We’re reliving the 1930’s – although it’s just not obvious to everyone.  No, It’s not “stagflation.”  There’s plenty of stag but no flation – in or de – apparent in the data. Financial rigor mortis.

Thursday’s Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization figures showed that the total index was up 3.5%. 

Given this, and a money supply that is up 6.2% (M2, year on year) we know that there is still deflation around, but the lack of other (normal) sources of money creation (loan originations and rising velocity of money) has kept gold and silver from making major advanced. 

This morning we have some new figures on housing to ponder, but again, nothing to write home about.  Good, but still in catch-up mode.

BUILDING PERMITS
Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,080,000. This is
8.0 percent (±0.7%) above the revised March rate of 1,000,000 and is 3.8 percent (±0.9%) above the April 2013 estimate of
Single-family authorizations in April were at a rate of 602,000; this is 0.3 percent (±0.8%)* above the revised March figure of
600,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 453,000 in April.

HOUSING STARTS
Privately-owned housing starts in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,072,000. This is 13.2 percent (±13.6%)* above
the revised March estimate of 947,000 and is 26.4 percent (±11.8%) above the April 2013 rate of 848,000.
Single-family housing starts in April were at a rate of 649,000; this is 0.8 percent (±10.8%)* above the revised March figure of
644,000. The April rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 413,000.

HOUSING COMPLETIONS
Privately-owned housing completions in April were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 847,000. This is 3.9 percent (±10.1%)*
below the revised March estimate of 881,000, but is 21.2 percent (±13.6%) above the April 2013 rate of 699,000.

And then, there is where America is in the economic long wave.  Nearing a long term bottom in interest rates. Between now and 2020.

We already know from looking at a maximum zoom-out that 10-year Treasuries have been falling since 1982, or so.  And this has fueled a rise in stock prices since lousy earnings don’t matter if everyone else has crappy real returns.  Average thrives and CEO’s are cutting a fat hog on stock benefits they had nothing to do with.  They largely have been lucky.

So, just how sick is this economy? 

Well, you have to keep your comedy-writing mindset in place, notice that earnings and jobs are so tight in America right now that a headline mentioned how “Hospitals reach out to attract affluent immigrants:  Hospitals compete for affluent immigrants with premium menus, revamped rooms, other extras.”  Truly WTF running wild.

That’s almost like saying “Help the economy: Get sick.”

Ever read the Lincoln Star Journal?  “Meat prices lead higher inflation” was their take on Consumer Prices. And we’re likely to keep heading down this road through 2015.

Driving it is the national drought.  As you can see in this week’s National Drought Monitor.

Oh, sure, the drought continues in California which means higher veggie (and almond) prices.

But the biggest area hit now is turning to the Dust Bowl area of the New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and Oklahoma.

A couple of months ago, I alerted you to my expectation that we would likely see human relocations beginning this year from California.

But maybe I’m wrong:  So far, only cattle are migrating, along with truckloads of salmon.

What’s worse, when you read the local news out of the Bay Area, you’ll find the drought is being used to roll back protection for endangered species of salmon, and whatnot.  Thanks to senatress Diane Feinstein.

To be sure, managing through times like this are difficult.  But migration of humans and settling in other parts of the country makes sense.  Yet, our real estate sources say people are still moving to the Bay Area is good numbers.  Lemmings are alive!

And so it goes with humans in  denial:  You can read the numbers all day long to folks, yet few will take them seriously, let alone act on them.  It’s a subtle difference, but the difference between survivors and victims.

While one of my consulting clients in the East Bay is still several weeks out on a drilling rig to punch in a water well on his (large) property, officials are already billing him for the increased valuation of his property if he gets his well in. Sending him forms of well equipment cost, you can almost see the tax slobber on the forms.

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Saturday, our Peoplenomics content will wrap up a look at the issue of “financial prepping” as we look at a number of future scenarios and try to figure the best way to have a little money (and maybe make some, in some instances) when the old crapperoo hits the fan.

One of the biggest trends to deal with is the “War on Cash” which involved everything from the civil asset forfeiture laws being abused to government accountability for income taxes.  And yes, for the paranoid with bank accounts outside the US, there will be some (upper income) fallout from the new bank reporting rules, FATCA, July 1, but it won’t bring down the financial house.  At least not likely.

