The American Dream....or is it?

For roughly 65% of Americans, owning a home means you've realized the American Dream.  Everyone has a vision of living on that picturesque tree-lined street with quaint homes and neatly manicured lawns.  That's what my generation, at least, was taught to aspire to, and there's nothing at all wrong with that.  If you have a young family (or nowadays grandkids living with you), or have a constant stream of out-of-town friends who come to visit, or if you just want bragging rights among your circle of friends, then by all means enjoy your American Dream home.

But frankly, home ownership isn't what it used to be. Things change, people change, and circumstances change. We were told owning a home brought with it huge tax benefits, and it still does....for about a third of us.  Sixty five percent of us own homes, and of those, half either have mortgages with so little balance left (or no mortgage at all) they miss out on the tax break. 

Many people naively think when they get their house paid for they'll be living virtually free.  Hardly!  In my area just the property taxes and homeowners insurance can easily be $1,000 a month on a middle class home.  Speaking of....yes, you can make a handsome profit due to appreciation, at least on paper, but the tax collector wants his money RIGHT NOW!  Rapidly increasing taxes are forcing some homeowners out of the homes they've lived in for decades.

Then there are the maintenance and repair costs.  Yikes!  Here in North Texas we used to have one damaging hail storm every seven years, on average.  Now we're having them yearly, including one just last night that will keep insurance adjusters and roofers busy for the next year.  Homes still need painting, and HVAC systems and water heaters and appliances still need to be repaired/replaced.  Carpets need to be cleaned and/or replaced, too, and wood floors need refinishing.  

And of course there's the lawn maintenance.  *cringe*  And here in termite country, those little bastards will eat your house out from under you if you don't stay ahead of 'em.  Oh, and "updating".  Remember that old fuzzy wallpaper?  Ewww.  Even if those old harvest gold appliances still work, they went out of style back in the Nixon administration.  Get out your wallet.

Even though my credit is primo and the banks say I can easily qualify for a modest home loan, I'm just not feeling it.  Years ago we parked ourselves in a nice apartment while I looked for a small lot to build a new home on.  It didn't take long to realize renting was actually, for me/us, a good alternative to owning.  I've had good neighbors (an OB/GYN, a respiratory therapist, a Realtor, etc), my car is in a secure, gated, concrete parking garage and safe from the weather (hail), and the mechanical units are somebody else's maintenance problem.  And every few years when a newer, nicer community opens up, I'm free to move.  

True, my rent goes up a bit yearly, but no more than my taxes would go up if I owned.  I feel no need to build a home to accommodate my furniture (I have no family heirlooms), I don't need a 3rd or 4th or 5th bedroom, and I jettisoned my ego years ago.  

There will always be quality builders and Realtors to cater to the 65% who want to be homeowners, but there's a lot to be said for nice upscale apartments, too.  The empty nester, downsized lifestyle is actually pretty sweet.   :)

S

The Age of Outrageous

There have always been people who acted, dressed, and behaved somewhere outside the mainstream, but they were usually mocked, laughed at even, and not taken seriously.  Just in my lifetime, however, I've seen this attitude change dramatically.  Time doesn't stand still.

While the early rock 'n roller's music was...ahh...different, they still looked pretty "normal" with their suits and ties.  Baby steps.

But then came the rebellious '60 's and the hippies and Woodstock an all the rest.  Long stringy hair was in, along with tye-died shirts and sandals (if not bare feet).  Grunge was in, to the shock of The Establishment.  And it wasn't just a few who joined the movement, but kids by the MILLIONS became the "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll" generation.

At about that same time outspokenness, for better or worse, arrived on Main Street.  Archie Bunker laid all his prejudices out for us on All In The Family, and the battle lines were drawn.  Some loved Archie, while others were repulsed.

By the 1970's, the more outlandish the better.  That's how you made a name for yourself, that's how you stood out in a crowd, and life was now all about "standing out".  Kids wanted more than ever to be like KISS or other shock groups of the time.  Outrageous became cool.

  Today we have the social media phenomenon.  True, we now know what all our friends had for lunch, and everyone loves the cute photo of me and my dog I just posted, but it also gave sicko's a stage to shock us with their outrageous-ness.  A couple of misfit kids in Colorado shot up their school and became folk-heroes to many other kids, who in turn shot up their schools in Connecticut, Florida, Texas, and    ?_,  copy-cat style.  

