TubaOrNotTuba

Yes I remember life before the ballpoint pen. We had something called a fountain pen. For the record I no longer own one or at least I do not think so. So much mess for a child in school. The secret of the fountain pen was that the ink supply was small. You had to refill your pen during the day. In fact I can remember those little plastic cartridges but you placed inside which made things easy but I also remember dipping the pen into a small jar and pushing on a small lump on the side of the pen until you had pumped up enough ink to make your whole desk into a disaster. We also used special paper. Something the teacher referred to as foolscap although she never explained the why of that word. These are oversized sheets of lined paper where you would place your knowledge in complete sentences with punctuation to be later graded by the teacher. It was an odd time in my life. Ink came in different colours including red black and blue and green. I was never given the chance to get green ink all over everything. I no longer have any of those examination papers. Some things go directly from the desk to the trash. This way of recording dialogue or thoughts is easier. And cleaner. So far I have not had a word spell. There are however odd mistakes. That spell in the previous sentence should have been spill. I did a quick search online and the fountain pen is still a thing. Mainly for the rich and famous. After all the ability to read cursive writing is a skill from a previous time in history. Go ahead. Check with your local school and see if anyone there other than the old teacher in the backroom is still capable of translating what looks like hand tracks into dialogue. And yes I know that people took great pride in their writing skills in the good old days. We are not there anymore. And do not get me started on the whole problem of a pen nib that had been covered in dried out ink. That was not supposed to happen but as students we did not listen to the whole explanation of how to use our pen correctly. If we could get to the point where we could write on a page and then recognize what we had written we felt that we had covered the whole curriculum gloriously.

It seems that government offices are often guilty of doing things in and uncontrolled manner. I am referring at the most granular level here. Like most of the world few of us have any direct experience with the madness of tariffs at all that they mean for the average client. We rely on anecdotal evidence. With that as a given I watched a video of a couple picking up their parcels on one side of the border and showing up at the customs office on the other side. With a list of all their parcels. The intention was to pay any dues required by either administration. Anyhow the couple with their small truckload of parcels cleared customs on one side of the border and arrived at the other side. They went so far as to make a computerized list to help out with all the intended paperwork. And, once inside the customs office they presented their case. At that moment there was a power failure. Not a failure to communicate. The lights went out and came on again and then the computer restarted a second time and the network remained offline. All involved we’re aware that things were not complete. However the customs of official simply stamped the paperwork as done and sent the couple on their way. The amount of uncollected monies would not in any way compensate the government for the extra time this file would require. Also since the computers had crashed there was no record of the whole visit. The only word that comes to mind is fortuitous. You usually cannot depend upon a power failure when it comes time to pay monies to the government. But it also shows a greater state of mind. Even the people in the nicer uniforms fail to understand the need to collect every penny a government decides is theirs when there is nothing in return. History shows that the idea of taxation without representation extends into the real world too. Yes I watched the video and then I re-watched it. Trying to see if there was a nuance that I had missed. My final take is that the people behind the desk are just doing their job as well. When the lights go out it is simply easier to stamp the papers in front of you, give a nod of the head and carry on.

When I was very young my parents had a cow. For many of you that would seem rather ordinary but I lived in a small village. And I was born at that interesting time before things changed greatly. There was no dairy delivering milk to my house. If you wanted fresh milk you also kept a cow. I will not claim to remember the cow specifically but I do remember the building behind the house. I bring this up because I want to point out just how much things have changed since I was born. Back in the day, as they say it was a common practice to prepare your own butter and to keep hens out back and to do all the things that were considered normal in a village. A lifetime later if I was to drive down the road I would be very surprised to see someone keeping a cow to make their own butter. There are older people who still have the knowledge but the technology has changed. Now if you wanted jug of milk you drive down to the store and get one. If you want a block of butter you drive to that same store and get one. If you want fresh bread? I suppose there are people who still make bread but not in the have to do it every day mentality that existed when I was young. My grandparents made bread and kept chickens. But I was born at the tail end of that. In fact I consider myself to be a pioneer of the modern day. We do things differently now. The idea of purchasing a loaf of sliced bread came along when I was a child. Before that you kept a bread knife and you did your own preparations. That fresh butter did not come out of the fridge as a starting point. In fact we have changed almost everything about our daily cooking habits. Someone needs to keep track of these things. How else will our children and grandchildren ever understand that it all changed suddenly.

