Constant Conservative

Our small town’s annual tractor pull is today. The wife and I were able to manage the 300-yard walk from our house with all the little ones in tow. As much as this is an event about internal combustion and power and noise–it is also a surprisingly green event.

There are usually Olivers (dark green) and John Deeres (you know what green that is) at this event–and this year is no exception. Of course, there are also a number of Allis-Chalmers, Minneapolis-Molines, Cockshutts, and McCormick Farmalls. Some of the tractors are beautifully restored–and some of them will simply be going home and back to work later today.

We left before the massively modified (read: environmentally heavy) tractors started. I’m sure I’ll hear the sound of it from here and may head back over, sans offspring, for a bit of the high-decibel battle. Once the track has really been torn up, a number of enterprising individuals will start pulling with their trucks–which often leads to equipment failures.

If you’ve never enjoyed a tractor pull, here are the basics. There is a sled which is essentially a special trailer and whole lot of weight on it and a large skid plate beneath the forward portion of the trailer. The tractor hooks on to the front of this sled and starts pulling. As the sled moves forward, hydraulics are used to move the weight forward of the rear axle and toward the skid plate. The bottom line is that the more distance covered equals greater downward pressure from the skid plate and more work for the tractor. Once the tractor can pull no further (or the end of the track is reached), the trailer is driven back to the start of the track for the next puller.

Here’s an image of one of today’s pullers in action.

As you can see, it is a beautiful summer day. May your day be as enjoyable as ours, wherever you may find yourself.

Back in the dark ages, my parents moved the family into an Amish rental for 6 months while they searched for the perfect 100-acre farm. We became good friends with the family who lived across the yard from us and spent many interesting Sundays together. During those Sunday affairs, my father and Mr. Stoltzfus would regularly compare notes on the sermons which each had heard that morning.

It was not until we were no longer living there that we found out Mr. Stolzfus had often been the pastor who gave the sermon which he and my father discussed. He thought that telling us he was the one who had preached the sermon would be a mark of pride and therefore sinful.

I mention this story because it came to mind when I read the following:

Is it too soon to name a road after President Barack Obama? A new road being built through Orlando will have his name.

Roads in Orlando honor some of our greatest presidents, from Washington to Jefferson and now Obama.

On Friday, Orlando leaders made President Barack Obama Parkway the first road under construction in the nation named after our 44th president, and surely one of the few in history to be named after a sitting president in his first term.

I’ve a pretty good idea what Mr. Stolzfus would think of this. I’m absolutely certain that I know my own thoughts on the matter.

I’m reminded of this from time to time, but finally decided to say something about it. How many people have you seen driving about the city with a pet, usually a dog, sitting/standing on the driver’s lap? Do these pet owners not have concern for the safety of their animals that they let them remain in a position where the poor animals can be compressed between the airbag and and the face of the driver should something happen?

Most people understand the benefit of using seatbelts. I would think that if the seatbelt laws were repealed (not a bad thing, in my opinion) most people would continue to wear them and benefit from them. Why do the aforementioned pet owners not consider that an unrestrained animal in the driver’s lap is not only a risk to the pet, but also to the driver?

Please do not tell me that drivers are unaffected by Bittums bouncing about, in and out of the driver’s side window and all over the lap and seat of the driver while the driver is trying to keep it between the lines. And yes, before someone turns his or her ankle-biter loose on me, I do realize that not all vehicle borne pets are so poorly controlled.

We’ve had a recent movement on the part of the South Dakota legislature to prevent people from using mobile devices for certain things while driving. This misguided attempt to protect us from ourselves met with the defeat which was warranted. Do you not think that a living animal in the lap of the driver has a much greater potential for distraction than an inanimate electronic device?

I am not calling for a law to prevent people from driving with pets on board–but I am asking that those who do so consider more than the enjoyment you (and your pets) may receive from so doing.

I had the opportunity last night to be at Jon Lauck’s book signing for Prairie Republic, his new work on the early days of Dakota Territory and its politics. I’ll have a full review up within a week or so, but I would like to say that the preview was interesting and enlightening. We were about 30 or so folks who met in the cozy area on the west end of Zandbroz Variety store in downtown Sioux Falls.

