NANCE COUNTY DISTRICT 12, BIG CUT

The day before I started kindergarten, the building blew up. They had just remodeled Big Cut, District 12, and the soft copper that connected the tank to the basement leaked (that's why they now have laws and regulations about that), the propane is heavier than air and deposited a layer in the basement. When the water well pump kicked on, the spark ignited it and kablooie.

So we (there were four of us that year) started in one of the abandoned houses that would become even more numerous in the 1950's as people failed at farming and moved to California or Oregon. Think about that one for a moment--California and the left coast are populated to some degree by the failures from the Midwest in the 1930's and on.

Off topic, sorry. That was the last time I had a classmate until the 8th grade when Tom moved in. Tom's family had a set of values that were not well-accepted by society. His older brothers were in prison and the last I heard, if I were to have an 8th grade reunion, it would be in the Michigan penitentiary.

Big Cut was named for an excavation the Union Pacific railroad made through a loess bluff near the school and near our farm. The family story is that my great grandfather, Samuel Peterson, bought an additional farm after he and his team of oxen proved better and more productive than the horse-drawn equipment. Workin' for the man.

I have no idea how much it cost to run that school, but I do know that there were many highly productive citizens who were pupils there. The smart kid in our high school graduating class was a National Merit scholar (there were two alternates as well that year out of the 17 graduates) was a product of another Nance County country school, the Skeedee if I remember correctly. About 10 years ago, living in Kansas City, I investigated the economics of that horrible school district and found that they were spending about $18,000 per pupil per year, not counting any expenses for facilities. Give me $18,000 per pupil, 15 pupils (about what we averaged) and I will give you a high-quality education, facilities included.

Kansas City had more administrators and special ed personnel than classroom teachers. At that time they were being run by the state under orders from the court, a fairly constant state of affairs since the court took over in the 1980's.

I have never understood the whole hair-on-fire urge to consolidate. Read a recent article about the high-performing schools in Nebraska, and most of them were the small town schools. Wonder if anybody looks at results? My view is probably not acceptable, though.

UPDATE, AUGUST 2020: I never quite felt that my date of 1950 was correct about the school blowing up and our attending school in the abandoned house, but a school mate corrected me--it was August of 1952.

The brain, even when we see and hear things first hand, is sometimes not accurate. Careful, folks.

JOE POS AND BEING A DAD

I don't know how I missed this the first time, but Joe Posnanski reposted an essay, Katie the Prefect from five years ago.

http://joeposnanski.com/katie-the-prefect-revisited/

He is not only a terrific writer, but a wonderful dad.

THE PRESIDENT AND THE CONSTITUTION

A few days ago, I saw a liberal poster on Facebook ranting about Conservatives. What, she said, do Conservatives conserve? They eat meat, so they are destroyers of living things; they are evil industrialists so they don't conserve clean air; and on and on.

Not once did the post mention preservation of the Constitution. If you are a Republican and if you are a Conservative, you should share in a small way the obligation placed on the President--to uphold and preserve the Constitution.

The oath of office is very specific, and it doesn't say that the President should serve the People, although that is a worthy goal and often cited by Presidents. No, the oath says:

 "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

It is the only oath of office specified in the Constitution. It was deemed to be important.

So, what do we have today? I'm going to let others determine the way the Constitution has been treated by our current President, and others can predict the way the other Democratic candidates might uphold that oath. Let's, instead, talk about the leading Republican candidate.

Sorry, I might vote for him, but Donald Trump is not someone that I would like to see "preserving, protecting and defending" the Constitution. I agree with William Kristol (and owe any clarity in this post, if there is any, to him) in his recent essay. The rest of the Republican candidates are, in my mind, completely worthy and able to take that oath and act responsibly on it.

I am just not a progressive, I guess. The Constitution is important to me and I think it is important to future generations. I deplore the lack of respect it has been given recently.

IT'S A WONDER WE SURVIVED

With all the hysterical talk on the Weather Channel about the impending snow storm, and no doubt it is going to be disruptive and dangerous, it made me remember an event from my teenage years. Certainly nobody was hysterical about storms like this when they hit the sparsely populated Great Plains...which they did with some regularity.

The temperature was in the 20-below range which prevents propane from vaporizing, or at least vaporizing properly. The cattle and horses could withstand low temperatures under these conditions: they were not wet, they were properly hydrated. They naturally migrated to places where they were out of the wind.

"Once it gets below zero, there's no difference how cold it is," said NO ONE who has experienced thirty below! It is different in so many ways beyond creature comfort--machines don't work or they break and the water tanks freeze over just as fast as you chop the ice out of them.

Only my brother and I were home, my guess is that I was 13 and he was 18, and we had been trying to round up the livestock and get them close to buildings and wind breaks, but there was snow and the terrible cold, and we only had one heated water tank. The propane burner would not stay lit as the flow was too weak.

