more and more paintings

Destiny - oil painting on board, for sale


Garden Goth - acrylic painting board an experiment in style

Dusty Road- acrylic painting on board of Frontier Town stage coach horses. sold

acrylic on paper

acrylic painting on board

Dupont Circle - oil painting

Away From the Crowd - oil painting

I'm trying to add more paintings from my files. Most of the paintings on this site are for sale and I have prints of some.

Raspberries- acrylic painting

It's red and green, anyway.

This and other paintings on this site are for sale at reasonable prices.

My political cartoons, etc. can be seen at www.thenothingstore.com. all originals available for sale. Contact thenothingstore or me.

Fighting the art establishment

Since I can't copy and paste my blog today, I'll just type this short version of what I'd intended to paste.

I visited an "art" gallery yesterday that I've unsuccessfully tried to get my paintings in several times. Canvases covered with hideous smears were displayed with astonishing prices. This was art like mud pies are food. The lady there said she'd sold one of these things for $3,500 last week. People think they're superior to others because they understand this "art". They turn their elite noses up at my paintings.

Evening acrylic painting

Harbor Day

Report on Harbor Day:
I looked forward to selling my book, Wet and Hungry, at Harbor Day, a day that celebrates the local fishing industry. The organizers had a tent for arts and craft vendors and organizations. Booth rent in the tent was $150, so I didn’t rent one. People who did complained about the cost and went in together. A lot of booths were rented by spendthrift gov , quasi gov and environmental organizations such as the Coast Guard, Maryland Coastal Bays, Reef Foundation, Assateague Coastal Trust, etc.
One writer shared a booth with boat models. You could hardly find the guy behind a seven-foot model of the Pride of Baltimore.
Merrill offered to let me sell my book in his booth outside the tent, but the organizer told him he couldn’t sell anything from his booth because it wasn’t in the tent. Bright, who docks in the harbor near the Harbor Day site, said I could sell my book in front of his boat, where he was going to sell lobsters. The organizer said he couldn’t do this and that only items relative to fishing could be sold, as if my book had nothing to do with fishing! Bright looked into it and learned that since he rents the slip, he could sell what he wanted there.
Despite the rules against selling in the outside booths, other people did it.
I sat outside in front of the fishing boats, Skiligillee and Pelican, tied side by side. Bright’s crewman showed a giant lobster to children. Bright sold lobsters and did demonstrations. The new owners of the Pelican had beer on their boat, which attracted quite a few people who traipsed across Skiligillee to get to the beer. That and the giant lobster drew a crowd and I sold a number of books. When it rained, I put away most of my promo stuff and left out two books in grip-lock plastic bags. I covered my other stuff with a black garbage bag and held an umbrella. And sold more books. By the end of the day, we were all wet and hungry.


If any of your readers, all two of you, think I should write another book, please send some feedback. I'm considering a book of stories, mostly funny and Eastern Shore oriented.

October Morning Glories acrylic painting

Politician's Books

Ulysses Grant wrote the first presidential best seller and it was a good one. Grant had lived an exciting life and HE WROTE HIS BOOK HIMSELF in a clear and thrifty style.
Dwight Eisenhower wrote a memoire of WWII, also a best seller and, I believe, he wrote it himself. Grant and Eisenhower both graduated from West Point and weren’t the doddering fools their enemies insinuated they were.
John Kennedy won a Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage, but he might not have writen it.
Barry Goldwater wrote drafts of his newspaper column, which his assistant completed. I believe his assistant helped with Goldwater’s first book. Goldwater resigned from the senate when he ran for President. He said a person didn’t have time to serve in the senate and run for president. That didn’t stop Hillary Clinton, Jim McCain and Barack Obama. Goldwater couldn’t mult-task like these modern politicians.
If ghost writers wrote Jimmy Carter’s books, they aren’t claiming them.
Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance was ghost written.
Hillary had assistance with her books.
Jim McCain is unable to use a keyboard due to war injuries and dictated his book.
Ron Paul writes his own books. He’s too frugal to hire a writer.
I’ve heard that Bill Ayers wrote at least one of Obama’s books.
Sarah Palin used an assistant for her book, which has sold 1,500,000 copies and it isn’t even in print yet.
I wrote my book, Wet and Hungry, myself. It tells exciting stories of real, working people and it’s more entertaining than the recent spate of over-paid politicians’ self-promotional pulp. Don’t give those people more of your money, buy Wet and Hungry, instead.

BS Detector Malfunctions

BS Detector Malfunctions
My BS detector overloads and freezes when I hear certain politicians. Since BS detector insurance is expensive, I try to fix it myself. With politicians producing so much BS these days, they should come out with a public option for BS detector insurance. If we had a cash for worn out BS detectors program, I could trade mine for a new green manure model. Ut oh, my detector is freezing again.
Last week, I visited my Mum and her boyfriend, Ed, aged 85 and 86, respectively. Ed likes to keep the TV on all the time, whether he listens to it or not. Politicians were giving eulogies for Ted Kennedy. Like most people, Kennedy’s improved since his demise, but Mum grumbled, “He murdered that girl.”
He also abused waitresses and his 60s immigration bill abused the nation.
Ed got up and Mum turned the TV off. Ed returned with about 30 keys to try in the lock to his shed. We walked out to try to find the shed key, but none of them worked. We returned to the house, where Ed found more keys. He sat down and turned on the TV, while I walked outside to test the keys. None worked and I returned to the house. Ed got up to look for more keys and Mum turned off the TV, saving wear and tear on my BS detector.
Ed returned with more keys, sat down and turned on the TV. I walked back to the shed and found two keys, labeled, SHED, worked. When I returned to the house, politicians were still praising the improved, no longer alcoholic and philandering, Ted K. My BS detector overloaded and froze.