I’m not the only one to see it.  Reader RD offers this:

“Specifically, as the transition to transition to “cashless” happens, how do you think you’ll ever be able to take those gold and silver coins you might have and roll them into needed fiat/scrip when you actually need to spend it?” – make up your mind – are we going to get an EMP?  or go “cashless” – and will either be in our lifetime (I’m now three score and 10) – with the EMP perhaps more likely.  You forget – ALL of US are not on computers nor do we have smart phones – and many don’t have the bank account/cash to run them if they did – I suppose the Socialist Merican government will supply that as well.  AND – as long as the Fed/Treasury – keeps printing dollars and stamping out coins – I’m not to worry – it’s when they stop – then I’ll begin to worry. – and so will all the business that are going to go belly up.  (( PS:  I seldom carry more than $20/$25 cash – but cashless – not usually.  You used to could get locked up as a vagrant if you didn’t have about $25 on you.  Of course – you could get locked up for a while for ‘adultery or homosexuality’ too.)

In yesterday’s report we got into some interesting territory and no doubt more will come Saturday.

Meantime, a couple of areas that you need to be aware of when it comes to personal wealth preservation.

The first is that the number of high tech thieves working credit card reader “skimmers” is going through the roof.  Just this morning we have headlines like:

• Credit card skimmer warning in Jacksonville.
• A south Florida skimmer was allegedly targeting McDonalds
• Shell has been watching for the problem which has cropped up in Sarasota gas stations
• Recently, the problem appeared in Texas…

And there are other reports from almost all overs the country.  So it’s really just a matter of when, not IF, you’ll run  into one of these things, looks like.

The way these skimmer operations runs is usually pretty simple:  You run your card through what you think is a card reader to pay for gas (or whatever) and a small device picks up your card information.

The best means of defense is really two-fold here.

First:  Whenever you scan a card, make absolutely sure that there is nothing around the card readers that you don’t understand.  If the key’s seem to be a bit odd, that may be because there’s a new skimmer tool which is picking off you zip code (gas) or PIN (retail, general) and collecting it and matching it up with a card skimmer. 

Given your card (and your PIN) you might as well be carved up and served for Thanksgiving since you’re now a turkey dinner in card circles.

Some readers go inside of regular readers, so inspect things carefully.

Second thing to do is grab yourself an RFID protected wallet.

Minimally, invest in something like the men’s  RFID Blocking Men’s Bi-Fold Leather Wallet and Removable ID Holder-Two Tone Black and Tan by Access Denied  $48 at Amazon, or, in the same price category for women there’s a RFID Blocking Womens Leather Wallet and Checkbook by Access Denied (Navy Blue) and they have other colors, too.  $53 bucks that sounds like a worthwhile investment.

This whole credit card skimming thing is no joke and if there’s a risk to the digital age that is actionable, this is certainly one of them.

You would never even consider having a 4-character password for your checking account online, but an amazing number of people have super short PINs which just amazes me.

Government Tracking

Speaking of electronics and Coping, and having watched the season-ender for Person of Interest  last night (which gets seriously into how Machines can take over the world especially in light of our near-PTB friend who reminds us “the movie is the message”) we can help but pass on this note from reader Claudia who has just come face-to-face with “The Machine” in here present job quest:

Greetings from the working world,

I started a new job this week and when they gave me the I-9 to fill out I almost lost it.  The Federal Government now requires your e-mail address 

and your phone number.  Now I am thinking the NSA already has it.  I live close to Fort Gordon and they house the communications center, NSA and the Cyber Command is making it’s way south to this base.  I thought about giving out phone numbers I no longer use, e-mail addresses that have fallen aside but fear I would be in trouble. Crazy, huh!  I am attaching a screen shot so you can see the form.

If you watch Person of Interest, you might ask them if the results will be fed into Harold’s “The Machine” or the (former Cigarette Man’s) “Samaritan” system.

If they don’t have an answer, or can’t differentiate between the two computer systems, then our advice would be along the lines of “Use them and lose them…”

In other words, go ahead and work for them for a while, but keep looking for better job.  If they can’t see the prospects of what’s ahead in the computer world, they may not have the brain cells to keep their company running in the future.

Use and lose, dear. 

