I stink....

I'm not a very good blogger. That's quite obvious given the great lengths of time between the very few posts I do have. Since I'm American and have the right to blame others for shortcomings I'll blame my grade school teachers for not showing me how to properly do what they called "free association writing".

Well, it's not really their fault but I never did understand that writing style. The drill was to write for a set amount of time anything that came to your mind. Anything. Some students wrote furiously, smoke coming out of their pencils. I usually just kind of sat there, wrote maybe one or two sentences. It wasn't because I wasn't thinking, I just never saw the point in writing something that nobody else was going to understand. I think the free association exercises were to prepare us for writing rough drafts of assignments. Another skill I didn't have. When I write, and I still do it this way, I do one draft. Almost like I'm using a typewriter and I want to use as little whiteout as possible. In short, my style has always been to get it right the first time, make it the way I want it from word one. I didn't write a draft and re-write that same draft three times as they wanted us to in school. One draft. Then edit later for factual and grammatical errors.

So maybe that's why I'm not a good blogger. I feel like I'm wasting people's time if they're reading something that I wrote just for the sake of writing. I always felt like there should be some kind of message not randome musings.

So what's the message here? There really is no "write" or wrong way.

Wal-Mart: How much are low prices costing you?

A Wal-Mart has opened up in my old hometown of Clio, MI.

So it goes.

It's the same Wal-Mart that doesn't pay its employees enough to stay out of poverty.

The same Wal-Mart that tells its employees to go on government assistance when they can't afford the company's healthcare plan.

I should mention said government assistance given to that portion of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million total employees costs tax payers $1.5 billion a year.

The same Wal-Mart that lowers property values of the towns it moves into. Who did you think was going to move into those empty buildings where the independently owned businesses used to be?

The list goes on. In some cases, when a Wal-Mart comes to a town they offer seven figure subsidies to the retailer, taking money out of municipal coffers that should otherwise go to the public school systems, not a $288 billion a year company (2005 figures). In recent years new Wal-Mart stores have been blocked in some parts of the country. The Vienna Township Planning Commission tried to block the rezoning for the land used in the Clio Wal-Mart but evidently something went wrong. I couldn't find that Clio gave Wal-Mart any subsidies but I did find that Wal-Mart gave the city of Clio grants in the amount of a whopping $11,500. Below is the motion notes from the meeting:

Wal-Mart Resolution

Motion by Commissioner Schiebel, second by Commissioner Marshall to discuss the Wal-Mart Resolution.
Voice Vote: Motion Carried

"The purpose of this resolution is to thank and recognize the Clio Wal-Mart for its contributions of eleven thousand one hundred fifty dollars to the City of Clio. Six thousand one hundred fifty dollars will go to the Police Department toward a “Live Scan” electronic fingerprinting system and five thousand will go toward the Clio Amphitheater Roof repair and replacement."

Wow, so Wal-Mart is going to possibly destroy what I have always considered an excellent network of family-run businesses Clio has and all it cost the retail giant was a concert hall roof and a fingerprint machine. That, my friend, is one hell of a trade off.

I hope the residents of Clio, MI are smart enough to realize this and stay away from a company that will do nothing but drag them down.

Here is a link to a documetarty about the joys of Wal-Mart

Want in one hand... Shit in the other...

And then mom would say, "See which one fills up first." And she was probably right every time.

If you want something, nobody's going to do it for you so do it yourself. I've written about troubled youth before. Not troubled like homelessness or disease but the youth in decent schools who aren't getting a 'real world' education. The schools that cut out recess, the schools that think math and science is the end all be all. The schools where part of the class is chronically failing and another part is above and beyond the studied subject. And then to top it off, when they all graduate none of them will have a clue about personal finances because they were forced to study crustaceans and alogrithims instead of credit scores and interest rates.

I sponsor a child through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. He just turned 12 the other day and I took him out for his birthday. He's changed a lot in the two years that I've known him and the biggest change is that he's now at an age where he recognizes the different class structure in this country. Simply put: the haves and have nots. Lately he's been showing an increasing interest in material objects, from iPods to as something as silly as cell phone minutes. He found it fascinating that I didn't know how many minutes I had on my phone.

He comes from a world where every cell phone minute, every dollar spent must carefully be thought out because there are not many to go around. He's a good student but, now in 6th grade, is showing signs of struggle, I believe, because he's more worried about social issues. I tried to talk to him about growing up and choices and college and such and his answer for it is, 'I just want to play professional baseball.' I told him that was fine but that he should probably join a little league team first. He's played football in the past and I asked him why not a football player and his reply was 'Because they don't make as much money as baseball players!'

While it's important to encourage kids to pursue their dreams and choices I couldn't even come up with a reasonable response to his desire to pursue a sport he doesn't even play because the money is better over a sport he loves but also isn't currently playing. I know, he's only 12 and dreams will change so I took the high road and explained how college athletic scholarship programs work (like I really know) and how he can pursue two careers at the same time, academically and athletic.

Then I helped him with his homework, which was in Social Studies. He was having the most difficulty on the chapter about Russia. Publishers, McGraw Hill came up with a nicely spun view of Communism. And we wonder why the kids are so damned confused.

My day at the library

Went to the library today. It's a shame that the word library never caught on as a verb like Google. "Let's 'library' it" just doesn't sound as good as "Let's 'Google' it". So, in result, the library is now a forgotten option in our search for information. In Atlanta, Margaret Mitchell was the last person to hold a library card, so it seems, and the rarest book to be found is a first edition of The Hardy Boys "The Tower Treasure".

Ok, I was kidding about the Hardy Boys. I went to the library to look up some county tax/neighborhood/ownership records. Information overload. And I'm an information geek. I found the original hard copy proposal for a mass transit system in Atlanta and the metro area. It was from 1961, very futuristic and well done. Safe to say what we have now for a transit system is a far, far cry from what was originally proposed. If only they had Google back then. So it goes.

Greetings from England

Working hard at the 60th annual Motocross of Nations in Winchester, England.