Trespassing

Dear faithfull followers, all two of you,
Sorry to take so long between blogs. I have slews of excuses, mainly I can't afford broadband. Like most people, I'm expert at making excuses, but who wants to hear them? I heard plenty last week and thought the circumstances might amuse you.
Trespassing
My daughter, Ella, received two subpoenas to appear in court as a witness in a shoplifting case. Ella works in a store. Two Russian girls filched forty dollars worth of cheap accessories: Chinese-made bracelets, purses, hair gizmos, etc, from that store and others nearby.
I complained that Worcester (pronounced Wurster) County has the lowest wages and highest winter unemployment rate in the state. Why do summer businesses import foreign workers like these girls?
Ella didn’t know where the court house was and asked me to go with her. We arrived on time and waited while others trickled in until the waiting room was full and the bailiff opened the court room. We sat on hard, back-breaking benches. A row of chained, prison-garbed arrestees waited on a bench to the side. One of them grinned and told someone, “They arrested me last night.”
Ella whispered, “This is just like the movies.”
“All rise.”
Judge Purnell, the county’s first black judge entered. (Purnell is pronounced two ways in Worcester County. White old timers pronounce it to rhyme with kernel.)
The judge handled the preliminary hearings for the bunch on the bench first: trespassing, resisting arrest, robbery. Purnell told each he had a right to a public defender. She sat in front with a stack of folders and, with one exception, was the only defense lawyer we saw that morning.
Most of the unfortunate souls who took the defendant’s place told stories of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong person. These multiple wrongs occurred frequently for them. After we had heard a lot of dumb excuses for dumb behavior, a confident, young, blond man, Mr. Budd, came before the judge. He didn’t have a lawyer and pled guilty to trespassing. “Can I explain?”
“You’ll get your chance,” said the judge, who then turned to a man in the courtroom, “Mr. Wimbrow, has Mr. Mudd paid you the $1,500 in damages I ordered?”
“No, he hasn’t. We thought they had only gone in one field, but they had been in five.”
Mr. Wimbrow (pronounced Wimber by some locals) is a produce farmer with a college education, but he prefers to use the local dialect. He sounded like he’d never been off the farm.
The State’s Attorney explained that the night of the trespassing, police found a mud-covered truck, with two flat tires, stuck in Mr. Wimbrow’s field. Mr. Mudd was the driver. Behind that truck, was another mud-covered truck stuck in the mud. Mr. Budd was in that truck, which belonged to Mr. Mudd’s father. They had driven over Mr. Wimbrow’s fields making huge ruts.
Mr. Budd explained, “I don’t have anything to do with Mr. Mudd anymore, don’t hang out with him, but he called me that night and said he was stuck. Since he was an old school chum and all, I went out and got his dad’s truck.” Budd rambled on at length and mentioned he worked all the time on a boat.
Judge Purnell heard him out and said he was tired of seeing him in court. “I don’t know whether it’s bad judgement or what…” The judge ordered Budd to pay Mr. Wimbrow $750. Budd strenuously objected that all he pled guilty to was trespassing. “Mudd told me he had to pay the $1,500, why should I have to pay anything?”
“Is this the Mudd you don’t have anything to do with?”
“He called me up.” Budd rambled into another extensive defense, mentioning again how he worked all the time.
“Good, you will be able to pay this man, then. Now when can you do it?”
After a few more cases, the Russian girls came before the judge. A translator spoke for them and since they didn’t have a lawyer and were returning to Russia in a month, Judge Purnell arranged for them to meet with the public defender immediately. They went out with their translator and public defender and after some time, returned. Since both a civil witness, Ella, and a police officer were there, they pled guilty. The judge ordered them to pay $258 each, court costs and fines. Too bad the law doesn’t allow witness compensation.
The next week, I told this story to the gang at the feed store. A man there said, “Wimber’s had a time with those boys.” Thirty or forty of them have been driving around in his fields for the last two years. At first he just wanted them to fix the damage, but some of them told him, “You can’t make us do anything.”
“We’ll see what I can make you do.”

Destruction of fishing industry sample of what government will do to healthcare

When scientists, state and federal fisheries managers couldn’t agree on the sea bass quota this summer, Pat Kurkle, National Marine Fisheries regional director issued an ultimatum. Either leave the quota as it was this year (the lowest ever) or she would close federal waters to sea bass fishing for 2010. This is the same kind of tyrannical bureaucrat we’ll have deciding our non-healthcare if Obamacare passes.

Fishermen, both recreational and commercial complain about the excessive numbers of dogfish, but NMFS refuses to increase fishing for them. An Ocean City fisherman has been landing smooth dogfish this summer. The dealer needs the fish gutted. NMFS is proposing a law banning ocean processing. Processing means gutting the fish so they'll keep better.

Having seen how the government has destroyed commercial fishing, it disturbs me that the government is taking over other aspects of our economy. The government can destroy our livelihoods and our freedom.

Atlantic Dawn

Painting of a former Ocean City Dragger.

NGO wants to ban trawling

Unelected NGO Official Wants to Ban Trawling
Merrill, our fish dealer, attended a turtle meeting. Some of the fishermen, like my husband, had worked 15 hours and were too tired to go. A woman from a Non-Governmental Organization brought proposed government regulations to protect turtles, which are already under protective regulation. The first option was closing all trawling.
Trawlers here land flounder for food and horse shoe crabs for medical use. They seldom come upon a turtle, although the turtle population is increasing. Turtles are omnivorous predators, who attack pots and nets to get to the fish.
The woman claimed there were 1,000 trawlers in the area. Merrill pointed out that there were only three active trawlers from Ocean City, a few more that sometimes docked in Chincoteague and no others between New Jersey and Hampton Roads, VA. She countered that there were 1,000 licenses. Merrill explained that this was obsolete information and these licenses were inactive. I suspect few of them have quotas, if there are even that many licenses left for trawlers. I don’t know how large an area this covers, but it sounds like the entire east coast.
The lady proposed a turtle excluder device in the nets. Merrill and a trawler captain explained they wouldn’t be able to land horse shoe crabs with this device in the net.
The people from the government and this lady from the NGO were paid to attend this meeting. Fishermen weren’t. We elect people to make our laws and hire bureaucrats to make regulations, but the government now allows environmental and other NGOs to make the laws. These un-elected officials are given power they shouldn’t have.

This is one of my crosses that has the eye and edges I aimed to create.


I raised the one above from a Forestlake seed.




Every part of a daylily is edable and I never spray mine. They are easy and inexpensive from seed.

Peaches and Cream

One of my seedlings from Wedding Band

Daylilies

I raise daylilies from seeds. Some I save from my own plants and others I buy from Forestlake Daylily Seeds. I will post photos. This takes a while with my slow internet connection.

Politicians versus the rest of us

A car hit two bicyclists on the Ocean City Rt 50 bridge. One died. Years ago, I saw a girl in a grocery store. She was covered in bruises and abrasions. A truck had hit her when she was bicycling across the OC bridge to work. At the time, The multi-million dollar, bicycle bridge to Assateague Island had just been built. A Senator had procured the money for this useless bridge to please environmentalists. It’s a long ride from Ocean City and few use it. Why do people vote for these spendthrift politicians?
Now congress is considering the Cap and Trade bill, which will double the price of gasoline and increase electricity costs 90% by 2035.
I wrote Wet and Hungry to expose government destruction of the commercial fishing industry, now the government is trying to destroy the rest of the economy.

News on the website

My silent? partner and I have a website, www.thenothingstore.com, where you can print your own money. My partner and his son do the tedious html stuff and I do the fun stuff, the designs and cartoons. We share the writing part. Everything is free except the advertising. My partner plans to add more content(stuff to me) each week.
Check out the latest, Boom, Bust and Beyond. and click the digg button.

