Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Snotsville

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What do you get when you combine a tree pollen count of, like, 80-quadzillion and combine it with a weekend soccer tournament that requires sitting at Sara Lee Park for something like 15 hours in 90 degree heat?  A really hot, sunburned and smelly middle aged guy who can't breathe.  Welcome to my hell, otherwise known as "Snotsville".

Oh, BTW Erin was a guest player for one of her club's sister teams (there are three U-15 girls "Challenge" teams in her club) and they came in second in the U-18 bracket of the Beat the Heat tournament. Okay, there were only three teams in the bracket so they played the other two teams twice, but one of the teams was a very strong U-18 team from West Virginia (they won all four of their games) and our girls managed to hang with them for three out of four halves of soccer that they played.  The other team was a strong U-15 team from Statesville that's given all of our club's U-15 team fits for the last couple of years and our girls managed to win both those games.  Four games in two days in 90+ degree heat is no easy thing and the girls did so and managed to play some great soccer in the process.  I enjoyed watching it despite my massive mucus problems.

Go West!

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West Forsyth High School's girls varsity soccer team, currently ranked 14th in North Carolina, was profiled in the Winston-Salem Journal today.  My daughter plays for the JV team and some of her friends are the freshmen varsity starters that are mentioned in the article.  She already realizes that she's going to have to work very hard to crack the varsity lineup next year, but knowing her she won't shrink from the challenge and if she makes it the reward will be that much greater.

In One Word

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The Sunlight Foundation has released a funny yet meaningless report about CongressCritters' favorite words.  Their Capitol Words project takes speeches recorded in the Congressional Record to calculate the frequency of specific words used by each member of Congress.  When I clicked on North Carolina on their interactive map I found out the following:

  • Over the last year (April 22, 2008 – April 21, 2009) Rep. Virginia Foxx was the biggest chatter box from NC.  She uttered 6,021 words.  Sen. Richard Burr came in second with 3,083 so you can see that Rep. Foxx took the talking title by a mile.  
  • Rep. Foxx's favorite word was "democrats" which she uttered 428 times, followed by "energy" at 373 times, "country" at 316 times and "oil" at 229 times. 
  • Sen. Kay Hagan apparently lost her voice with each only uttering 242 words over the last year.  Well, since she's only been there since January I guess we can cut her some slack.  Or maybe she's just a "walk softly and carry a big stick" kind of gal.

H/T to Ed Cone for the link. 

How’s That Recession Treating You?

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Truliant Federal Credit Union surveyed its members to see how the recession has affected their behavior and over 3,000 shared their thoughts. Some of the results are highlighted in this press release.  Anyone who's seen all the restaurants shuttered recently won't be surprised by this one:

Q: If you have cut back on spending, what areas are most affected? 

73% – Dining Out 
70% – Entertainment 
64% – Travel, vacations 
59% – Clothing 
55% – Home Electronics 
45% – Auto (buying/leasing a new vehicle, repairs) 
35% – Home Appliances 
22% – Cell Phones and/or calling plans 
5% – Other 

From the “other” category, popular items that were mentioned include groceries, medications, food and club memberships. Another trend that the “other” category highlighted is that more of Truliant’s member-owners are starting to purchase generic products to help them save money.

Walking the Tightrope With No Safety Net

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Ed Cone points to an article on the front page of the Washington Post that highlights the dire straits that many (25%) of North Carolinians are in with health care.  Literally 1/4 of all adult North Carolinians, or 1.8 million people, are living without health insurance and an additional 9% are underinsured. 

On a related note one of the doctor's from Lewisville Family Physicians wrote a Letter to the Editor at the Winston-Salem Journal pointing out that the terms "health insurance", "health-care coverage" and "health care" are incorrectly used interchangeably.  He says that instead of looking for health care reform we should be looking for health insurance reform.  From his letter:

Health insurance has become exorbitantly expensive. Insurance companies continue to raise premiums while at the same time reducing benefits. They can do this with impunity because they know that policy holders have no other choice but to pay what they demand, or choose to go without coverage. They also refuse to increase payments for services, continuing to pocket the growing difference. More and more people are taking the gamble and choosing to go without coverage.

I can tell you from our family's perspective it's hard to argue with him.  When we're spending over $8,000 a year on premiums alone, and we're doing pretty well compared to other families we've talked to, then you know there's something out of whack with the system.  It's also easy to understand how so many people end up having to live without insurance in the first place.  

Local Shopping: Burn Barrels

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I have lots of yard waste.  In fact after getting our new septic field installed I think I literally have a ton of torn down bushes and small trees that I need to get rid of.  Last weekend I had the kids help me move them to the small wooded area behind our house, but I'm not happy with it because I think I have a rather large brush fire in the making if we get a dry, hot summer.  Thankfully there's a solution at hand.

Last week my buddy Fig told me he'd purchased a burn barrel for $10 from Shouse's near the corner of Yadkinville and Reynolda Roads.  "A burn barrel!" I thought.  I don't have space to do an open burn of my big pile of stuff, but I figured I could burn a little every night in a barrel.  Yesterday when I was out in that neck of the woods I stopped by Shouse's to see if they had any more barrels.  Lucky for me they'd just gotten some barrels that had been used to ship molasses, so they used the biggest can opener I've ever seen to cut the top off and loaded the now open barrel in the back of the minivan for me.  Since the inside of the barrel still had some molasses coating it our old minivan smells pretty darn nice right now, and I assume that the first couple of burns are going to make our yard smell like a molasses cookie factory.

Here's Shouse's location via Google Maps:

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Our Friends to the East Get Their Own American Viticulture Area

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Most of us in the Winston-Salem area know about the burgeoning wine business in the Yadkin Valley.  Heck, Westbend Vineyards, one of the oldest wineries in the state is just down the road from me in Lewisville.  Well there's now a new official American Viticulture Area to our east in the Haw River Valley.  Here's a press release about the announcement and here's a link to the Haw River Wine Trail brochure.  Looks like there's an event called Art on the Haw River on May 2-3 that could be interesting too.

Have Your Say in the $3 Trillion Spending Spree

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The Boston Globe has an interview with Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel that is overseeing the bailout of America's financial system (thanks to Lex for the pointer).  It's a pretty quick read and if you're at all interested in what's going on with your trillions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the financial muckety-mucks then I suggest you read it.  Here's the end of the interview, which I think gives you an idea of the stakes:

Q: Is there anything else that you would want people to understand?
A: I don't have a badge and a gun. The power of this panel is derived entirely from the voice of the American people. If they stay out of the policy debates, then Treasury can spend at will and reshape the American economy with no one in the room but insiders. If they are involved, the policies will look different.
It's the design of the rules going forward that will tell us or that will determine whether we are moving to a cyclical economy with high wealth, high risk, and crashes every 10 to 15 years. Or whether we will emerge, as we did following the new regulatory reforms in the Great Depression, with a more stable economic system that benefits people across the economic spectrum. It's an amazing moment in history.