…by Jack Handy

I’ve spent all Saturday morning clearing leaves, for the second weekend in a row. Whereas past years this was an unbearable task, with all the mowing and dumping and shaking the vacuum hose to unclog and all that, now I have a pretty good system. Jack put mulching blades on the mower and that makes all the difference in the world. I can go around the yard once and mulch all the leaves. Then I’ll make a second pass to pick up the small pieces, small enough that they don’t clog the hose that goes up the bagger. Like, I got the front and side yard all done in about an hour and a half. It’s still a chore but as long as I have time on the weekends and the leaves are dry it’s not too bad.

Doing this yard work is a good opportunity to get caught up on my audio books. Today I just finished “The Perfectionists” by Simon Winchester. It’s a great book about the history of precision measurement and how the world has changed a man and machines create objects to finer and finer tolerances. The author read the audiobook himself, which is a hit-or-miss prospect from books I’ve listened to in the past. Sometimes the author is just not cut out to be a narrator. But this guy, with his comforting English accent, did a great job. So then I started the next book: “Capitalism vs. Socialism: Comparing Economic Systems” which is a Great Courses book. That means there’s about 13 hours of audio to listen to.

Growing up I would say I leaned more toward the left-wing socialist camp. Dad was in the Laborers’ Union and he and mom were Democrats. But really, I think all young people are socialists until they buy their first house. Then it’s a quick slide towards hating all these taxes lol. But when you’re young you still feel powerless, like there’s The Man out there that is conspiring to keep you down. But as you get older and wiser you realize that there is no Man.

So during the Great Recession of 2008 I was really freaking out. I thought that economic collapse was eminent (which it very well was). I thought it was going to be The End of the World as We Know It, and I did NOT feel fine. At one point I moved closer to my job just because I thought the price of gas was going to become outrageous, and that I needed to mitigate that before it happened. But then the wife and I moved to a town that was kinda halfway between both our jobs. I was commuting about three hours a day at this point.

Having this much time to spare, I really got into audiobooks. More specifically I really got into Ayn Rand and her book “Atlas Shrugged”. It was an epiphany for me as I read it because it answered a lot of economic questions I had. I was also scared, which makes it easy for a new worldview (good or bad) to be easily accepted.

Then I read “The Fountainhead” and loved it. Actually I re-read it, having read it a few years earlier and dismissing it. The first time I read it because Neil Peart of Rush had good things to say about Rand, and I loved Rush (still do), so I thought I’d check out the book. After reading it I thought all the characters were static, two-dimensional caricatures. All except for one of the main characters, Peter Keating. I sympathized more with him than anyone else because he seemed the most human. But after learning more about Rand and her Russian past and struggles against Communism, I came to see where she was coming from in The Fountainhead. Her characters are two-dimensional on purpose because they symbolize different philosophies. And the Peter Keating character was a sign of what happens when, maybe not choosing the wrong philosophy, but not actively choosing any philosophy at all, then falling between the cracks when you don’t have any larger worldview to guide and support you.

The philosophies were reason/capitalism/individualism versus statism/communism/collectivism. Ayn Rand today is not really taken seriously by any economic or philosophical class, probably because her two-dimensional characters are so off-putting to anyone who comes to her books thinking they’re going to get a well-rounded story arc where characters learn and grow and develop. And so her ideas seem rather idealistic and not suited for the real world. And as time went on I shed a lot of the absolutists didacticism that people often associate with followers of her writings. I would say that I still have at heart about 50% of what she was trying to get across. I still follow her idea of What Man Should Be Allowed To Do but am sceptic of her idea on What Man Should Do. The latter would be all the hero worship that’s present in her books. Like yeah, it’s cool that there are people out there creating great things and business, and they should get to be billionaires, and more power to them, and all that. But I’m not going to go around putting someone like Jeff Bezos up on a pedestal and worship him. He’s probably a jerk in real life, and I’m glad that I don’t have to work for Amazon (from all accounts I’ve read), but America is a great country and he should get all the funds coming to him for having a great business.

I agree more with What Man Should Be Allowed To Do, which is to pay a minimal amount in taxes, just enough to support military, police and courts, and otherwise be left alone. Thought at my peak, around 2010, I was at my most conservative, I now find joy in coming back down to more liberal ideas. I’d say that I’m firmly in the middle now, somewhere between fiscally conservative and socially liberal, like most libertarians. Like, I think America today is greatest country in the world, ever, because we are the best place to be for someone who wants to try to live up to their potential, legally. But would America be great if all the other countries in the world just up and started to be like the US? Probably not. I think a lot of America’s greatness comes from us finding our niche in the world. If someone wants to attempt to make a ton of money, they can come to the US. But if they’re more interested in social equality they could move to Europe. Like, there’s a place for everyone here on Earth.