The Author versus County Library

I searched the library shelves under the new books sign. As usual, I saw nothing that interested me, nothing dealing with economics, social or political issues from a libertarian or conservative point-of-view. I saw a lot of fiction by best-selling hacks, books by and about celebrities and cook books. I couldn’t even find a new gardening book. Of the older books, the Dickens biography had been tossed, but several biographies of Princess Diane, rock stars and models had replaced it. Few classics resided on the shelves. I did find a new book about an art thief and a paperback memoire by Bill Ayers.
Bill Ayers is the leftist terrorist who attempted to blow up Washington buildings in the 70s. He was not prosecuted due to lack of evidence, although his wife, Bernadette Dorn, was arrested and served jail time. Today, an unrepentant Bill Ayers states he wished he’d set more bombs. He is involved in Chicago educational reform and is a former associate of Barack Obama.
I resented my tax dollars paying for Ayers’ book. Esspecially since the libraries had refused to purchase a copy of my book, Wet and Hungry, which is the only book that tells the story of our local commercial fishermen. I marched over to the librarian’s desk and plopped down the Ayers book. “Who’s in charge of library purchases?” I asked.
The librarian explained that she made suggestions to a committee. I explained why I didn’t think tax dollars should be supporting Bill Ayers and asked who suggested this book.
“I guess I did,” she replied, adding later, “We have to have something for every taste.”
That explains the books and DVDs full of obscenities, violence, sex acts and drug use. I’ve enjoyed a few of them, myself. Easyrider, Across the Universe, the Sopranos come to mind, but I’m not easy with the fact that other people’s money is paying for my questionable taste. Should libraries cater to the tastes of child porn addicts, for instance? Or the tastes of leftist terrorists?
If the librarian wanted to please her customers, why didn’t she carry my locally popular book? I asked again that she consider my book. She repeated a previous suggestion that I donate a copy. I’m not wealthy and I pointed out that Bill Ayers didn’t donate his book. “I’ve heard of this book,” the librarian said, when I handed her a copy, “I’ve seen it on Amazon. Where else is it available?”
I said from my publisher of directly from me. She asked if my publisher was a vanity press and I said no, I hadn’t paid to be published. That seemed to impress. Most local authors have paid to have their books published and can only get their books in libraries via donating them.
The librarian said she would suggest my book to the committee. My father warned me about committees. Judging from what is and isn’t in our local libraries, this is the type of idiotic committee he meant.

The county library now has one copy of my book, Wet and Hungry. They did not purchase it from me, however.

Jenny Duval

moss rose

I omited my garden in this blog's title. May is the best month for my garden and its antique roses. Some of them I bought and other s I found in abandomed gardens. Most of the plants in my garden were either hand-me-downs or increased from seed or cuttings.

Varigata de Bologne

Probably miss-spelled the name. This is one of my favorite roses for looks, but a martyr to blackspot and blooms only in May.

Garden in May

My Garden

I've been busy making funny money for www.thenothingstore.com. Check it out. Meanwhile, here are some photos of my garden. Iris, clematis, pinks are blooming. Antique roses are budding.

O no mobile

Housewife Makes Billions Working at Home!

Housewife Makes Billions Working at Home!
You can too!
I’m making billions in a new enterprise. Working at home, from my couch, I use my artistic talent to make money, but you don’t need any talent at all to make money using our website. Go to www.thenothingstore.com and make all the money you want.
My business partner labors in the management and promo departments of our enterprise, while I toil in production here at the mint. To create our product, I first arrange my couch pillows for maximum comfort. Then I pile the tools of my trade on the tea table. These tools include plain printer paper and free ball point and gel pens advertising businesses and government agencies. Since pen ink comes in a limited color range, I also use my daughter’s old markers and colored pencils. If I still don’t find the color I need, I change colors on photo shop. I’ve always worked on a shoestring, not a wide athletic shoestring, but a narrow dress shoestring. Even now that I’m making so much money, I maintain my frugal habits.
When I complete the designs, I scan them into my computer, add finishing touches and print them. I’ve printed several denominations of U.S. currency, including one of my favorites, the Everett Dirksen billion.
This is not counterfeiting; this is exploring the aesthetic dimensions and meanings of fiat money. And it is the logical extension of artistic endeavor. If an artist must sell one’s art for money, one might as well skip the middle stage and create money directly. That is what I am doing. Today’s artists describe the purpose of their work in obtuse explanations meant to impress the art world. I hope I have satisfied that requirement.
My partner and I want everyone to have money. We don’t rob Peter to pay Paul as the government does. We don’t redistribute wealth, we share it. We let you print your own money at www.thenothingstore.com, home of the unmighty dollar. Be sure and click the dig button.

Might as well make soap

Might as well make soap
I signed my book at a gift shop Friday night. Thursday, a local newspaper published a big spread on my book and art and mentioned the book signing. This vast publicity brought a deluge of fans and I thank the two for coming.
The gift shop sells art, but not my art as the proprietor prefers non-traditional styles. He introduced a soap maker to me this way, “This is one of your fellow artists, Ms Soapmaker.”
I’m sure the soapmaker has been called worse things. Paintings, books, soap, what’s the difference?

Tommy's bunkers 3/27

These fishermen are so selective, they caught almost nothing but the targeted species. Tommy took other interesting photos, but my dial up connection is so slow, I can only post a few.

Sonny standing in 15,000 pounds of bunkers

Bunkers, Menhaden, are used for crab and lobster bait. Recreational fishermen also use them for bait. Fishermen are getting eight cents a pound for these inedible fish.

Tommy and the others went bunker fishing again on Friday, 3/27. Tommy's first net had only 900 pounds. He figured he wasn't going to have much. Then the tide changed and the nets came up full. He caught 10,000 pounds, loaded to the gunwales of his 35 foot boat and Sonny caught 15,000 pounds. Tommy fishes alone. Sonny has a crewman and a larger boat.

Bunker Fishing

Bunker fishing. Shah in small boat.

