The whole idea of taxing beards is simply ridiculous. And who decided he should be called “Peter The Great?” Sounds like a huge mistake to me.
Archive for the ‘Living Life’ Category
A Hairy Tax Scheme: Ridding Society of Superfluous Burdens Leave a comment
Solvitur ambulando Leave a comment
I don’t always agree with Ms. Huffington, but she’s correct here.
At A Minimum Leave a comment
Chicago recently saw protests aimed at McDonald’s and promoting a $15 minimum wage.
What are you worth?
That’s a humbling question for most, and one that our government does answer every day for wage earners at the bottom of the food chain.
Well, legally at the bottom anyway. And the answer for those workers earning minimum wage?
You’re not worth much.
This Thursday, there will be protests in Los Angeles at fast food chains. People are upset about the compensation received by workers that feed much of our society on a regular basis. Management of those fast food chains is trying to confront the reason for the protest with their PR muscle. Read the LA Times article (link below) for some perspective here.
After years of thinking that minimum wage rates should be kept low, I’ve begun to rethink my position. I believe the compensation rates should be raised, and here’s why:
McDonald’s recently moved to pay their employees with high-fee debit cards, igniting a firestorm of protest. Click on the image to visit one site helping to prepare a class action lawsuit.
1. Compensation at the minimum wage is not a living wage. $290 each week … assuming that you can get 40 hours of work in the week. The reality is the vast majority of minimum wage workers do not receive 40 hours in a week, because that violates many company policies requiring entry-level workers to never receive enough hours to be considered full time and qualify for benefits. So, it’s not just that minimum wage workers receive little hourly compensation … they don’t receive many hours of work, either. Stitching together multiple part time jobs in order to get more hours of work is very common. Bottom line: minimum wage workers don’t make enough to support themselves, much less their families.
2. Benefits for minimum wage workers are even lower than their wages. Part of the need to keep minimum wage workers from being full time workers is that they would then qualify for more employee benefits. No matter, US workers at the bottom of the wage ladder are given very few benefits, even when they do qualify for them. The United States is 30th among 30 industrialized countries in paying benefits to their workers as a percent of their compensation (check it out in the Business Insider link, below). The US is below Singapore, Brazil and Estonia. Bottom line: low wage workers get very few benefits.
3. The pay gap is widening between line workers and senior management. It’s well documented that senior management compensation is rising dramatically when compared to entry-level workers. The Huffington Post reports that the CEO of Walmart makes $11,000 per hour. Further:
American CEO’s are the highest paid in the world. As of 2011, Corporate CEO’s in America make 340 times what the average worker makes. As a comparison, in 1980, CEO pay was only 42 times more than the average worker. For decades now, the compensation packages of the top one percent have been steadily increasing — income inequality is a runaway train, with the divide between the corporate oligarchy and the average citizen growing larger and larger every year.
I reject the Wall Street perspective that the CEO is running the company and should richly benefit from his position, while line workers should be paid as little as possible without significant benefits.
Costco is an exception to that trend … their average hourly wage is over $20/hour, and 88% of their employees have company-paid health insurance. Does the Costco CEO get Wall Street pressure to lower the compensation his company pays to hourly workers? Absolutely.
Will he do it? No. He believes that if you pay people a decent wage, you get happy employees that perform better for the company and its customers.
Wouldn’t it be great if McDonald’s and Taco Bell believed that?
More
LA Times: Fast Food Wage Protest
Forbes: Meet The McDonald’s Employees Fighting For Fair Wages
New York Times: Raise That Wage
Washington Post: Minimum Wage Comparison
Business Insider: What The Minimum Wage Debate In The United States Is Missing
Friendship Leave a comment
The Problem With Flap Valves Leave a comment
My first real job was working for a handyman in Skidmore, MO. Wayne was mainly an exterior house painter, but he did all sorts of projects around the houses of his clients. I was 16.
It was my first exposure to up-to-the-elbows home repair.
Wayne taught me that a plumber only needed to know 2 things.
1. Know what floats down hill.
2. Payday is on Friday.
I learned a third thing: I hate plumbing.
Today’s home repair job was replacing the flap valve in the downstairs toilet.
I hate plumbing.
And why is it that flap valves can’t be made to last? They have to be replaced every … year? … and when you replace them, they have always degenerated into mush? They always leave black rubber stuff all over your hands, every time.
We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t make a flap valve to last.
I hate plumbing.
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The Buzz Leave a comment
I work at home. I’m alone with the phone, smilin’ and dialin’. Most days, it’s a quiet house.
It was nearing the end of my Monday, and the sales meeting was over. Calls were done. I was setting up my CRM database for the next few weeks … scheduling activities for broadcasters in Idaho, actually. It’s quiet work.
I was home alone. Well, just me and 3 cats.
And then I heard the buzz from the bedroom. A growl. A noise. An unidentified noise. A very peculiar noise. A new noise.