The bulk propane tank held probably 1,000 gallons and was located near the main driveway to facilitate replenishment with a bob-tail since it would have been a mess for them to be required to go into the cattle lots with a truck. That meant the gas had to travel perhaps 75 yards to the burner.
Add that to the temperature and lack of vaporization, and we were looking at problems because there would be a subsequent result when the water pipes froze if the flow stopped.

The only solution we could come up with was to encourage a more rapid rate of vaporization, and that required the propane to get warmer. The only way we could figure out to heat up the propane tank was to light a fire under it. So we did. We took two (as I remember) "hog pans" that are round and maybe three inches deep, set them under the propane tank, dropped a 1" to 2" layer of diesel fuel and lit it off. Don't try this at home, boys and girls.

When our dad, Wallie, got home, one of his first questions was "How did the propane tank turn black?" I don't think he was pleased, but the fact that none of the livestock were lost was a good thing.

Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith

Jada Pinkett-Smith, along with others including Spike Lee, are on a rampage about the lack of African-Americans nominated for Oscars.

Wow, I thought that was based on merit.

The video of her (Jada's) rant shows an elephant tusk in the background. Then another. Not that I was ever going to see a movie that she or her husband were in, but the fact that she has pieces of ivory from elephants pretty much strikes her off my list.

Wonder what PETA thinks of that?

TESLA, Third time

TESLA FOR THE THIRD TIME

First, September 2014, second August 2015 and now, January 2016. Although I write about the past a lot, this is the only longitudinal series.

Today, January 13, 2016, the stock of Tesla is about $210 per share, again pretty volatile but with a total market value of nearly $28 billion. 

It is hanging in there, the bubble has still not burst. But we will keep track. General Motors still has a bit of an edge in total market value (market cap) at $48 billion. 

We will continue to keep track.

TESLA REDUX

The post below was written 11 months ago. I don't think it was ever posted, which is no surprise as I write a lot of stuff that never sees the light of day...fortunately!! But the date was September 4, 2014 and the observations were made below. Just wanted to update.

The stock was at $290 and the sky was the limit. By April, the stock dropped to $180; yesterday it was $270 and this morning it is opening in the $240 range, or down 10% plus. That’s volatility.

The previous article pointed out the small production and it is still a problem as 2015 was the year that they would achieve a pace of 100,000 units per year. Well, folks, it ain’t gonna happen—they changed “guidance” by -15% and still think 100,000 is going to happen…next year.

Meanwhile, the company loses $16,000 per car, up from a loss of $11,000 per car last December. The $2.3 billion raised in the market last year is essentially gone, burned up.

Are we starting to see a trend here? It is still valued at $34 billion (which is less than Apple, valued at $650 billion) but I can’t reconcile that with the current GM value of $50 billion.

Is anybody else thinking tulip bulbs? Google “tulip bulb craze.”

Soooo, the logical thing to do is short the stock, right? Not so fast, there, Baba Looey. It is already close to being “fully shorted” meaning a lot of short interest which is also dedicated buying interest since the shorts have to be covered eventually. The bigger influence, in my mind, is the power of Wall Street. Don’t discount the ability of the brokers who are going to pick up hundreds of millions when they place the $2 billion or $3 billion in the next financing round.

Let us just sit back and keep track and determine if the markets are, indeed, efficient.

TESLA

I have not been an electric car fan, principally because I think it requires too much government support to make them even marginally competitive in the marketplace. Now, Tesla is getting about $3 billion or more in tax breaks to put a factory in Nevada.

The second reason I don't think electric cars should have a place on the planet involves the ecological damage created by the batteries. The awful ecological disaster in Canada where the raw material is mined has been used by NASA because it resembles a moonscape. The factories where the lithium is processed in China are polluters on a cosmic scale.

But...since the cars run part of the time on batteries (Tesla's are all electric, not hybrid as I understand it), they are "green." Now, the power plants that supply the electricity to power the batteries are deemed to be enemies of the environment by the politicians, but that doesn't appear to matter.

Now, get this:

Excitement over Tesla’s future has caused Wall Street to give this momentum stock a $35 billion market capitalization, versus General Motors’ $55 billion. Tesla sold 39,149 cars through June 30, while GM sold north of 9.7 million vehicles last year alone. Tesla has posted net losses of $581.93 million from January 2012 through June 2014, while GM has posted net income of $13.84 billion over the same period...

Not in this article, but in another it was noted that Mountain View, California saw a lot of Tesla purchases. I guess you can afford one when your house is worth $1 million, $773 per square foot.

DOES COSMO COVER RESULTS GIVE US HOPE?

November's 50th anniversary issue of Cosmopolitan magazine should have been a blockbuster. After all Christmas ads, 50th anniversary, but they were able to yank a defeat from the jaws of victory.

How? By putting the Jenner/Kardashian family on the cover and calling them America's "First Family." Well, I suppose better than the actual, "First Family," but still.

Anyway, sales tanked. About a 20% drop in sales of the magazine, meaning about 100,000 Americans who typically bought the magazine voted with their dollars and said "NO!"

Gives ya hope, don't it?