In response to my question about what Jon had found in his research which was most surprising, he replied that it was probably that “God’s Country” had been seriously considered as a name for the Dakotas. And all this time, I was thinking I was the only one who considered it such . . . .

Joking aside, I’m looking forward to reading the book.

A little more than two years ago I mailed two letters via the US Postal service. One of them was mailed on March 8, 2008 and the other on March 15, 2008. Each of the letters was a invoice and corresponding check. Or, in simple terms, I was paying two of my bills.

Those letters never made it to their destinations–even though I used the correct postage, the correct return address and the company-provided window envelopes with the company address showing through the window. As a result of the letters not making it to their destinations, I had to pay late fees on one of the bills (when I got a double bill the following month), pay my financial institution to stop payments on both checks, and wonder if I was about to have a portion of my identity stolen or if I would be dealing with fraudulently cashed checks.

Thankfully, no one stole the mail and cashed the checks or lifted my signature and went on a three-state shopping spree. But, how do I know all of this?

Simple. Both of those letters were returned to me today with a lovely yellow sticker on each of them which says “Return to Sender” “Not Deliverable as Addressed” “Unable to Forward.” The last two statements are demonstrably wrong, but one must suppose that I should be grateful I at last found out what happened.

Here’s the thing, though. While I am happy to know the disposition of my long-lost mail, I am not glad to have received it with absolutely no explanation for where it has (or has not) been for these last 26 months? Did it ever make it out of the mail sorting facility in Sioux Falls? One would think that it probably did not–though the postage was rollmarked at that facility.

Ahh. One should not be unhappy with getting poor customer service from a quasi-government entity, right? Right. After all, government entities/agencies are not in business to make the customers happy. They are in business because they have a monopoly on some particular product or service and I must use them–regardless of what kind of customer service I might desire.

That’s something that more of us might be benefited by considering.

Update

It seems as though I’ve received some mail which was stolen (given this story). The article says that the thief has paid some $2600 in restitution, but that seems awfully small considering that his theft resulted in almost $50 in fees and penalties for me with regard to two pieces of mail. And, it would have been nice if the returned mail had indicated the real reason I was receiving it–and not the misleading information noted above.

Today was beautiful–on the prairies of South Dakota. Little to no wind, (at least the part in which I found myself) temperature in the low 60s, largely sun-drenched. Since we as humans are emotionally attached to the weather, many of us found today to be encouraging for that very reason.

Meanwhile, Poland mourns the deaths of its president and a number of other members of the government as well as spouses and citizens. The irony of so many dying while trying to make it to the memorial of so many who died is not lost on any. I know not the weather in Poland today, but I doubt it was enough to offset the news.

In West Virginia, the news that many had been dreading finally arrived. The last of the missing miners were located, but not alive. Again, I do not know the weather there, but I think that few cared.

Why am I thinking so much about the weather? Well, it is something that we all complain about. Oh yes, there is always the “if you don’t like it, give it a few minutes and it will change” aspect to cheer us. The thing is that we complain regularly about something which is very rarely truly dangerous; we almost always know well in advance what will be happening, yet we expend so much energy on trying to make something which is into something which it is not. In short, we waste our energy as surely as if we were electrons running to ground.

The tragedy near Katyn and the other one at Montcoal are far beyond what most of us have had to deal with personally. We should mourn with those who mourn. One of the lessons we ought to learn from such mourning is that we’ve, most of us, great cause for rejoicing.

This is not to say that there are not things which need changing, things that are wrong which need to be righted. This is not to say that every complaint is misdirected and valueless–rather that we (like small children) cry too often and too much over things which mean little.

No politics today. I actually spent a bit of time out of doors. It was quite pleasant. However, between some outside work (which needed to be done) and some inside work which also needed to be done (and an early morning meeting), I didn’t even get around to reading the news today. I’ll trust that the world has not stopped spinning–yet–and will catch up with you all on Monday.

Have a Blessed Easter.

Just to let you all know that Constant Conservative may now be found on Twitter and Facebook. I’m working on the putting some icons over in one of the columns to the right, but figured I’d put out a post to make sure all of my regular readers (especially those of you coming in via RSS) know what going on.