During my short careere life as a mathematics teacher I learned something important. Sometimes you do not need to understand what is going on. Just find the way to trace the problem from start to finish. That same idea holds true in real life. I have been watching a man repair large machines. And no, I have little urge to become a mechanic. But I do want to understand the process. Almost everything that men constructs can be deconstructed. Taken apart and then put back together. Looking at you those alarm clocks from when I was very young. In the case of these videos the repairs to a large machine include trying to trace the path of a problem. If it will not start look to the starter. If there is no power look to your power source. And if the machine runs just a little bit try to see how far you can go before you run out of ideas. The narrator in the videos does this as a career. He has a lot of good tricks for finding where things stop working. And in reality that is all I want to know about. How do you tell if something is actually broken. I have determined that vocabulary is important. If someone is describing a system it helps to know what the big words actually mean. I do not need to stand in front of an old motor to get a sense of what he is trying to do. At least that is my belief. So far all of his strategies seem to be accurate. The proof is when an old motor comes back to life and he drives the machine around the yard. Remember I have no plan of becoming a heavy machine mechanic but I do want to understand the process. My thanks to the Internet for providing hours of content that I can re watch on my schedule. And if I’m ever put in the position of trying to keep something running I will have learned that finding someone who understands the system makes the job a lot more palatable. Keep your fingers cleaner. Stops you from getting burned by touching the wrong spot. All useful techniques.

Please do not come to me for financial advice. Everything that I know about the field can be put down to one phrase. Buy it low and sell it high. For those of you paying attention to the absolute mess going on right now you have missed your window of opportunity. Yes the low is here but unless you have a lot of extra money you will not be taking advantage of it. Something about uncertainty looking forward. As in will it ever go high again. I feel safe. My ignorance makes sure that I will not be investing all the money I have just to watch it disappear. Yes I still have a bag of pennies. Is copper worth anything? Allow from what I have read even pennies are low on copper. My life might have been different if I had been more finely tuned into how others make money. No, wait, that is a myth. I have never had all this extra money that others seem to lose so willingly. I guess I was born at the wrong time in the wrong place. I have no gold mine or oil well under the house. I hope. Apparently having oil under your house is actually a really bad thing and the government will take all of your extra money to recuperate the condition. They will take the oil in the dirt and you will have a lovely whole to contemplate. To be fair watching the current state of financial stress is cathartic. I could have been much more stressed and unhappy if all of my riches had gone away for what seems to be the stroke of a sharpie. If anyone else has figured this one out please tell the world because the rest of us I just living day-to-day in a state of astonishment. Why are such intelligent people doing such idiotic things? And before you say that there is a plan bite your tongue. There is not. Is this whole thing an example of voodoo economics? Again probably not. This is just the result of allowing an old uneducated man to take over the steering wheel of your car metaphorically. Time for you to look under the seat cushions to see how many pennies you still have. We could start an alternate economy. Forget Bitcoin. Buy copper.

The music program my local high school was good. I have a biased view because I was a member of that program but every once in a while a memory comes to the surface. Some people were more talented than others. In order to stand out in a program involving hundreds of students you have to bring something else to the game. Today I remember the girl who knew how to arrange. An average piece of music in high school will be performed by dozens of students in the case of a band program we all worked from the printed page. Probably the best way to direct dozens of students in the right direction. When it came time to do a band recording it was a major undertaking. We were fortunate to have a proper concert hall in our town. A large stage with good acoustics. It made creating a band recording somewhat easier. However you still needed to acquire the sheet music. On one iteration our band took on a piece of contemporary music. The whole band of course. And the interesting part in retrospect was that the arrangement had been created by one of our own. The girl who served as the band president. Now I did not fully understand what was involved. I still do not. Somehow she took a song that she had heard on the radio and created all of the parts required dozens of parts. And wrote out the sheet music. When it came time to record this number we were working with materials produced in our own band classroom. By one person who had not been trained to do such a thing. She had it as a talent. I think I have lost the recording over the decades but I still remember the song. Scarborough fair. Arranged for all 50 people in the band. Not copied but arranged. She took a simple musical idea and made it into something that we could all understand. I will probably never see her again in my lifetime but I would love to ask the one question that has stayed with me. How did she figure all this out. I think she saw more than we did in that simple air. 