My husband, Tommy, set bunker nets Sunday and tended them Monday. He fought rough seas and frigid water, but the bunkers came up thick. He shook them out of the nets until one net came up twisted. He struggled with that, picking each fish. Standing in bunkers up to his knees, he didn’t move his feet for an hour. It was like standing in cement. Tommy brought in 7,679 pounds of bunkers, enough shaking, picking and shoveling for three young men let alone a fifty-two-year-old.
Shah, a young fisherman with a twenty-seven foot boat, had borrowed one of Tommy’s nets, but couldn’t tend it. He radioed that the seas were too high for him. A large dredge boat heard him and escorted him back through the inlet.
Bunkers are small bait fish, at eight cents a pound to the fisherman, the cheapest fish sold. Three other Ocean City fishermen are fishing for them this year, but none have deep nets like Tommy’s. They would rather catch rockfish and dogfish, but the rock quota is so stingy, Tommy saves it for fall and the dogfish quota is filled. The state allocates rockfish quota to too many non-fishermen. The ridiculously inadequate dogfish quota is shared by New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia fishermen and filled within a few weeks of opening. Maryland fishermen would like to have a separate state quota, but Maryland’s bureaucrats don’t care. Maryland is destroying its commercial fishermen.
A man I call Brown in my book leased the sea bass quota he didn’t deserve to a New Jersey dragger. Yesterday that dragger landed the entire 11,000 pound quota and gave Brown 40%. When the sea bass laws were agreed on by the fishermen, this was supposed to be caught by pot fishermen on their own boats, but fishermen have leased and sold Maryland sea bass and flounder quotas to New Jersey companies.
Tommy realizes he would probably be better off leasing his quotas than taking so much risk and working so hard landing them himself. He has a small fortune invested in the boat and gear. My book describes the endless work and expense involved.

Crabbers and Ospreys- painting

Crabbers tending pots in MD's coastal bays in April

Eastern Shore Bucks

This is the reverse side of a zillion Eastern Shore buck note designed by me.







This is the face side of an Eastern Shore Zillion Buck note.
Details are blurred on this site to enable posting.

Congress Bans Money

Congress Bans Money
Exclusive interview with Congressman Hamlet Hamm
This Reporter (TP)- Congressman Hamm, can you explain why Congress banned money?
Hamm- Yes, having banned oil drilling, coal mining, big business, small business and banks, the congress decided to go to the root of the country’s problems and ban money.
TP- How will the money ban work?
Hamm- Work! It has nothing to do with work. It’s about fairness and personal responsibility.
TP- I mean how will it affect people?
Hamm- Oh, not at all. The dollar was worthless anyway.
TP- I see. How will it affect you personally?
Hamm- No problem. I always gave all my salary to charities.
TP- Charities, Sir?
Hamm- Yes, The Hamm Campaign Fund, The Hamm Retirement Fund, The Hamm Charitable Trust.
TP- How will working people be paid?
Hamm- I’m glad you asked. The federal government will issue every working person a Federal Reserve Entitlement Extension Card, a FREE Card.
TP- What about non-working people?
Hamm- They’ll get FREE Cards, too.
TP- Won’t people lose their incentive to work?
Hamm- Not at all! That’s the beauty of the plan. People will work because they want to, not because they have to. They will be able to pursue their dreams.
TP- Beautiful! What about unpleasant jobs like garbage collection?
Hamm- There will be no more garbage in the United States. The Department of the Environment banned garbage.
TP- You mentioned personal responsibility. How will the FREE card encourage responsible actions.
Hamm- I’m glad you asked. Each person must take the responsibility to apply for their own FREE Card. We will have federal workers soliciting the homeless and disadvantaged and of course we will advertise the FREE Card on television. Every attempt will be made to inform every person living in the United States of the FREE Card, but each individual must apply by phone, mail, internet or in person.
TP- I see. I notice you said every person in the United States. Does that include non-citizens?
Hamm- Of course. We would never discriminate against someone just because they were a citizen of another country.
TP- How will the FREE Card be financed?
Hamm- Oh, the usual way, through taxes, fees and bonds.
TP- Paid with the FREE Card?
Hamm- That’s right.

Terror on a Quiet Road

I pretend I’m the secretary of our local writers’ club and so far I have them fooled. I attended a meeting where one member mentioned that she found fiction writing challenging. I said it never challenged me, but I carry two inspiring little creatures on my shoulders. One is an angel and the other a devil. At least four other members said it was more like two devils. No, there’s an angel, too, but the devil is the better raconteur.
I thought about fiction writing as I drove home on the narrow back road through the Pocomoke Swamp. Tom Jones’ stentorian voice boomed from the CD player. Tall bare trees arched over the sylvan track. On either side of the road, still water reflected scurrying clouds and wind-whipped branches. Suddenly, a brilliant red Alfa Romeo passed, followed by two black Bentleys. One of the Bentleys pulled behind me; the other settled alongside. A loud crash and the rear window of the Alfa Romeo shattered. Bullet holes appeared across the trunk. I saw a man shooting from the passenger side of the Bentley beside me. I hoped they would pass, but they didn’t. I stomped on the gas, but they stayed even with me. With no place to turn, I could only keep driving. I heard a loud staccato roar above and saw a helicopter in my rear view mirror. It aimed and fired shots at the Bentleys. I looked ahead and saw a large farm truck loaded with chicken house manure. The driver, talking on a cell phone, drove obliviously towards us. I glanced to my right for a place to pull over and saw a herd of deer leaping from the woods into my path.
Fiction writing comes easy when you live an exciting life like mine.

Barnyard Jewels, acrylic painting

KEEP OUT!

Keep Out!
I mentioned the Eastern Shore of Virginia (ESVA) in my last blog. I apologize to the citizens of ESVA who want to keep their heaven-on-earth a secret. Rumors that gas never goes above $2 a gallon on the ESVA are not true. It is true that isolated spots on the ESVA are still in 1960 or 1860. The Confederate flag ripples in the breeze, eight-year-old boys shoot deer instead of classmates and ninety-year-old men gather oysters in the marsh.
Depressing examples of rural poverty line the main roads to discourage intruders. Occasionally an amateur politician suggests seceding from the union. You won’t like living on the ESVA. As we say on the Eastern Shore, visit, leave your money and go home!

Langmaid Farm, acrylic painting

The next post is an acrylic painting.

Country Breakfast

Thinking about Animals or Save the Vegetables

Warning: This will probably offend you and you won’t read my blog anymore.

I confess I am an unrepentant meat-eating, heterosexual, who believes in constitutional government, individual rights and responsibilities. I realize that these are unpopular, repulsive habits and beliefs. People tell me to keep my opinions to myself, but I don’t and that makes me offensive. I read a blog by a vegetarian, homosexual, non-violent anarchist. Unlike me, she seems like a nice lady. She teaches at a college. I don’t have a college degree and therefore lack the education to understand other points of view. (Unmitigated humbug)

Most college graduates learn only the information required for their field of study. I’ve read that a lot of professors are leftist, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good teachers. Most have been educated in state schools and hired with tax dollars, so they must be knowledgeable.