A terrorist mows down a hundred innocent people on a street in France, and before long a copycat does the same thing in NYC.

Now we have a President who just makes up stuff on the fly and Tweets about it at 4 AM to his adoring base, and they all but foam at the mouth.  "If it's on the internet, it must be true!"  

Now conservative Roseanne Barr can call a black woman the offspring of an ape, and liberal Samantha Bee can return the insult by referring to Ivanka Trump on live (cable) TV as a "cunt".  REALLY?

To me the take away on all this is that the more outrageous you are, the more attention you bring to yourself, and that apparently makes it all OK.  That isn't necessarily bad.  I liked Elvis and Janis Joplin, Steve Jobs and even that Gates guy.  Many brilliant people who did good things were often unconventional looking (Albert Einstein) and acting (Robin Williams).  But too often people are using their individuality and outrageous-ness to hurt and insult and destroy.  If we some day crash and burn, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.  Lets not encourage and enable those who are destroying us.  There's nothing cool about hurting and insulting and destroying.

S

So now do you feel old? Well, do you...punk?

My friend Frank recently posted on his Facebook page this photo of TV's MASH characters Cpl Maxwell Klinger, now 83, and Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, now 80.  (The title is a nod to 87-year-old Clint Eastwood if you didn't catch it.)

And if you're curious, Marilyn Monroe would have recently turned 92, Neil Armstrong would have been 88, Elvis would have been 83, Sophia Loren is 83, and youngsters Raquel Welch and Roger Staubach are 77 and 76 respectively.  Yikes!  And to add insult to injury, this year will mark the 50th anniversary of me being honorably discharged from high school.  These are things you don't really think much about, until you think about them.  Then it's like, "Sumbitch, where has the time gone?"

This is not meant to be a downer post.  Just the opposite.  I've seen some pretty amazing things that Generation XYZer's might have only heard about on Twitter, maybe.  I DON'T envy them at all.

Now consider this:  The average American today lives to be 78.7 years old, which has dropped recently and is below the 80.3 year average of other OECD advanced nations.  Some of that is due, they say, to poor lifestyle choices, and some due to lack of adequate healthcare.  Regardless, all of us are one day closer to kicking off today than we were yesterday. 

All the recent prescription drugs that are advertised on TV got me to thinking.  One is a treatment for those who have non-small-cell cancer that has spread.  It says Optivolumovoriousoptomoline (marketed as YippieJuice*) can "give you a chance to live longer".  That concept, "living longer", baffles me. Why does everyone want to "live longer"?  Is that some great virtue?  Why would you want to squeeze out a couple of more months/years of feeling like crap?  Just to prolong the inevitable?

We seem to put way too much time and effort in trying to hold on.  Just think of Max, Hot Lips, Marilyn, Elvis, Sophia, and all the rest of your childhood icons as forever young.  Then just live right, be kind, help those you can, hurt no one, and go on about your business.  What's gonna happen is gonna happen. ;)

S

* Now don't go running to your pharmacy asking for some YippieJuice.  I might have just made that name up.

Very prophetic

Last Thursday when I opened my morning email I found this in my inbox:

It wasn't an hour later when we first began to hear the news of yet another mass school shooting, this one in Santa Fe, TX that so far has claimed 10 innocent lives.  The NRA (which I am not a member of) has for a while now been advocating for at least some classroom teachers to be armed.   As you might imagine this has been met with much resistance from those who claim teachers are trained to teach, not to be armed security.  I, too, have had some reservations....until now.  Now I'm reluctantly on board with the idea. 

One of the main lessons learned from the Columbine school shooting back in1999 is that shooters must be confronted immediately.  Back then it took SWAT one hour and 50 minutes to muster, brief, and finally enter the school.  The killing was long since over before they got inside.  Speed of confrontation saves lives, and that has been the standard police response ever since....the first cop on the scene enters and engages.

