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It's guaranteed to relieve stress and slow down time.
It also is a wonderful education about the agrarian age 100 years ago.
It's- - the county fair. Not all county fairs are created equal of course. So look for one with lots of poultry, maybe harness racing, and 4-H exhibits.
It will relieve your stress, slow down time, and take you back 100 years.
Photo: Girl trimming the feet of one of her blue ribbon winning chickens at the Gogebic County Fair.
Goiong green is a lifelong commitment for Generation Y.
That's no more apparent than at the Gogebic County Fair in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is a rural county where wages are low and the standard of living low. But pride and education and standards of morality and history and culture and sense of family and community are at an all time high.
Even here, away from the smog, with blue sky and trees and clean water and bald eagles overhead, Generation Y is committed to saving the planet.
At the county fair the teenage girls show and show off their horses. At one of the stalls we saw this sign, a sign of the times. Go girls, go green, go Gen Y.
National Public Radio (NPR) is obsessed with saving the industrial age.
There's almost daily reports on trying to save the symbol of the industrial age, the auto.
Last week they even reported on an "American car company that is profitable." Yes, Tesla Motors, which made 109 cars last year. Desperation reigns at NPR.
One of the institutions public radio is trying to save is the U.S. Post Office.
And the news out last week is sure to cement the stamp licking loyalty of future generations for years to come.
The commemorative Ozzie and Harriet stamp is now out! This could do it. NPR is already heralding it as a big a success as Tesla Motors.
Sunday was my co-author's 63rd birthday.
Julie is the oldest baby boomer.
In just two years Boomers will be turning 65. In 20 years every Boomer will be over age 65, even Barack Obama. In 20 years Gen Yers will be age 30 -50. Guess who runs the show in 2030?
For those Boomers welcoming the new century, things will be exciting. For those mourning the loss of newspapers, cars, suburbs, post office, motorboats, factories and offices, well.... they will just get old.
Happy birthday Julie! Photo: big preparations for Julie's birthday.
Julie's presents: From the last century, the commemorative Ozzie and Harriet stamps; From this century, a Kindle.
This is got to be one of the three top most shameful things teachers do.
Why do they do it?
Last week the great guitarist Les Paul died at age 94. He invented the electric guitar.
When he was age 8, his music teacher sent a note home to his mother. The note read, "Your boy Lester will never learn music, so save your money. Please don't send him for any more lessons."
Every day teachers say this to children. What countless talents have been lost because teachers have discouraged, rather than encouraged, learning? Photo: Gibson Les Paul guitar named after him
Up here in northern Wisconsin and the U.P. of Michigan (look at a map) the Industrial Age might be collapsing a little more quickly than elsewhere. There are simply too few jobs for those without a college education.
I'm riding my bike to the mailbox and start talking with a trucker who hauls logs from the forest to the paper mill. He said he gets only $10 for loading up the whole truck full of logs. Pointing to his Peterbuilt cab with all its computers, "That thing has more brains than I do." He's 56, no college degree. "It's all over," he says about his job and pay prospects. He's right.
'Everything's changing so fast,' she said. 'Isn't it stunning to wake up every morning and feel that the whole world's brand-new again, a present waiting for you to unwrap it?'
That's the first paragraph of the book A Summer in the Twenties. In ten years the whole world will indeed feel brand-new again, as we leave the Industrial Age behind and are truly in the Internet or Information Age of the 21st Century.
But first, the second decade of the 21st Century. From 2010 to 2020 will be a gut wrenching hard fought and iffy decade as the Industrial Age collapses without plan or order, and the new Internet Age takes over in a messy chaotic and not-altogether-perfect way.
And we don't know how it will turn out for every nation, state, city, business and family. Some countries (the U.S. maybe?) could screw it up. To rework a great line from F. Scott Fitzgerald, the first author of the Industrial Age and symbol of the 1920s, "Inevitable (the Internet Age) becomes evitable (each country's success is iffy)." Will America remain the number one country in the world, or fall in its ranking? What's your opinion?
If you want a big picture huge prediction for 10-20 years from now, here it is:
For-profit railroad interests in the United States will try to convince the government to trade Trains for Track.
Right now railroads own the track. And states and federal government run the trains. But that's the reverse of how transportation works with airplanes and automobiles. With air travel the government owns and pays for the infrastructure (airports, control towers). With automobiles, the government owns and pays for the highways, state patrol, and ambulances. The reason: there's no profit in the infrastructure, only cost. The profit is in the planes and cars.
The government gave the track and land to the railroads in the 1800s in a successful effort to convince them to provide train service on the frontier, eventually reaching the west coast. The government gave away acreage the size of Pennsylvania to the railroads. In 10-20 years, NineShift is predicting the railroads will want to give it back.
There's money to be made in running trains. For-profit interests will try to convince the train public and government to pay for the track, and give the trains to for-profiteers. Is that a good thing?
WIll they succeed? Take a guess: :