Thinking about Animals

Animal rights proponents believe we shouldn’t kill animals of any kind, including birds and, sometimes, fish. They claim all creatures are equal. I disagree. Only humans can think and comprehend concepts like time and death. A human baby’s life should be saved before a kitten’s because a baby has the potential to think, among other reasons.
Thinking requires a language to think in. When animals appear to think, they either use a language incomprehensible to humans or they use instincts. Animals learn the meanings of some human words and actions, but that doesn’t mean animals think. People train horses to perform via cues, but horses don’t have a language. They cannot think, “My person asked me to trot.” They associate the cue with the action for which they have been rewarded.
Some claim their pets are as smart as humans. They probably are. Many humans don’t think, either. Some animal rightists keep dogs and cats. These animals require meat protein, which in commercial food comes from byproducts of meat and fish processing.
Our ancestors hunted and gathered before they farmed and raised grain. Meat is a natural food for people and healthier than the excessive refined carbohydrates we consume today. Man manufactures white flour and sugar. They aren’t found in nature. Animal rightists believe advanced civilizations should exist on vegetables and grains rather than meat. They theorize civilized people shouldn’t kill animals. Yet civilized people kill other humans.
Humans can kill livestock quickly and painlessly. Most livestock thrives on plants people can’t use, like grass, on land unsuitable for growing anything else. Many animal rightists are also extreme environmentalists who don’t like the idea of people in the world. To them, people harm the environment. On the other hand, people who believe in a creator believe humans are the ultimate creation.
Natural forces also destroy the environment and animal life. Humans are part of creation and should be responsible stewards of the earth. If we protected all animals from slaughter, domestic livestock could only be pets. Eventually cows, pigs and chickens would become endangered since raising them is too laborious and expensive to justify keeping them as pets. All fishing would end, too. Living on protein-poor, high carbohydrate diets, more people would succumb to diabetes and other carbohydrate related ills.
The idea of ending meat eating and creating chicken sanctuaries reminds me of an old hippie song. The farmer took some LSD and set all the chickens free. Animal rightists seem to be projecting their own feelings onto animals. Perhaps the animal rightists were abused in some way or indulge in hypersensitivity to emotions. They can’t seem to accept the unpleasant necessities of life, such as birth pains, illness and death. They seem disconnected from the natural world they worship, a world where people work on land and sea to produce essential protein.

For Insomniacs, acrylic painting

You may have noticed that my paintings don't illustrate my writing. I have a hundred or so paintings I want to resize and post. I add them when I have time.

Holstein Calves, acrylic painting

Naked hands banned from oystering

Two Chesapeake Bay fishermen found oysters growing in a marsh and picked up eight bushels. A MD marine police officer saw them and said, "You can't do that."
"We have a license," one of the fishermen replied.
"You didn't use tongs. You aren't allowed to harvest oysters with your hands," the officer replied. He gave them a verbal warning.
One of the fishermen objected. "I want a paper citation so I can take this to court! Any judge would throw it out."

My book, Wet and Hungry, contains many ridiculous incidents like this. I have added an excellent commercial fishing website and a site where readers may purchase my book at the bottom of this blog site.
I thought I added them, but they haven't shown up. The sites are www.commercial-fishing.org and www.authorsbookshop.com, this site gives me a larger percentage on my book sales than other on-line book stores.

PJ and Tubs, oil painting

Blue and Orange, acrylic painting

Winter Sunset, oil painting

May Deer

Gear and Loafing in Ocean City

Gear and Loafing in Ocean City
The annual Maryland Waterman’s Association Expo attracts commercial fishermen from the Mid-Atlantic States. They buy boats, engines and gear at this show held in Ocean City, Maryland, in January. My fisherman husband and I attended the show every year. It seemed like a good venue to sell my book, Wet and Hungry: A Commercial Fisherman’s Life.
Most booths displayed candy, pens and other freebies to entice customers and occupy children. Life raft companies, engine dealers and government entities could afford such largess, especially the ubiquitous government agencies. NMFS, ASMFC, MDDNR, NOAA and other government acronyms occupied numerous booths.
I considered what hand-outs I could afford to offer. That didn’t take long to consider. None, unless the other exhibitors would each donate one piece of candy to my booth. My daughter rescued me with an offer of leftover Halloween candy an ex-boyfriend had given her, an unusually generous offer for a candy fiend like her. We poured it in a large tin and I took it to the show.
In 2008, fishermen had suffered from profit siphoning, stratospheric fuel costs, added to poor catches, erratic markets and harsh regulations. Now they were broke. Instead of the usual heavy crowd of fishermen eager to buy gear, a meager few trickled in and many carried no money.
Beset with lachrymose ennui, I sat in a ten by ten-foot booth waiting for customers. I looked at my watch, again. Only fifteen minutes had passed since the last time I had looked. I felt like I was back in high school waiting for a tedious school day to end. I visited the other booths, stocking up on pens and note pads. Then I returned to my booth and waited for business to pick up.
Our fish dealer strolled by and plopped a couple of pieces of my candy in his mouth. He grimaced. “Yuck! You need to get better candy!”
I watched people’s faces contort as they tried the candy.
A fisherman tried a piece and his face puckered up like an elderly person who’d soaked in a bath tub too long. He grabbed another piece and offered it to a fellow fisherman. “Have you ever tried this candy?”
The second fisherman unwrapped it, put it in his mouth and immediately spit it into a trash can.
I looked in my tin. The wrappers said, “Extreme Sour.” I made a warning sign, “Worse show candy, guaranteed. Best books.”
This encouraged every passing child to grab a handful. Several returned for more.
During dull spells between sales and candy incidents, I contrived imprecations and ripostes I would like to sling at irksome people who did not buy books. I practiced proper public behavior and only dreamed of using these responses.
To the armed policeman who didn’t have any cash to buy my book, “Are you afraid of muggers?”
To the henpecked man who claimed, “My wife says I have too many books,” I would retort, “Are you afraid of that illiterate battle ax?”
To the woman eating a fried clam and smearing grease over a book, “Pig, you’ve gotten enough grease on that book to deep fry a turkey.”
To adults who grabbed candy without looking at the book, never mind, they were going to get puckered mouths and acid reflux.
To others who passed by, oblivious to the literary masterpieces on my table, “You unobservant numbskulls probably don’t notice sunsets, flowers, butterflies or kittens, either.”
To the guy who stood in my booth to make a cell phone call, “This is not a phone booth.”
To the men, one booth over, selling Diesel additive, “Do you really need a gorgeous, slender blonde in tight jeans and spiked heels to sell your product? What next, a thong-clad girl slathered with Diesel additive?”
To the loquacious know-it-all who stood in my booth endlessly rapping, “Take your big yap over to the booth with the blonde.”
To the idiots who asked where they could get someone else’s book, “You can get it in Hades. Why would you come to a fishing expo, claim to be interested in books about fishing, ignore a highly rated book on the subject and ask for a book not remotely related to fishing?”
Meanwhile, honks and quacks from gaggles of geese and flocks of ducks, emanated from the duck call booth. Fishermen perambulated the hall carrying plastic fish baskets, boat hooks and shopping bags advertising engines. By the end of the three-day show, in spite of low attendance, I’d sold forty books to wonderful, highly intelligent, generous, broadminded, sensible people. I also enjoyed ego inflating compliments from readers and on the second day, the company of my dear friend and fellow author, Ann.
One extreme sour remained in the tin.