Some things are mysterious. Some things are not. In a world where many people travel by air and pass through airports those shops that are marked duty free must seem very mysterious. I mean, a shop where they do not take your money period. We all know I hope the tariff and duty are synonymous. When you arrive in a duty free shop the government decides not to collect your money for objects that they sell you. Have I lost you yet? You see right now the United States government plans to collect tariffs from all and sundry fun stuff produced elsewhere. Synonymous with a sales tax but for a different jurisdiction. In fact if we jump to the obvious conclusion a tariff is just another way for government to take your money from you. Do those people who think that the president and his tariffs are not there to collect their money have a clue. Or are they by extension clueless. The opening of a new arm of the government called the external Revenue Service told me all I needed to know. This was a way for the government to collect more money from all and sundry. At least from those that travel. To be fair the last time I knowingly had to calculate what was meant by a tariff, it came with a different name. We used to buy photography equipment from another nation and in the calculation of cost we had to put in the amount of duty that we were going to remit to our own government. Not exactly a sales tax but just as much of a burden on the wallet. Giving 20% more for whatever you buy it’s hardly a way to keep your own costs down. The government gladly collects money. The taxpayer is not as apt to want to give that same money to the government so if there is a legal reason the government is going to do its best to make sure you pay for whatever it is. When the US government announced yesterday almost every nation in the world would have new tariffs applied did that not awaken consumers? I am looking forward in a way to seeing what the press has to say after today. Does anyone notice that they’re voluntarily paying more for the things they want. There will be a price to pay. Probably a recession on the economy. And it takes a long time to recover from such an event. I suggest that you go and redo your family budget because you now have less money to spend. And believe me, the government will spend that money but not necessarily for your good.

We are in the midst of a federal election. And of course there are polling results. You see an election all by itself has no interest for people. The results are future based and the results are tenuous at best. We go in Canada to great lengths to keep a party structure alive. And yes I have railed against that whole idea many times. Here is the term that counts. The whip. That is the person who is tasked we’re keeping party members on task. What does that mean. It is an attempt to make sure that any given member of a party votes with the goals of the party itself. Blatantly undemocratic. As we move along through this campaign the polling results are all that there is for the news to report. Keep in mind that all politics is local. What your elected representative does your views is supposed to reflect. Even if you have never met that person or even had so much as a visit from their friends. With enough news coverage you can develop an idea of what might happen take power if a given group of people. Again not exactly what I understand by the terms of democracy and freedom of thought. We’re only halfway through the current campaign and already patterns are beginning to emerge. Humans love the idea of patterns. It allows our tiny animalistic brains to keep ourselves pointed in the direction of a goal. In the absence of a whip of course. I try to believe that I am reasonably informed about issues. Until I am not. I learn new details every day which is the point I guess. If you drive by my house there is no sign out front telling you how I might vote. Some of the older members of the community can tell you how my grand father voted but not me. Therein lies the pleasure of politics. Trying to keep the others guessing. If I lived in a country where the votes are commonly miscounted I would worry but in Canada that is not the case. When the numbers are finally posted the day after the elections they will probably mirror closely but the polls have been telling us. It keeps me intrigued because I look for the failure rather than the success. Glass half full or glass half empty.

What makes you anxious? Not the major items which affect all of us but the simple things in life. I’m going to put this out there. I just like wind chimes. Each element taken by itself is anodyne. Even with two of them you can in some ways anticipate what comes next. But, if you place a large number of random sounds together it does not create music. Something like that old idea that 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters could produce something useful to society. The wind chimes never get there. And as I get older I have noticed that our memories are a little bit like those chimes. We all have a lifetime of moments and unless you are slowly sinking into madness all of the elements do not rise to the surface at the same time. We can plan a little bit of where we want our stream of thoughts to go. However once that whole memory buffer starts to fill up moments slip out. Suddenly we find ourselves recalling a time or a place or a person that have not been in the view for ages. In that sense we are a little bit too close to the randomness of wind chimes. Perhaps I am too much of an introvert. Hours of time spent with my own memories as the main data stream. We do not invent memories. We do tend to give importance to the ones that have affected us personally. But if your thought process is make you think that wind chimes would be a good addition to your environment seek advice. Someone, near you, might have a different perspective.