I think back to the Dark Ages and the high school I attended.  As I recall we had five buildings on campus plus two parking lots, spread out over quite a few acres.  Today, due to budgetary constraints, there is probably just one School Resource Officer (SRO) patrolling that same campus.  What are the odds of that one officer being in the right building, on the right floor, at the right time, able to respond immediately to a shooter?  Now imagine how much better the odds would be if there were five armed, trained teachers or administrators scattered around the campus, plus that one SRO, available to respond?  With speed being of the essence, this could save lives!

Of course the key to this is making sure those adults on campus who volunteered were themselves thoroughly vetted and trained.  And not just trained once, but subjected to ongoing training until their response becomes automatic.  This muscle memory is essential as (so I've been told) when the shooting starts, people suddenly exhibit the IQ of a gerbil.  It would be a hefty responsibility these volunteers would take on, and there are serious coordination and liability issues that would need to be worked out, but again, it could save lives!

My state has allowed school districts to permit teacher carry for some time now, but so far I've heard of only a few rural districts who have done so, mainly because they know police response would take too long to do any good.  I think this is an idea that, sadly, should be strongly considered by every district.  Laws can be passed that restrict this or that, and they might be effective, but confronting shooters will definitely save lives.  We can't afford to just sit here and talk about it ad infinitium.  We need action.

I'm S, and I approved this message.

British and European Car Show 2018

Visitors to today's British and European Car Show were greeted at the gate by Sir Winston and his nicely turned out Triumph TR3.

 

The day was gorgeous, the sun was hot, and the crowd was lovin' it.

I wasn't there when the awards were announced, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this beautiful Triumph took home a top award.

 

This nice Morris Minor caught my eye.  I think it should have received more looks than it did.

 

Another of my favorites from the past was back again...a Saab Sonnet.  Tougher 'n a nail, and slower 'n a snail.

                                            

I'm always a sucker for an Isetta micro-car.  This one was nice, and colorful, too.

I have no idea how this Tuk Tuk qualifies as British, or European, or even a car for that matter, but I guess it was too unique to turn away.

But for my money, this Triumph GT6 is the one I'd like to have taken home.  It was a good day....the 2018 British and European Car Show.

More construction stuff...

It rained yesterday so Jax and I didn't get to walk around the big construction site, but today we were back in stride.  Here is what has happened since Tuesday:

All the scaffolding is in place and now the big crane (I reeeeeeally wanna drive it!) is moving these concrete form panels into place.  I earlier thought they would be steel, but it appears they are lumber and plywood.  They will eventually all be tied together and leveled, rebar steel will be installed on top, then concrete will be poured.  That concrete will form the floor of the second level.  Then they start all over again...taller column extensions, more scaffolding, more concrete form panels, more steel....

S

Pretty cool construction stuff....

I've been enjoying walking Jax around our neighborhood lake where I can get an up close and personal view of the construction site just feet away.

This is what the final product will eventually look like

To date they have these foundation columns in place.  They are setting up what looks like heavy scaffolding, which will hold up horizontal steel panels that a layer of steel reinforced concrete can be poured on top of.  When that concrete hardens (cures) they will take the scaffolding down, add on to the columns to make them another story taller, then reinstall the scaffolding for another layer of concrete, over and over, higher and higher, until the owner runs out of money.

Have you ever noticed these beautiful man-made "water features" inside many new developments?  I'll bet you thought it was so nice of the developers to go to such great lengths to beautify their projects, didn't you?  You would be wrong.

Here's what they're really for:  They're storm water retention ponds.  This is what they look like drained ^ .  In flat land like we have here, with everything paved over (parking lots, streets, buildings, etc), there is no place for rainwater to soak in.  Therefore developers dig these big "ponds" lined with decorative stone walls, then empty all the surrounding storm water collection drains into them.  That's what that big pipe just below wall height in the far right/center of the picture is. (There are several more you can't see also dumping water in.)  From here the water will drain into a larger city drain, then a creek, then a larger river, and eventually out to somewhere far, far away you'll never see.

They're currently draining our beloved neighborhood "lake" so they can install new storm water pipes into it to drain the new building site.  These look to be about 4' in diameter.  This is pretty heavy duty civil engineering stuff.

The bottom line is this:  developers don't do anything out of the kindness of their hearts.  Everything they do makes them money or they don't do it.  No "water feature" (storm water retention pond), no pretty landscaping, no zoning approval, no building permit, no payday.  Now you know.

S