If they ask, refer them to the TV series Person of Interest and send them a link to the Freedom Output post “Former VIA/NSA Director Michel Hayden: “We kill people based on metadata.”

Our two most important personal survival tools around here are the axioms:

Everything is a business model and The Movie (or TV series) IS the Message.

Now, take your pills and off to work with you…

Serious Denial

OK, now we’re into an interesting discussion…about how smart people (and consequently, their employers) are.

“Average Americans think they’re smarter than the Average American” says a new report.

Talk about narcissism gone to egoism gone to delusional….there’s your path for you.

But it’s exactly this kind of mental lack of “due processing” that makes average people cannon fodder for sales, marketing, and management consultants like me.

Using phrases like “You want to do the smart thing, right?” sprinkled all overs the place (along with getting people to talk about themselves) is probably the shortest path there is to high pay and getting people to believe you really are smart.

That, and the “take-away” (or “reverse sale”) and you’re definitely “C-level” material.

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We’ll get to this morning’s retail sales numbers in a moment.  But before we do, a couple of key trends to be thinking about that may take precedence over the short-term news blips:

Over the past couple of weeks I have been mentioning to our www.peoplenomics.com subscribers that there is a “war on cash” in progress and that more and more, the press is on to get everything you do in an electronic money system so even the slightest deviation from “the herd” can be spotted as aberrant behavior.

Right on cue, along comes a CNBC story this morning when you need to read which goes into the trend with more data.  The eye-opener is that one-in-ten Americans don’t carry any cash, anymore.  And 78% carry less than $50 in paper money.

I’ll now say publicly what I’ve been telling subscribers for a while:  It may be true that having more than a small amount of cash (like $2,000) around your home might turn you into a suspect of some kind of criminal conduct, but it gets us to a couple of topics which very few people kick around.

Specifically, as the transition to transition to “cashless” happens, how do you think you’ll ever be able to take those gold and silver coins you might have and roll them into needed fiat/scrip when you actually need to spend it?

And more to the point, on the flip side of the “how much on hand?” question:  Who is crazy enough to turn over their whole future to computers, networks, the powers grid, and hackers?

Which gets me to mentioning that “Personal Financial Data Backup Plans” is the top of tomorrow’s Peoplenomics report.  Just so’s you know it’s coming…

Delightful (But Delirious) Markets

Our second point is that markets are continuing to set new highs, no doubt due in some measure to the Fed keeping up the slow QE process along with the large increases in printing of money down at the M1 and M2 levels.

All that money, virtual or printed cash, is bound to “leak” into the economy somewhere and the markets are one of those “wheres.”

To be sure, there are a few reasonable souls out there, like Jeff Kilburg of KKM Financial is quoted as saying as we get closer and closer to 1,900 in the smart thing to do might be to “lighten up” a bit.

From a longwave economics standpoint, this is a very good time to revive the debate over what drives the ultra-long cycles in the economy.  Whether you believe in the 49-64 year Kondratieff (Kondratiev) wave theory, or variants that work out to 73-85 years, the key dynamic which not too many people seem to get is how demographic shifts play into things.

The thumbnail sketch of the problem goes something likes this:  After World War II we had a huge Baby Boom.  And most of us Boomers are at, or near, retirement age right now. 

As some point, we will be taking our life savings, much of it in stocks, mutual funds, 401k’s and the like, off the table.

When that happens there will need to be young people who are ready to step up and buy stocks.

Well, just like things were hitting new highs right up until September 3 of 1929 with the Dow, I think there’s at least an even-money chance that there will be a decline of stocks because over time there may not be enough buyers.

I’ve penciled in some time to look at this more deeply in coming weeks, but the long and short of it right now is that markets COULD be living on borrowed time.  People who are seniors are holding onto their stock (for now) but when the markets begin to turn – even modestly – there could be a whole wave of unexpected “demographically driven selling” and that’s the kind of thing that Great Depressions are made of.

Still, we might also see a major run-up.  Remember, from the market break in 1921, there was an 8-year period that led to 1929.  So, if we’re in that kind of a blow-off,; aided and abetted by excessive money-printing, then we might make it as far as late 2015 or even into 2016.

Once there, however, and with robotics scarfing up the manufacturing jobs, the old paradigm will be in a whole heap of trouble, especially with China’s outlook.

