. If they do they face immediate inflation and a ripple of other effects that are not economically enhancing. If it does take place, there is a huge global market out there salivating to absorb it... and the more gold is traded the more it becomes entrenched as the benchmark. As gold ascends it becomes a believable standard of gauging the true value of the World's currencies. Two years ago it was selling for a thousand dollars an ounce. Today it is selling for seventeen fifty-eight. Is there a message here? Despinte the Government's, efforts to underreport inflation, there is no way they can continue to ignore the market price of gold. No longer is gold being defined by the dollar but now the dollar is being defined by gold. Several years ago commodity traders couldn't get more that $250 an ounce. As a currency it has surged to nearly ten times that amount. What we are seeing is a much more believable measure of worth, and if you look at it's surge since the last change in administrations it will suggest that that problem of inflation is much worse than the point two percentage points reported by the government and my conservative estimate of ten percent. |
| Gold, the “New” World Currency. Today the Stock Market made a recovery of sorts. Stocks recovered a small measure of what they had lost in the past weeks. No doubt most of the recovery was the purchase of shares in companies that were undervalued. That is their cash reserves and earnings showed they were worth more than their shares were selling for. Many of these companies produce goods and services necessary to support a decent and in some cases, minimum essential lifestyle. The government continues to spend more than it takes in and fears changing its fiscal policies will sour constituents and prevent reelection. There is however another reason why the markets fail to grow and unemployment continues as a problem. This is because a primary source of Government revenue is printing more currency than the country is worth which devalues everything. We understand how inflation devalues CDs but take that understanding and apply it to all things finiancial. The Stock market must periodically “adjust” to compensate for the steam rising off the printing presses. The downgrading of a Government’s credit rating by the S&P reflects directly on fiscal policies that are being abused across a wide spectrum of overspending initiatives. What is beginning to emerge is that the US Dollar is no longer the premier world currency. Fortunately for us, the other world currencies are not much better off and in many cases worse, because governments worldwide have been spending to shore up bankrupt socialist economic policies that funnel vast sums into entitlement programs. The addiction to these programs is acute and efforts to get the monkey under control will lead to ever greater social unrest. The latest example took place in this country with the passage of the recent US Healthcare Bill. This all but insures the United States will not be able to survive the downward spiral of spending vs. revenues. Slowly the investors of the world are awakening to the currency manipulations that are going on. There is a “new” world currency that is beginning to arise and that is GOLD. There are many who say the current surge in gold prices is a bubble that will collapse once the world markets settle down a bit. What we are seeing is not a bubble but a strong and enduring change. Gold cannot be conjured out of thin air like currency or manufactured with a high volume printing press. Gold is not a fad but a form of currency that has been around a long time and is returning to the forefront as a medium of exchange that has believability. It has become a benchmark against which currencies are currently being measured. People with a savings account can use GOLD as a measure of the real inflation that is taking place. If two years ago gold was selling for a thousand dollars an ounce and today it is going for eighteen hundred, what does that tell you about an inflated dollar? Duh! Even an old codger like me can see that the current administration is ripping off the nest egg of senior citizens and gold prices are a good measure of the scope. |
| Percy Goodfellow on Money Today when we hear politicians from the right speak, they often use the analogy of a families financial strategy and the Governments. They point to the Government’s policy of spending more than they take in and point to a family’s inability to sustain this type of imbalance. There is however one major difference between a Government and a Family and that is that the Government can print money. The paper they issue is the medium of exchange that the economy is stuck with and a government can print as much of it as it wants. When it prints too much there is something called inflation that takes place as a correction. One of the ways to hide the extent of the inflation that is taking place is to use criteria to measure it that does not show the full extent of the problem. Today inflation is measured not using energy increases and rising food prices. Thus the guide that the average family uses to gauge inflation is not the came criteria that the government uses and as a consequence the inflation is under reported. Hold that thought. During recent weeks the market has made what is being referred to as another “Correction.” Many say this correction is the result of consumer confidence in the spending of the Government and the inability of the Politicians to rein it under control. No doubt some of this is true. However, the root problem in my view is that the market is making a correction for the silent and unreported inflation that is taking place. If you use energy and food to calculate inflation, in addition to the carefully selected measures currently being used, you would see an annual inflation rate of about ten percent. This means that if you have a $1,000 in a savings account at the start of the year it has declined in actual value (Buying power) to $900 by the end of the year. This is a silent form of taxation that is being used to create money for government spending that isn’t actually there and when the market “Corrects” the correction is to reconcile reported value with actual value. As a result the true value of production, goods and services, reflected in open trading on the stock market comes crashing down