Snowing

The Haunted Parlor

The Parlor
The ancient, oak, pump organ groaned, moaned, wheezed, thumped and squealed. I pressed its peddles with my child’s feet and pushed its keys at random with my skinny fingers. I had nearly flunked flutophone in third grade and had no musical talent. All I could play was a record player.
I wondered why my grandmother had bought such a hideous instrument, rather than a piano or guitar. The organ’s cacophony was worse than a bag pipe’s and it took up more space. My grandmother couldn’t even play the contraption. Nobody in the family could until my mother took piano lessons and my mother’s musical ability matched mine. The family home didn’t even have an indoor bathroom when the organ was purchased. At that time, no house in rural Campbelltown had indoor plumbing, yet many homes were furnished with pump organs, even my stingy Aunt Manie owned one. A superlative salesman had persuaded those thrifty farmers to buy pump organs.
The dark varnished organ, bereft of its ornate superstructure, which had been relegated to a dirty shed, stood in the parlor on the west end of the T-shaped farm house. Like most houses built in the late 1800s, whether farm house or city row house, this house was built with sixteen-foot joists spanning the width of each section. The parlor wasn’t sixteen feet wide, however. A wide, enclosed stairs took up one side of the room, but we didn’t use this comfortable stairs. My grandmother preferred the steep, narrow kitchen stairs.
Mature box elder trees and a porch shaded the gloomy parlor. My grandmother’s best furniture filled it; a dark blue velvet couch and chair; several tables and lamps; my mother’s old radio, enclosed in a wood cabinet as tall as I was. The radio needed new tubes and didn’t work. A little clock hung on the wall. It didn’t work, either. A Victorian superfluity of knick knacks furnished every table and shelf. My mother’s Bobsey Twins books gathered dust on one shelf. A rug covered the baby-poop-brown painted floor. Two 16”by 20” calendar pictures hung in wide elaborate gold-painted frames against floral wallpaper. One frame held a copy of a Dutch master’s vase of flowers and the other frame held a picture of Jesus with a flock of sheep. In spite of these comforts, my grandmother never used the parlor except for special visitors.
I always felt that a benign presence watched me in that cold room, but it didn’t bother me much, not with that organ bawling loud enough to dissipate any spirit. However, in the evening, I never entered the parlor alone. I felt a stronger presence then, even when accompanied by my grandmother.
On dull summer days, when the sun and humidity made outside play miserable, I retreated to the cool parlor and investigated postcards and a photo album stored in the organ’s empty top. My grandmother had sent most of the cards, with one cent stamps, to my grandfather when they were courting. The photo album contained tin types, photos printed on thin metal plates, of family members I didn’t know. Most of them had died before I was born.
Family members consistently died young. Most died of tuberculosis, but one great uncle had cut himself shaving and died of blood poisoning.
When I was four, my father held me up to kiss my beautiful, blonde, fifteen-year-old cousin goodnight. She was sleeping, he said. I thought it strange that she slept fully dressed, in a satin-lined box, in a strange house. I never saw my cousin again. Later I learned she had died of an aneurism.
The parlor seemed to fill with spirits when I looked at those old photos. Sometimes I thought I saw movement in the shadows, but reasoned that was just my nerves. Even in summer, the parlor was as cool as my dead cousin’s skin.
Years later, my grandmother died and we faced the usual family concerns, or usual for my family. Would the hearse get stuck in the narrow track that led to the family graveyard? The graveyard sat on a slight sand hill in the midst of a muddy corn field. The quarter mile path to it consisted of two deep, overgrown ruts. Grass-grown muck served as a parking lot by the graveyard. The hearse didn’t get stuck and we buried my grandmother between her husband and granddaughter. The next year, we added my uncle.
By then, we had sold the farm. My mother sold the organ to Florida relatives for ten dollars. They fetched the organ, but never paid the money. My father said it didn’t matter, “Good riddance! We didn’t have room for that ugly old organ. Now those queer Florida relatives won’t bother us because they owe us money.” My family used the word “queer” to describe our ubiquitous oddball relatives. Odd was typical in our family.
My mother told me once that the good stairs in that old farm house were only used to carry coffins downstairs when someone died in bed. In former times, the family displayed the corpse in the parlor for all the friends and relatives to see before burial.

Dull Heros

Dull Heroes, Compelling Villains
Often writers give villains deeper, more interesting characters than heroes. I believe writers use their own most hated traits in their villains, like an exorcism. Since we have bad thoughts and emotions, why not use them? Here are two examples from excellent books nobody reads anymore.
In Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, we learned little about Ivanhoe except that he was brave, handsome and good. Yawn. I don’t recall any passion in that superficial hero, but the Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert suffered from unrequited lust and conflicting emotions. Brian had life and fire, but he couldn’t be good. Anyone who ever suffered from lust or conflicting emotions had to feel a tinge of empathy for the Templar, who died of a heart attack.
In Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, the hero is another brave, handsome youth of no depth or complexity. We hardly know him, let alone identify with him. But Dickens must have put every evil emotion he’d ever suffered in Bradley, the angry school master, another villain tortured with lust and jealousy.
Writers divide their own feelings with all their good going to heroes and all their bad going to villains. The recent Batman movie, The Dark Knight, poses another example. The handsome millionaire, who is secretly Batman, is so dull his girlfriend dumps him. The Joker represents pure, psychopathic evil, yet he’s more intense and fascinating than the hero. Heath Ledger, a charismatic actor, creates much of this attraction. The colorful Joker provokes with his eccentric make-up, clothes, action, mystery, underlying good looks and odd humor. He’s everything Batman isn’t. It’s easier to imagine the Joker telling a joke than Batman telling one. Fortunately, the Joker is so thoroughly evil, he excites no sympathy.
Ian Fleming’s James Bond is one of the few heroes more interesting than the villains. The villains in James Bond movies tend to be megalomaniacal bores, with no emotional or physical attractiveness. Lusty Bond engages us with his cool sense of humor and physical vigor. He’s comfortable with his sexuality, a charming and fun guy to have around, good without being impossibly perfect.

Economics and Aunt Manie

A Concise Economic Treatise

Spend less than you make. Vote for tightwads. The End.