On that, the Hang Seng is back on the positive side of the psychologically important 22,000 level (22,352 overnight) but it has been below that level several times in recent weeks.  Part of the reason for China knocking at our door as the leading economy in the world is that they’ve been printing money like crazy.

But theirs is a circular process, which means they are rolling money as fast as possible into home mortgages.  While they are facing an 18-month low in GDP growth, the Chinese are leaning on banks to “wash” more money into home loans.

All of which has us wondering if former Fed Boss Alan Greenspan’s Bubblemeister of the real estate market might be reprised by the Chinese Central Bank.   Is that odd?  You bet.  But in today’s world, what’s normal?

Maybe America has finally exported the one thing China was lacking:  The concept of home ownership for the middle class.  Just as ours is being tossed out.  Again, though, what’s normal, anymore?

More after this.

Retail Fails

We sort of knew from looking at the Fed’s Consumer Debt Reports recently that people didn’t have a lot of disposable income.  In fact, the one category where there has been continuing growth in the Fed data is student loans.

Unanswered, though, was what the cumulative impact on consumer Retail Spending would be with people trying to “buy more smarts” to get out of dead-end jobs, and all the while trying to pay for ever-increasing healthcare costs.

This morning we get some additional insight as the Retail Sales figures are just out:

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for April, adjusted for seasonal
variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $434.6 billion, an increase of 0.1 percent (±0.5)* from the
previous month, and 4.0 percent (±0.7) above April 2013. Total sales for the February 2014 through April 2014 period were up 3.3 percent
(±0.5) from the same period a year ago. The February 2014 to March 2014 percent change was revised from +1.2 percent (±0.5) to +1.5
percent (±0.2).

Retail trade sales were up 0.2 percent (±0.5)* from March 2014, and 4.2 percent (±0.9) above last year. Auto and other motor vehicle dealers
were up 10.5 percent (±3.2) from April 2013 and nonstore retailers were up 6.5 percent (±2.5) from last year.

From the charts in the news release, we see that auto sales are up 10% but general merchandise and ex-autos were both stuck at sub 4% levels.

Remember, as the fine print says the data is “ adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes…”  and about here, any good forensic economics student would look at either M2 (which is up 6% in the past year) or my friend Trader Bart’s fine M3b Reconstructed (up 7-9%) and wonder (*in a Goofy) kind of voice:

“Ah yup, Garsh Mickey, whatddah yah think happened?”

Lack of vision, national dream, and …uh…change.  I may have to start referring to Obama as Bush III. Headlines like “American shoppers take a breather after March retail sales surge” certainly put a much for ebullient light on things.  The phrase “sales surge” is what is designed to stick, not the “take a breaker.” 

File under “HappyTalk” or take it to the throne room.

Tomorrow, the Producer Price Index will be released but the biggie of the week will be the Consumer Price Index which we’ll serve up (with a side of ham) Thursday morning.

Dry Ships/Baltic

Looks like the odds of the bottom falling out from under markets is almost passed.  The Dry Ships *(Baltic Dry) index had bounced back up over 1,000 for a while now after dipping into the (worrisome) 900’s for a while.  This morning’s reading?  982…so not out of the woods yet.

Stock futures are about flat.  Option expiration is in two days…

Still Waiting on War

As expected, the anti-Kiev voters in eastern Ukraine are not getting any respect while the rebel leadership in Kiev remains blessed with EU/Western/US money and the hype continues.

Undeterred, however, the eastern groups are now talking about unification.  Missing?  The ultra-right thugs who changed governments in Kiev.

Not making headlines in the Western media is this other story out of Russia’s Novosti news service that “Ammunition for Special Forces airlifted for Slaviansk Operation.”

So let me complete the picture a bit for you:  Ukraine Denetsk region is asking to join Russia.  Others are likely to follow.  Russia is airlifting ammo into the region.

The story of pending war may be off the front pages of most sites, but don’t put your flash goggles away just year.

MERS Hits Orlando

Oh, sure, only one case, but it’s enough to get CDC uptight about the spread of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome which has come to America from the Middle East.  First case was up in Indiana.  From the CDC press sheet:

A second imported case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) was confirmed late night on May 11 in a traveler to the United States. This patient is a healthcare worker who resides and works in Saudi Arabia. This case is unlinked to the first U.S.