even though everybody knows that the monetary value of these instruments is greater than what they are being sold for at the end of the day. The Current Administration, in an attempt to get out of a pickle, that is not entirely of their making, is trying to print their way out of trouble. The bill payers are first off those who have money in CD and Treasury instruments. These are being invisibly devalued as I explasined. Thus it is the Old Codgers who have yet to fully grasp what is happening and perhaps many of the foreign investors who don’t realize their principle is being erroded much more than they realize. Why, then you ask, are Treasuries and CDs in such demand if they are such a bad investment? A good question and the answer is why little guys should stay out of the stock market. Right now there is no good place to park the huge amounts of capital that are in the hands of nations and mega investors. While they would certainly like to get a good interest rate, right now, with the fragile world economy, they are willing to settle for keeping what they have. If you have $50 million dollars, making a few more in interest is not the prime concern. The prime concern is keeping what you have. So they are attracted, in the short term, to the liquidity of Treasury notes and the safety of this investment. This is particularly true of foreign investors in our markets. They see the United States as being the last to fall should a catastrophic crash take place in the world economy. What they fail to realize is that in ten years their investment would be seriously devalued if they parked it there that long. Some claim that lthey will keep it there only until the markets stabilize and then take their capital out to buy up stocks that are undervalued when they think the market has bottomed out. Another area where money is being parked is Gold. Gold is seen by most as a valuable commodity but keep in mind you can’t eat it and while investors are drawn to it, many fear it is a bubble that will pop once the markets stabilize. In my view this is unlikely for reasons I will discuss in my next blog. The real value of the Worlds economics rests in the Marketplace. There are resources, goods and services that are essential to a person’s survival and well being and while these can drop below or rise above their actual value, people require these in order to exist. The market will never drop so low that food will have no value, or clothing or shelter or water or breathable air. This is where investors must ultimately park their money even though they become the bill-payer for “Adjustments,“ that result from a government's manipulation of currency. |
| Coming to WDC and New Horizon’s Academy (NHA) A family of starlings built a nest on the eaves above our deck. There is a lot of traffic in birds swooping and darting this morning. Maybe the eggs hatched or the cats are walking about. We like the starlings despite the fact they are messy….they eat mosquitoes and the barnyard is amazingly free of them. I came to WDC from a site called Fan Story. The management was a group that was not particularly fond of men and encouraged stories of bad guys getting their just deserts; particularly abusive or perverted ones. The climate just was not conducive to males, and I wonder now why I stayed as long as I did. I guess it was because you meet some pretty cool people regardless of where you go. I had a female friend who was outspoken and when she got booted I came to WDC. WDC is still heavily female dominated but it is more tolerant of males and man bashing is certainly not the norm. As a matter of fact there are activities here that would “freak out” the Fan Story community. I have always enjoyed writing even though it has been a bit of a struggle over the years with my dyslexia issue. It is a problem I have always had but as I write more I feel more and more in control of my work. Practice makes perfect…but I am still a long way from that. After about a year here, I saw a request for Writing Instructors from New Horizon’s Academy. In the Military I taught basic writing skills like writing memos and doing Staff Studies. What the heck I thought, maybe I can do some more of that. What I discovered is that they were looking for a Drama Instructor and asked if I would consider the job. At the very bottom of my list of writing experiences I had listed Drama and “don’t you know…” that is the one they zeroed in on. I was surprised in a sense because WDC is not exactly a Mecca for stage and screen plays. (Wow! I just hit a wrong key on my word processor and half this blog flashed in a highlight and vanished… thank goodness that on my word processor, under the edit function is the “Undo Typing Option. This happens to me frequently working in the WDC editor and in such instances there is no recovery. Thus I have learned to write everything on my Microsoft Word Processor and copy and paste it to applications on WDC.) After retiring from the Military I belonged to the Playwrights center in Minneapolis (It was a long drive) and wrote some full length and one act plays. A couple of them were given readings and that was a good experience. (One of them, Andromache, is in my port.) However, it hardly qualified me to be an instructor… However the staff at NHA took exception and asked me to develop a course. I did and that’s how the One Act Play Course was born. Last semester I got to test it and for a host of reasons (Personal problems), that appeared unrelated to the course, four of the students dropped out in the very beginning. Two, however, stuck it out and I was amazed at how these persistent students, with vastly different skill backgrounds, improved. New Horizon’s Academy sets the bar pretty high in requirements for course development. There are course pages to write and lesson plans and in my case a mini library of reference aids. All this requires an understanding in ML Write and you get pretty familiar with this print utility at WDC that enhances the text and graphics of your work. All the effort paid off and the aids and handouts answered a lot of questions; particularly the examples that were provided for the student’s guidance. I can’t wait for this semester (quarter) to get started and see what this class comes up with. |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
Love it! Especially the safety measures for us homo sapiens...