An Economic Treatise with a Brief History of United States Economics and Explanation of the Current Situation, OR Economics and Aunt Manie
Part I
I learned about economics from the following: Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Frederick Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Richard Salsman and Aunt Manie.
Aunt Manie was born about 1890, the oldest of six children. Her father worked as a lumberjack and the children shared two unfinished attic bedrooms, five girls in one room, one son in the other. From their beds, they saw the wood shingles that covered the roof. Although this family doesn’t sound prosperous to us, living standards had improved dramatically in the 1800s, except during the Civil War period. Prior to the Civil War, the United States had enjoyed stable, gold-based money.
The founders of the United States had issued paper continentals during the Revolutionary War. These lost value and the founders wrote a constitution that allowed the government to only issue metallic money, no paper money. The government allowed private money printed or minted by banks until 1864. The Constitution mandated gold-based money until Supreme Court decisions allowed the government to issue fiat, paper money, called greenbacks, during the Civil War. These were eventually redeemed for gold and the United States returned to the gold standard until WWI.
After the Civil War, government controls on banks created money panics and currency shortages. Instead of repealing the restrictions, the government increased control, a pattern of government behavior that continues today.
The government established the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913 to stabilize the currency and prevent panics and recessions. The Fed has done neither, but exists to support government. The government acquired a monopoly on the issuance of money. When President Wilson unnecessarily involved the United States in WWI, the government abandoned the gold standard and devalued the currency to inflate the money supply and pay for the war. Congress established the Federal income tax in 1916. Recession followed. Instead of returning to the classical gold standard, the government conceived a gold exchanged standard managed by politicians rather than the market.
In 1925, Britain returned to a gold standard, but at an exchange rate that had prevailed before the war. Pound notes had expanded, exceeding the gold supply. To help the Bank of England return to gold, the United States Federal Reserve lowered interest rates and encouraged Americans to hold gold claims in pounds, not dollars, to offset the inflating increase in pounds.
Low interest rates stoked a speculative boom in United States stocks. In 1929, the Fed drastically raised rates leading to a market crash.
The United States defaulted on the gold exchange standard when public fear that President Franklin Roosevelt would abandon the gold standard led to the banking panic of 1933. The government nearly doubled income tax rates and supported artificially high wage rates by unions. Roosevelt ordered confiscation of all privately held gold coins and bullion, forcing unstable paper money on the United States.
After WWII, the Bretton Woods Agreement established a new gold exchange standard, defining a dollar as 1/35th ounce of gold. Central banks held gold, but private citizens were not allowed to own gold other than jewelry. Only foreign governments could redeem dollars for gold.
The Kennedy and Johnson administrations set the country on a course of unprecedented deficit spending and inflating. The last balanced budget was in 1969.

Part II
Aunt Manie had big, blue eyes, wavy black hair (a woman’s crowning glory) worn in a Gibson girl pouf, a fair complexion and a figure of a slender hourglass form. An early twentieth century knock-out. Manie’s striking beauty attracted a prosperous local farmer. They married, but Manie was unable to have children and folks said she dominated her husband. She loved children, however, including her sisters’ children. My grandmother was one of those sisters.
After Manie’s husband died in the 1950s, she lived alone in an old, two-story, T-shaped farm house. Manie occupied two downstairs rooms, a country kitchen and a small bedroom. An outhouse stood in the backyard between the garage, where her deceased husband’s car resided, and the hen house. Aunt Manie had running water in the kitchen. When the faucet leaked, she had the electric pump removed and replaced with a hand pump. She heated her two rooms with a coal stove. She didn’t use the rest of the house, including a living room with an old television and a pump organ, items purchased when her husband was alive.
Farmers didn’t qualify for Social Security benefits at the time. Although past her sixties, Aunt Manie raised broiler chickens and, sometimes, turkeys. She kept a few laying hens and feral cats roamed the yard. An empty barn fell into disrepair. The old lady, like her sisters, had never learned to drive, but she kept her husband’s car.
Aunt Manie grew a vegetable garden, saving seeds each year to replant. Mauve petunias self-seeded in her yard and she grew zinnias and cosmos from saved seed. She yanked up a handful of yellow sedum one day and gave it to me. “Just cover it with dirt and it will grow,” she said and it did. Like her sisters, she canned produce and made her own clothes, quilts and rag rugs.
Addie, Manie’s widowed sister, lived in similar circumstances on a nearby farm. A couple of miles down another dirt road lived my widowed grandmother, who had an indoor bathroom my father had installed. On another road, the youngest sister, a spinster, Hettie, lived with the bachelor brother, John. All farmed. A fifth sister had died young. Only John drove. None had ever received government benefits and all were thrifty.
Manie beat them all for thrift. Relatives complained she was tight, miserly, stingy and parsimonious. They said she had money and should live up to it.
Aunt Manie walked to my grandmother’s house when I stayed there. The old ladies shelled peas or beans or sewed, while rocking by the iron, coal stove and listening to crop prices on the radio. Evenings, they moved into the living room, turned on the oil stove and watched television. They loved Laurence Welk’s music and Oral Roberts’ preaching.
When the nearest country store closed and delivery men stopped coming by with bread and meat, my mother drove the old ladies to a grocery store. Aunt Manie always gave me a quarter and smiled when my mother told her I put them in my piggy bank. These were the genuine silver, pre-1965 quarters. I wish I’d kept them in the piggy bank instead of depositing them in a commercial bank, but most adults didn’t know the government would devalue our coins and I was only a child.
A doctor told Aunt Manie she didn’t eat right. In winter, she lived on melted cheese and jelly sandwiches and probably skimped on the cheese. When she needed cataract surgery on both eyes, she only had one done to save money. Aunt Manie had to stay in the hospital a few days. She said the food was good, the first time I’d ever heard anyone say that about hospital food. She wasn’t a complainer.
When antique dealers roamed the countryside looking for farmers willing to sell their heirlooms, Aunt Manie sold old furniture and glass ware, old stuff she’d inherited and didn’t need. When she died, her relatives found a broken glass oil lamp, the pump organ and other stuff that the dealers didn’t want. Aunt Manie’s nieces and nephews didn’t complain about her frugality when they inherited shares of her small estate. She produced food for others most of her life and never used anyone’s money but her own.