So now I like to keep my mind open. I’ll entertain ideas from both the left and right political spectrums. I’ll take the ideas, swirl them around in the wine glass, sniff them, taste them and ruminate. But gee, you might say, don’t you believe in anything absolutely? To which I would say that I’m not a particularly religious or jingoistic person, but I do still pray at the alter of Free Trade. I will defend Free Trade until I die. Whether it’s between two people in our country, or me trading with another country, or whatever – it is trading that makes being a human a good social creature. To this end I know that someday I may very well be laid off from my job, and I will have to accept it with a stiff upper lip, because this is the philosophy and worldview that I accept. My job now is very cool, but in order for cool new jobs to be easily created you have to allow for cool old jobs to be easily destroyed. And so my job isn’t really “my” job at all; it’s my employer’s. They created it, they get to dispose of it as they see fit. I’m just selling my labor to them for the time being. I would be upset if I did lose my job because I’m so engaged in it. There’s a lot of it that I’ve taken and molded and injected my own judgement into. So it’s a part of me, part of my identity.

Jack went deer hunting yesterday with Papa, and he’s staying there all weekend too. This is great, to me, on one hand, because who knows what the future will hold. Maybe artificial intelligence really will be a huge paradigm shift and upend many good paying white collar jobs soon. In that case it’s good that Jack gains all this farming, motor vehicle and hunting knowledge. It may be essential in the future. But on the other hand Jack does very well in school. I feel like I’ve pulled (or been pulled, with my wife’s help) out of this lower middle-class rung that I was born into. Now I occupy this higher class. I kind of want Jack to continue this upward trajectory, where he could be even higher and more prosperous than myself. He’s not going to do that if he settles for a blue collar farming job. Now, if farming and machinery continues to be his passion when he gets out of high school, then more power to him. Following your passion is one of the goals in life. But I know that when I was in high school I didn’t harbor any dreams of going to college. And then we all graduate and the smart kids move away to go to school, so they’re not around. And then they graduate college and take entry level jobs, and we’re still on an even keel. Then they start buying nicer houses, nicer cars and nicer vacations with their increasing incomes, and the comparisons to my own life become more visible. Next thing I know I’m going to college myself, about 2-3 years older than my classmates, with a strict determination to graduate and succeed, to catch up to where I feel I should be if I wouldn’t have dilly-dallied around for 2 years. I just don’t want Jack to experience this.

Elsa, on the other hand, I should start saving for her college now. Her grades are below that of Jacks but she will still be on the honor roll in high school. She has unlimited potential, with her people skills, intelligent, wit, and her bubbly personality. She is my supernova and I don’t want there to be any roadblocks in the way for her future.

On another note, Emma, the wife and I went to Chicago Wednesday to see Hamilton: The Musical. We had to get up at the butt crack of dawn to get on the school bus to Macomb. I haven’t ridden on a school bus in about 30 years, so I don’t remember them being so small, cramped and uncomfortable. We got to the Amtrak station in Macomb and got on the train. This is the only train I’ve been on other than the one in Alaska, and that was made more for tourism than for serious mass transit.

I have to say that the trip up was nice. We had comfortable seats that reclined, with leg rests and foot rests. I went to the dining car and almost fell down multiple times from the swaying motion. I thought that it was because we were on the upper level of the train, but taking the single level train home I ran into the same problem.

I had a whole cookie for breakfast, which was 20 WW points. I knew that I was going to blow my diet for this special trip so I wasn’t worried about what I ate. But damn, 20 points is a lot.

In Chicago we went to this restaurant and had the best deep dish pizza I’ve ever had. The cheese was so fresh tasting. But something I’ve noticed during my month long diet is that, you know, I never really get that hungry. I don’t know if it’s because I’m eating apples and bananas all day long, or if my body is adjusting to eating less food, or what. But I also discovered, as I was eating my second slice of pizza, is that I will eat and eat and not get full, even though I wasn’t that hungry to begin with. These are new feelings to me. In my 48 years of life I’ve never ever had to contemplate this much about what goes into my body. Sure, I know that I could stand to lose some weight, for the past 10 years. But this diet is the first one where I’ve actively tracked what I ate, for this long. So I don’t know. I do know that I’m always eating apples and drinking more coffee. It’s the Apples and Coffee diet for me.