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“Spit fire and save matches!”

(The actual term is a little more, oh, how would we say?  Not suitable for the breakfast table, but you get the idea….)

Pull up a cup and let’s talk vacation planning as we run the numbers for another summer decision point:  So here we are:  Ures truly has been running his butt all over hell’s half-acre and I need a vacation.  Elaine needs a vacation.  Panama needs a vacation (from us, lol).

Panama’s health, by the way is quickly recovering from his lung issue, which may turn out to be a service-related “orange” thing, but for now he’s back at 100% knowing (like we all do) that there will be some degradation over time.  Golden years my foot.

Word to the wise:  If you can figure a way to pull off a mid-life retirement?  Go for it.  It’s way more fun to have limited money and great energy of mid-life than it is to have the money angle figured but then realize that the energy is fading.  Don’t start building your own home after about age 64, or so.

Anyway, we keep talking about spending time time up in the Tacoma or Gig Harbor area of Washington state for a month, while Panama runs through a year’s worth of night vision batteries and rat killing around here.

So where to stay?  Enter www.airbnb.com which is a way cool way to find long term stays, everything from shared rooms w/ shared baths (no thanks, not for us…) to really spiffy condos with everything set to roll and for about 25% of the cost of staying in a major chain, but no points, of course.

And we have a couple of hot prospects.  but we shall see how that works out.

And since we “own” our own lives (except we need to be totally wired) our timing is semi-open.

And that leaves only one question:  How do we get from here (driving or flying) to there?

We only have three choices.

One is to take a commercial jet.  Another choice is to fly our old airplane up.  Then there’s the long-drive option where we’d pile into the the 9-year old Lexus (in perfect shape that has just turned over 96,000 miles and which just had the timing belt done, brakes, and the tires have 6,000 on them); which is hard of the butt but also has the best ground-level scenery.

The car gets 25+ MPG even going through the mountains of Colorado.  But it involves a hell of a lot of seat-time:  33-hours of it, each way.  66-hours, both ways.  And since I don’t like to press more than 6 hours per day (I need time to write and sleep, OK?) that means that we’d be looking at 5-days of travel each direction for 66-hours total.

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This is an odd one.  Not so odd as to leave me shaking my head (like some dreams that come true.  But, certainly odd enough to take note of.

I’ll begin at the (more or less) beginning.

I’m a fanatic about airplane maintenance.  If our old plane is not absolutely “by-the-book” it sits on the ground until I am absolutely certain than there is nothing amiss.

Weekend before this, my lifelong friend (the retired major fellow) and I flew up to Sheppard Air Force Base where his son is learning air combat (in ever-so slightly) faster airplanes.

On the way back, we climbed up to 7,500 feet and were doing an indicated 123 MPH, but because air is thinner up there, our actual ground speed was pretty much “book:” and maybe a bit better.

The climb-out was bumpy and things didn’t settle down until over 7,000 feet – plus, being 90 on the ground at takeoff time, it was nice to be up where the outside air was showing 62-degrees.

Then I noticed it:  The tachometer was showing between 2500 and 2525 RPM.  It should have been reading 2600 RPM or even a tad higher than that (2650 would be expected).

The flight went smoothly, nice landing, and so forth.  But I called the local mechanic to meet us last week and check things out.

We met at 10 AM as planned, taxied over to a large hangar where there was air (neither of us had brought a compressor) and we set about looking for anything out of place.  But a ground run-up on the engine showed it was on the ragged edge of not making power.

We tore apart a good bit, going through a compression test (everything high 70’s (77,78,79,78) and yes, mag timing was right.

By 11:30 we had to run into town and got to the local Chinese food dispensary.

With the mechanic back at the field, (taking the prop off for more checking on things and to tighten an alternator belt a tad) we say down after the buffet line.  It’s then my buddy gets this far-away look and then says to me:

“You should really call the mechanic and make sure he has your cell phone number.  In case he needs to get hold of you.  I think he will…”

I, of course, poo-poo’ed the idea with all kinds of objections from “rational” mind:  We’re in the midst of George Tso’s chicken, fried rice, bean sprouts, and short of a nuclear exchange, there  wasn’t much reason to put down my fork.