Part III
By 1970, nearly half the gold confiscated from American citizens in the 1930s was in foreign central banks. When France continued to exchange dollars for gold, Nixon defaulted on foreign gold payments, ending the dollar’s connection with gold.
By 1980, gold sold for over $800 an ounce. Inflation and interest rates soared over ten percent. Savers lost millions. During the 80s, despite President Reagan’s battles with congress to rein in spending and balance the budget, government spending, taxes and debts increased.
The Federal Reserve Bank serves the purpose of financing government and has no place in a free economy. The Fed underwrites federal loans, controls money supply, manipulates interest rates and regulates banks. This central planning creates instability and economic inefficiency.
“When we assign the production of money to government, we should expect inferior money.” –Laurence White
The Fed enables government to spend more than it can take in taxes, creating inflation. After 9/11, Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates to revive the economy. Lower rates and government policies encouraging home ownership increased housing demand, inflating prices. Real estate speculation and development increased. Lower interest rates encouraged the purchase of larger homes and goods to fill them. Low rates led to purchases of more and bigger vehicles to drive greater distances to work and shop.
Government borrowing and spending increased to finance war, homeland security and new government programs such as No Child Left Behind and senior prescription drugs. An increased money supply devalued the dollar. Expanding economies in Asia, fed by United States consumer spending, increased demand for fuel. Demand, the devalued dollar and speculation increased the price of fuel. That created more inflation and people found it harder to pay off their debts. The Fed exacerbated the problem by increasing interest rates to control inflation. The results: default, foreclosure, tight credit, recession and deflation in home prices, leaving financial institutions and homeowners with homes worth less than the prices paid for them.
Politicians believe they can create jobs with public works programs, industry bailouts and subsidies to new industries. Public works programs prolonged the Great Depression. Government money comes from inflation and taxes.
Politicians and the media condemn CEOs and Wall Street. The uninformed demand more regulation. Regulation won’t cure a problem caused by government control of money and the resulting profligacy. Americans will experience booms and busts, fluctuating speculations in commodities, real estate, stocks and production as long as the government controls the money. We need to get rid of government’s drunken sailor economic policies and replace them with tightfisted Aunt Manie policies.

One of the Last

oil painting

giclee print available

Crossbred Calves

Dupont Circle

Oil painting of Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., early morning in winter

IN the Stable

acrylic painting

Morning Glories

a painting, available as giclee print

Thorn in the Ointment

Thorn in the Ointment

I attended a town hall meeting held by our area’s two state delegates, Norm and Jim. Jim got a bill passed a couple of years ago that put five or six commercial clammers out of business. These men operated conveyor belt clam boats in the coastal bays. At one time, there were over seventy of these boats, but men don’t want to work that hard anymore. The Maryland Coastal Bays, a government sponsored environmental organization, had worked out an agreement with these clammers that allowed them to continue working, but some people accused them of damaging the bays and that’s why Jim got this anti-clamming bill passed.
I had a letter for Maryland’s fisheries director proposing a change in commercial rockfish allocation, an issue too complicated to explain here. When I gave it to Jim, I explained that local fishermen considered him against them due to the clam bill. He protested that he had met with twenty-five clammers and the president of their organization. He couldn’t remember the name of the president of the Maryland Waterman’s Association or the organization. This group and its president have been prominent in Maryland for over twenty-five years.
Jim looked at my letter and asked if it was for the DNR. I said yes, for the fisheries director. Jim didn’t know who that was, either. I decided not to attempt to explain the matter to Jim, or bring it up during the meeting.
Norm, Jim and Gee, the Mayor of Berlin, sat down at a table on the ends of two other tables. They wore suits, as did the county’s state’s attorney, who attended with his wife. She works for Maryland Coastal Bays, but they attended as private citizens. An aged Republican, a fireman, three newspaper women and two other private citizens, besides myself, sat down. Later my council woman Aunt and a member of the school board arrived.
Although the meeting was to hear our desires for the up-coming legislative session, the politicians, particularly long-winded Jim, dominated with their motor-mouths. The news ladies photographed them. The politicians spoke about the difficult session they would have cutting the budget. The Republican guest asked about distribution of slot machine money to towns. Gee said he hoped they wouldn’t change Berlin’s ten percent as the town was counting on it for the budget. They don’t even have slots yet and how do you count on something that can vary?
Two citizens wanted more money designated for highway widening and medical care. The fireman was concerned about medivac funding. The state is considering privatizing it. He also said the fire company could no longer run back ground checks. The states attorney said he couldn’t do it for them or he’d lose his license to do it. Some weird federal law restricts access to this information.
A news lady had no more sense than to ask the loquacious delegates about their pet legislative projects. Norm had a truancy court bill and a proposal to keep Holly Center, an institution for the disabled operating. A group for the disabled wanted it closed and the residents put in group homes. “They object to the idea of an institution,” Norman said, but many patients and their parents needed and wanted the center.
I said, “Some people object to the institution of marriage, too.”
Fabulous Jim was working on a law to ban the sale of salvia, the latest drug craze. Salvia’s probably safer for Maryland citizens than Jim is, at least to clammers. The state’s attorney said nothing about this.
Gee asked about getting federal infrastructure money for Berlin, a bailout. The federal government required the town of about 4,000 residents to get a new $18 million sewage treatment plant using spray irrigation. A newspaper lady asked if spray irrigation was to help the farmers. She didn’t understand this was a water treatment method. This is why I didn’t bring up my fisheries problem.
Developers have expanded Berlin since the last sewage plant was built twenty or so years ago. I asked if tax money from people in California and Texas should be used for this. What would happen if the town didn’t get federal money? Gee said they would still get the system, but he was annoyed by my question. After all Berlin taxpayers were going to pay for projects in other states.
Gee said that deregulation had hurt Berlin’s power plant. Berlin is one of few towns that operate their own electric plants. It needed a new generator and Gee wanted the state to help with a program to educate the public about saving electricity. At some point during this meeting, a private citizen had said that private citizens had restored the town’s Victorian buildings and she thought more should be left up to private enterprise.
Gee bitterly repeated the term deregulation. He wanted re-regulation, but said he knew re-regulation wasn’t likely. Could the delegates help the town with this?
I asked, “When the state deregulated, didn’t it continue to regulate the price utilities could charge the customer?”
“Yes, I’m glad you brought that up,” Gee said.
“That’s not deregulation,” I added. When the cost to produce electricity goes up, the utilities can’t raise prices to compensate without state approval.
Gee claimed small town plants could use renewable energy. (Berlin’s unprofitable plant uses Diesel and the town can’t afford wind mills.) The towns needed to be entrepreneurial, he said.
I refrained from barfing. “The government’s not good at operating power plants. That’s why Berlin’s plant’s in trouble,” I said.
“We need to live in the real world and leave ideology aside,” Gee said, “We have NGOs and businesses. We shouldn’t put up walls between them and government. We need partnerships.”
Whoa! “Ideology is what gave us our freedoms,” I said, adding, “Okay, we don’t have them now. Everything is enmeshed.”
I learned I had an ideology, but leftist politicians didn’t! There is nothing realistic about every municipality collecting federal money, borrowed money that would have to be paid back, with interest, to foreign governments. Today’s profligate spending would bring future higher taxes and inflation.
“This is what’s great about meeting and hearing the public,” someone said.
“Yeah, but if it weren’t for me, one point of view would dominate. You’re all democrats and a little bit socialist.”
A lot socialist, but I didn’t want to offend. One private citizen thought I meant everyone in the room was socialist, but I meant the politicians. So I offended anyway. Every political meeting needs a thorn in the ointment.

One of my paintings, Rare Colored Cat