We’ve been on Twitter for a while–and I do tweet about material which is not published on Constant Conservative–so it is not completely redundant with the posts shown here. However, Facebook is a completely new thing. Not crazy about it yet, but–as was explained to me by one of my regular readers–Facebook is where the eyes are, so it makes sense to get in front of them. Posts from here will get linked via the Facebook page, but we’ll also have some new content which will be created by the collision of ideas as other Facebook users engage in conversations around the principles of liberty, freedom and constant conservatism.

See you there.

Like many studies, this one seems to have been a waste of time (seeing that it only confirms what most people already know):

Teens and pre-teens have access to practically any movies, DVDs, music or video games despite industry ratings and warning labels, according to a University of South Dakota study.

Years ago, when I was much younger (and we had no iPods and no internet) we had easy access to all the stuff we were not supposed to have access to. I’ve a feeling that we could go back to my parents’ and grandparents’ day and find the same to be true for the prohibited materials for their generations also.

I will admit that “easy” is easier than ever, with the advent of the digital age. The bottom line is that self-control, which may be defined as keeping the rules when adults aren’t there to ensure strict conformity, is not something for which children are known. Increasingly, adults are not known for it either.

“We found that parents couldn’t rely much on (industry) safeguards,” he said. “The challenge is how to keep children and teenagers away from inappropriate information.”

The USD findings become even more disturbing in light of a recent Kaiser Family Foundation study, Spurlin said. The Kaiser study found the average young American spends practically every waking minute, except for time in school, using or interacting with electronic media.

Though my wife and I are by no means perfect (just ask either of us) we have made a conscious and concerted effort to limit the amount of interaction with electronic media which our children have in a given time period. We do not do this because such interaction is necessarily bad, in and of itself, but because it replaces other (more healthy) interactions with human beings and old fashioned media such as books.

Spurlin wants to continue more research if funding becomes available. She hopes the USD study creates more awareness around the nation. She noted a new trend with the introduction of “naughty” video games.

“What might be interesting, (to see if) the ratings board really tried to do anything more in terms of self-regulating things,” she said. “The industry says it’s regulating themselves, but it doesn’t appear to be working.”

In the end, parents need to do their job, Garry said.

Here’s the thing, most of the folks who are creating games, movies, music, etc are not terribly interested in preventing people from playing, watching or hearing their products. In fact, they are strongly motivated to the exact opposite. Like good capitalists the world round, they wish to make money on their investments–and they do so by selling the same product to hundreds–thousands–millions of customers. While some marketers might give lip service to the idea that younger consumers should wait until they are older for certain products, most simply do not care–or even explicitly market their material to those who should arguably not be using it.

Yeah, I’m an old fuddy duddy (or whatever the corresponding term is today). I admit–I’m a parent who believes that I am doing right by my children by keeping them children until they are physically, emotionally and spiritually mature enough to be adults.

Does this mean I’m in favor of new laws and regulations regarding children and media? Not really. You can see where things are now and understand how well that is working. Such laws, unless supported by a majority of poeple within a culture, tend to be stepped upon with regularity and impunity. The last thing we need are more laws to ignore.

I am in favor of “parents … do[ing] their job.” Good choices begin at home.

Any year that we reach the end of is a good year, eh? While this year has had its share of disappointments and failures, the events of the last 12 months have provided many of this country’s citizens with a needful education. I know my education is continuing.

Anyway, moving on the good part: [lifts virtual glass of carbonated grape juice] Here’s to a less exciting, yet fruitful and blessed New Year. [drinks virtually]

Middle Border Sun (AKA Todd Epp) has the poll. Don’t worry, as Todd notes, the winners will get only “The satisfaction of knowing they are beloved.”

Interesting choice of words, “beloved” and not “loved.” Hmm.

Anyway, please vote for Constant Conservative if you honestly appreciate this site. Thank you.

I was reminded of the following at service last Sunday:

Matthew Henry, famous Presbyterian minister in the British Isles three centuries ago, got mugged and robbed. That night he recorded this prayer of thanksgiving in his journal: “I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.”

As homage to one who had a remarkable capacity to see things from a divine perspective, I offer this weak reflection of the same in light of the health care reform shenanigans.

“I thank You that I have been able to select my own doctors until this time of my life; second, because though my government wishes to take more of my money than ever before for the improbable benefit which it will bring to others, it is unlikely that it will take my life outright; third, because although they may take everything which I have, they cannot take my soul; and fourth, because it is I who am being wronged, and not I who am wronging another.”