“Besides,” I told my friend, “Dan who is normally in the airport Admin office had also gone into town on errands and there’s no one to run the message out to Jeremy (the mechanic) even if I do call.”

“Well, your decision,” explained my buddy, “But I have one of my “feelings” and you really need to talk to the mechanics.  He wants to talk to you…”

Keep in mind, we have been friends for 62-years and have led totally different lives, but we both have some respect for one-another’s “seeing” ability.  While my background went from high school electronics wunderkind to DJ to newscaster to news director to airline VP, his had gone from seminary to college to grad school to army.

Totally different takes on things, so as I sat there munching (more been sprouts and now onto the sesame seed chicken and some broccoli beef by this point, I was wondering if this would turn into one of those World of Woo-Woo near brushes with Other.

Deep down, there was this part of me that was very quietly saying “Yeah, he’s probably right…” but I was in denial and thinking about the deserts ahead.

We paid (the $4.99 Chinese buffet here would be $9.99 in a busy northern city) and headed back out to the airport to see how the doctor was doing on the plane.

Then the phone rang.

It was Elaine, who doesn’t like nit-picking on airplanes.  “Did Jeremy get hold of you?  He didn’t have your cell phone, so he called the house.  He ran into something or other, and needs to talk to you…Can you call him?”

12-minutes later, we were back at the airport.  My friend had the good taste to only shake his finger at me once and say quietly  “I told you.  This kind of thing happens all the time to me…”

And that gets us to this weekend and our wrap-up discussion on the way up to the airport at Tyler, Texas at oh-dark-thirty Sunday morning.

We agree that there is something much more to this life than people generally let on.  Not everyone gets to sense it, perhaps because you need to be in a quiet enough mental and physical state for the messages to come through.

But the larger point of agreement was that many people don’t actually make “the connection” to this strata of Reality.  He’d summed that up in a conversation with Elaine about it earlier in the week.  They’d been up late talking and he wax explaining to her about the difference between belief in something and knowing something.

Belief, as he’s figured it, is something that comes from study, reports, and so on.  The knowing part is experiential.  In other words, it’s the difference between reading about heat and stoves, and resulting injuries and such (belief) versus the actual “touching” and “pain” that immediately results in the “experience.”

In the World of Woo-Woo, those who have experienced either big things (like vivid telepathic or precognitive dreams) or a more or less constant stream of small things ( of the “mechanic needs to get hold of you” ) sort, the existence of something Other than what’s obvious is undeniable and real.

But, for those who have never had contact with The Big It, there’s tons of belief and plenty of collection plates to hear reports.

Which gets me to the point that there are (when you look for them) a few books out there on this “borderland” between the organized religiosity of it all and the knowing/experiential “been there, sensed That directly.

Sunday afternoon, after catching up on some shut-eye, I went looking for a book that might cover the topic more deeply than we get into in our morning coffee-side chats.  I’m a chapter into  Be Still And Know: Incredible Hunches From Your Creator and it may offer some pointers.

Hard stuff, this matter of spirituality in Modern (such as they are) Times.  Tons of charlatans, always a collection plate, and many times, those passing the plate are more putting toll gates up on the “stairway to heaven.”

Armed with a study of all the world’s holy books, and then a sense of inquiry that is deliberately non-judgmental, I think it is possible construct your own approach to “discovering the World of Woo-Woo” that, at least in my research to date, is something like a hybrid between video game virtual reality, the multiverse of quantum physics, the “personality focus” of the world’s great religions, and six heaping spoonful’s of “The way than can be said, in not The Way.”

You homework assignment, due Thursday, then is simply this:  Of all the great books and teachings in the world, what is the one page of said book that holds (for you) the greatest insight into how the world truly IS?

A Holly-Woo Report

Meantime, the flow of WoWW reports continues.  Sometimes they are big and sometimes they are just enough to be noticed and to leave someone scratching there head going “Hmmm…”

Hey, George, hope your weekend has been a great one!  I’m writing to report another one of these strange experiences.  This bizarre event took place two weeks ago.  I am employed as a steward at a restaurant in Hollywood, or Hollyweird if you prefer.  

One of my many responsibilities is to replace a trash bag in the bathroom when it becomes full.  In order to do this I need to use a key to remove a metal container from the wall, take out the bag, replace it with a new one, and then use the key to reattach the container.  This is exactly what I did.  I then brought the full garbage bag to a dumpster and continued with my myriad of other tasks.