Not a cat, mind you. This sound was more, uh, creepy. Couldn’t identify it. I walked towards the noise.
Why? Because I’m a homeowner. It doesn’t matter how weird the noise is … it’s in MY house, and I have to end the noise and regain my solitude. Even if it’s a scary noise.
So I walked towards the noise.
Master bedroom. Through the door, past the bed. It’s coming from the shower area.
I walked toward the noise. It was still creepy. I had no idea what it was.
Past the desk. The noise seemed to be coming from the bathroom vanity. Still couldn’t figure it out. Water leak? Wild killer bees? Floor collapsing? No clue.
I walked toward the noise.
Ninja ran past me. Ninja’s the stealth cat that probably had nothing to do with the noise. That I can prove.
I walked towards the noise. I hear it. It’s IN THE SINK.
I’m now 6′ from the sink, and I still can’t see what Spawn of Satan is making this horrid racket.
I have no choice. I walked towards the noise.
.
.
.
.
.
BUZZZZZZZZZ.
.
.
.
.
.
It’s Velda’s toothbrush. Beelzebub must have turned it on. My nemesis is laying in the bottom of the sink. Buzzing. Vibrating. Spinning. And annoying me.
I pick it up, and it will not turn off. Two buttons. They do nothing.
BUZZZZZZZZZ.
I had to call Velda to find out how to kill the monster. I couldn’t do it. Arthur C Clarke said it best: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The toothbrush was magic. It had a mind of its own, until Velda told me how to kill it … by plugging it in (and if that’s not a paradoxical solution, I don’t know what is. You kill it by feeding it?).
Solitude returns.
I faced my fear. Another home owner crisis … averted.
Beelzebub as he appears in Shin Megami Tensei II. Artwork by Kazuma Kaneko.
The Incredible Banana Split 1 comment
The Dairy Queen Banana Split
My world was small, growing up. St Joe, Missouri (St Joseph to you strangers) was about 30 miles away, and that was the big city. We really didn’t go farther afield than that … but who would need to?
And on the way home from St Joe, there was the ultimate summer treat at the Savannah Dairy Queen: a banana split. Now that was something to get your heart thumping.
- The plastic banana boat
- A banana … split
- 3 dollops of soft serve ice cream, each with the famous DQ signature swirl on top.
- Three toppings … chocolate, pineapple and strawberry
- Whipped cream.
- Mmmmmmmmm.
Come to find out, the banana split is celebrating its 109th birthday this summer. My favorite ice cream treat was invented in Latrobe, PA in 1904 by a 23-year old apprentice pharmacist named David Strickler. He worked in the Tassel Pharmacy, which he later purchased and re-named Strickler’s Pharmacy. They dispensed banana splits for many years, though the business has since closed and the building destroyed (sigh).
Banana splits were 10 cents each – twice the price of a regular sundae – and proved to be very popular with students at the local Saint Vincent College.
How do we know this to be true? Because in 2004 the National Ice Cream Retailers Association certified the birth of the banana split as being in Latrobe, PA in 1904. Thank goodness we have commerce to show us the way to truth!
This summer, a Pennsylvania historic marker will be unveiled on the original site of the pharmacy. The celebration will be August 23-25, and it seems apparent that there will be a lot of banana splits served if you happen to be in the area.
Strickler’s drugstore in Latrobe, Pa., in 1955 is now defunct, but it was known for serving banana splits. The ice cream creation pictured above, served at Valley Dairy, is derived from the 1904 original that’s said to have been invented in Latrobe. (Strickler’s photo: Harry Frye / Latrobe Art Center; banana-split photo: Valley Dairy)
More
Latrobe’s Valley Dairy & The 2013 Celebration
LA Times: Latrobe’s Banana-Split
Playing, uh, I mean, Cooking With Fire 1 comment
I remember when we cooked on a wood fire. We didn’t have a natural gas or electric stove. Mom cooked with fire.
Today, that’s so bizarre that when we cook with fire, it’s an entertainment event.
We’ve worked on perfecting cooking with fire, using our wood-fired oven to cook pizza. Velda makes the dough 2 days in advance, begins staging the pizza ingredients 1 day in advance … and then I light the fire 4 hours out.
Cold oven, ready to go.
Three pages of newsprint, loosely crumpled.
Small cut-offs crossed on top of the newsprint. It’s a handy way to clean up scraps from the woodshop … these scraps are from 3 different projects.
One match! Well, it’s like a match….
Lots of smoke can be generated by wet wood, or a wet chimney.
Keep air space between the wood pieces.
Until the chimney is hot and sucks all of the smoke up, some will come out the front of the oven.
The temperature climb is inevitable … and always slower than I would like.
Too much fuel can temporarily choke the fire …
… and generate too much smoke until the fuel is fully engulfed in flame again.
And the temperature continues to rise.
We burn a lot of oak … both lumber cut-offs and firewood.