20 minutes later or so, when I next checked to make sure the bathroom was in order, I saw that there was no trash bag in the metal container.  I was absolutely stunned!  The process of changing out the bag is enough of an annoyance that I clearly remembered doing it.  It would be possible for someone to have ripped the bag out, but it wouldn’t have come out clean.  Without using the key some plastic would inevitably have remained attached to the container.  I took note that I had once again encountered the world of woo-woo, again replaced the bag, and made a note to write you.

I’m still not sure what all these things mean, but they move you in a powerful way when they happen…

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People say a lot of things about Oregon…and not all of it is good.  For example, there are some local issues related to people collecting rainwater – that falls on their own land or property.  And, since people in Oregon are fiercely independent in their thinking, Oregon is pictured (variously) as a land of heathens, stoners, and revolutionaries.

But please take note, even Oregon scores big in one category around here:  They are in the process of preserving industrial arts in schools.

A long time reader will know this as a familiar harangue: As long as people have access to industrial areas, or even a few used tools off Craigslist (or cheap new ones from Harbor Freight)  you can play “bend me, shape me, any way you want me” to your heart’s content.

Reader Michael’s observation:

George, The State of Oregon has awarded grants to Oregon high schools to initiate a number of acronymious programs. See link and doc for details on where the state is going–they think and/or hope, I guess. You likely will recognize the programs, though I have not been able to, for the most part.  Collectively, it is probably an indication of where the nation is headed. 

This may be a kind of “old story” since the state school folks out there put out a press release on topic in January of this year, but check this out:

In a major expansion of career readiness investment, 140 Oregon middle schools and high schools – serving more than 90,000 students – will receive Career and Technical Education (CTE) Revitalization Grants totaling $8.87 million, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian and Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Rob Saxton announced today.
The CTE Revitalization Grant funds will benefit students, schools and local employers around the state in fields such as health care, advanced manufacturing, construction, engineering, agriculture, renewable energy technology and more.

As a former vocational college director, I can assume you that one of the reasons people “fail” in school is that the content in a lot of programs just plain sucks.  In order for a school to really be a remarkable life-changing place, the number one focus of the entire staff has to be delivery of truly superior course content.

Oh,; sure, kids will drop out (8-12 and postsec) for all kinds of reasons, including home financial issues, drugs, peer pressure, and all the rest.  But a first-rate product that really grips kids and makes education relevant?  Kids (and adults) will line up for that kind of education.

‘If schools across America were more in the business of empowering the young – and showing them the tools to “make their own futures” I have absolutely no doubt that dropout rates could be cut in half – or more.

Can you imagine a teacher sending you home with a shoebox and telling a student “I want ya’ll to bring us something from home that will fit inside this shoebox – with the lid closed – and we’re going to teach you how to scan it with a laser modeling platform.  They we’re going to modify it in some way using surface modeling software (like SolidWorks) and then we’re going to print whatever this new thing is.

It might be something as simple as a customized (hand fitting) remote for the television, or something as arcane as an all-plastic clock.  But who wouldn’t find that kind of content engaging?

It’s onlyh one example, but the Joseph Carter School (in awards announced in April) is scheduled to receive $72,329 in award money and perhaps $10,150 in matching fees for a program called “Greenhouse: GHrowing Minds, Skills, and Community;””

Three CTE programs will benefit from the new learning laboratory: the CTE Agricultural Sciences students will have year-round experiences working with a greater diversity of plant-life and will be expanded with new course offerings, the CTE Family and Consumer Sciences (FACS) students will use campus-grown herbs and vegetables for food preservation education, and the CTE Business/IT students will gain experiences in marketing, 3-D design, and sales.  Partners will provide grassroots support for greenhouse development, CTE expansion, and meaningful work-based educational experiences.

So while the number of Americans wallowing in constant political whining about this and that continues to grow,  there are some people in public schools around the country who are handing out the kind of skills which will eventually empower people and given then the hands-on experience that is so necessary for the tactile learners and the mixed input learner.

I think in time we’ll look back on the experiment over emphasis on “head schooling” instead of a mixed approach with hands-on, will be seen as a serious mistake in education overall.

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