The red hot coals continue to heat the oven … you can see the black soot begin to cook off of the side of the oven, leaving the white, hot brick.
An 800* oven will cook a pizza in under 5 minutes.
Move the coals to either side of the oven.
I use an old broom handle to move coals in the oven.
The broom handle slowly burns away as I use it.
A brass brush is used to clear the oven floor.
A damp mop cleans the floor of ash before you begin cooking.
The mopping temporarily lowers the floor temperature a bit … but the big concrete & rock oven serves as a heat sink so the temperature does not fall in the oven.
We always start with a “sacrificial cheese pizza” … but that’s a story for another day.
Beware The Mini-Bears 3 comments
Little Girl had been after me for years to go camping again. It used to be our annual tradition to go to the Sequoia National Park every Memorial Day weekend. We lost the tradition as the kids got older & busier … and now, we hadn’t been camping as a family in far too many years.
A plan was born.
MrsMowry fell out because of her fabulous new job. That was sad because she had never been camping with the family, but work has to come first at least occasionally, right? MrsMowry & her husband will go camping next time.
The rest of the family – including Payton – would go camping over the July 4th weekend. I would go to the Sequoia National Park early to secure a good spot to camp during this holiday weekend. That meant I would get 2 days of solitude with the big trees before the family showed up.
Perhaps you missed that: 2 days of solitude.
What a fabulous thing. I. Could. Not. Wait.
I drove up on Monday and found the campsite in Crystal Springs, right next to Grant’s Grove. Elevation: 6,500′. Distance to the nearest sequoia: 120′. Distance to the nearest human that first night: unknown, as I couldn’t see their tent from my campsite.
Heaven.
I set up my tent, bedding and Velda’s kitchen with 3-burner stove. I stowed all of the food in the bear box quickly … the boys & I had learned how important that was when we visited Philmont a few years ago. There, you learn that bears WILL eat any smellable thing they can find that’s not in a proper bear-proof container. We also learned that mini-bears (AKA ground squirrels) were actually far more common and not at all cute after they got into your food stash. Beware the mini-bears.
No problem; everything went into the bear box.
Critters without fine motor skills and no ability to use a tool can’t open this box of goodies.
Dinner turned out to be a bit of a challenge, because I made a huge mistake. I’ve trained Scouts. I’ve trained my family. And I failed … to pack my own gear. We had a busy weekend leading up to my Monday morning departure, and Velda packed my food and the kitchen supplies. When we packed my car, I grabbed the containers with everything that I “needed” for my 2 days alone, and then grabbed more of the group’s supplies so they wouldn’t have as much to bring north.
Monday night’s dinner, I decided would be soup. I had a nice can of chowder to open … and no pot to cook it in. I made do, and heated the soup in the can on the stove. It didn’t work very well, as you might have guessed, but I had warm soup and I did not starve. And, oh my, the stars that night in my cold camp. Lovely.
(Side note: I found that Velda had snuck in a can of barley soup, which must be an attempt at humor on her part. I haven’t eaten barley without comment since the great barley soup pot of ’97 became a legend in her kitchen. But she still tries to sneak that stuff into my diet. You’ve got to watch her every minute, apparently.)
Tuesday morning dawned, and I took a wonderful hike. Didn’t see a human on the trek. Lovely pictures to follow.
I got back to camp and found that I had some international neighbors across the road (it fascinates me what an international experience it is when visiting our national parks). A German family with 2 teenaged boys were my new neighbors. I didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother me … and we had a quiet afternoon in camp. All good.
Dinner time, I decided, would be a peanut butter sandwich (when I’m cooking in camp, it is a decidedly gourmet selection, you see). I got the bread and peanut butter out of the bear box, and then returned to get the cooler out and pour myself a Diet Coke. Life was good. I was about 15′ away from my picnic table, pouring my soda.
The next thing I knew, there was a smiling AGY (Annoying German Youth) pointing his cellphone behind the bear box … where a raccoon was eating my bread. The AGY apparently thought it more important to capture the moment for posterity than it was to yell, “Hey, Stupid Guy! That Mini-Bear is eating your food!”
Once I figured out that I was being burgled, I yelled at the ‘coon and ran to get my bread.
At which point I learned that a raccoon carries a package of bread in his mouth and runs faster than I do.
And then my shorts fell down.
Chase over.
My dinner became peanut butter bagels. See, I didn’t starve.
AGY followed the critter at a leisurely pace about 100’ up the hill, watched him eat the bread and scurry away. The AGY then returned the torn, empty bread wrapper to me.
Thoughtful AGY, that one. I’m sure he put my mini-bear adventure on YouTube. Let me know if you find it, and I’ll send the AGY my, uh, regards.
The mini-bear got 4 pieces of bread. I got outsmarted by a quadriped.
A Winning Combination Leave a comment
This pinup is called “A Winning Combination,” by Rolf Armstrong. 1945.
