WE ARE NOT TEACHING OUR YOUNG PEOPLE ENOUGH

WE ARE NOT TEACHING OUR YOUNG PEOPLE ENOUGH

　

When I say we aren’t teaching our young people enough I am not talking about schools or teachers. No, I am talking about you and me. I am talking about parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and employers. You should be teaching the young people around you every day. Teach them everything. Nothing is too trivial and you never know what little thing is going to be valuable to them in the years ahead. Neither can you ever guess what little tidbit is going to spark a young mind and send it in search of more information or a great discovery.

My youth skipped out on me decades ago but my memory is still good enough that I remember some of the many things that my father taught me but I also remember many things that he didn’t teach me. These words are not meant to be criticism of my father. Far from it! My father was a good man and his example gave me priceless knowledge but, like all of us, he didn’t realize the importance of passing on everything he knew. I think I learned most of it as time went by but it would have been an advantage for me if I had known it earlier. If he had explained to me about the various types of saws and how they cut or what makes a syphon work. Or if he had shown me how to figure interest or the ways to save money and make it earn more money. Perhaps he could have taught me how to listen when people talk and how what they didn’t say was often more important than what they said.

Now that I have been a father and an employer I can see that I have failed in the exact same ways that he did. I could have taught the young people in my life so many things but I thought that most of it was unimportant and that they wouldn’t be interested anyhow. From a position of hindsight, I can see how wrong I was. Nothing is truly unimportant. Everything should be passed on and let the recipient decide what is important and what is not. Also consider that if the recipient later decides that something was important after all, they already have the knowledge.

So go ahead, every chance you get explain to some young person what makes moonlight and the various phases of the moon. Show them how to splice a bandsaw blade and how to make a cup of tea. Tell them about the animals you knew when you were growing up and the first cars you rode in. If they show a spark of interest, elaborate on the subject and ask them to tell you their experiences.

Don’t criticize the school or the teachers unless you are doing your part. If I could do it over I would make it a priority to pass on all of the knowledge I possibly could. Every time I learned something new I would pass the knowledge on to a younger person. Unfortunately, I am now at the age where people look at me and automatically assume that I have some degree of senility and this causes them to have some doubt about anything I tell them. The best thing I can do now is direct them to a reliable source and I do that quite often. Whatever it takes to give them the knowledge is worth doing.

KILL IF YOU MUST

At first it only happened at night and the vandalism was rather moderate so I overlooked it. As a matter of fact, I overlooked it too many times. I should have done something about it sooner but he was clever as well as sneaky and increased his destruction bit by bit so as not to trigger my indignation. Also, he skipped from one location to another so often that I sometimes didn’t notice the new vandalism for several days. I would often repair a spot and it would remain undamaged for so long that I would be lulled into thinking he wasn’t going to harass me anymore but then I would discover that he had sneaked in under the cover of darkness and vandalized somewhere else. This continued for months before I admitted to myself that it wasn’t going to stop unless I did something to stop it. But what could I do? I didn’t know what he looked like or where he went to hide from me. After some investigating I thought I had found his hiding place so I very craftily piped engine exhaust into the place and felt sure that I had removed him from my life. Wrong!! He retaliated by making a total mess of part of the flower garden.
Obviously, the battle was on but I was completely stymied. However the vandalism stopped so I had won the battle after all. Wrong again! He had merely moved his attacks to another area and I didn’t see the new vandalism for nearly a week. I went to work repairing the new damage while I pondered what to do next. He definitely knew he had the upper hand and became extremely bold. He began hitting multiple spots at night and even committing his acts of vandalism in broad daylight while I was napping or away from home. Now he had pushed me too far and I was angry. I vowed that I was going to stop him even if I had to kill him.
It was at this point that a neighbor stopped by and, upon seeing the widespread devastation, informed me that I was mistaken about it being a mole. He told me that it was a pocket gopher and he told me what he had been told about trapping pocket gophers. With renewed hope and determination I followed his directions with high hopes of celebrating a victory. Wrong once more! I soon had visions of a pocket gopher thumbing its nose at me as I tried various modifications of my neighbor’s suggestions.
In defeat and dejection I resorted to high tech help for a low tech problem. I went to the internet in search of help with pocket gopher control and found a video that gave detailed instructions for opening a pocket gopher’s burrow and setting a trap. The trap that was used appeared to be quite different than most traps but now my hopes were revived because I had been given a similar trap several years before but hadn’t known how to use it or what its purpose was. Now I had the answers to both questions so I followed the instructions from the video. When I uncovered the opening into the burrow a few hours later I found that the trap had worked perfectly and the pocket gopher had been killed humanely and instantly.
No doubt my grandfather would have been thoroughly disgusted to know that his grandson could be so ignorant that he would have to call for help to deal with such a small problem as a pocket gopher. Would he have resorted to killing? I think the answer would be a definite yes. Would he have had a dog that would dig one out and kill it? I don’t know. I would like to ask him but I can’t.

WHY ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGES DON’T WORK

　
　The Obama administration and Bernanke are preparing for another failed attempt to stimulate the economy by throwing money at it. They would have a good chance of making it work if the government had some money to throw but the government is bankrupt.
Even if we were to go back to ancient times when the U. S. Government was not in debt, the government could not stimulate the economy with money because the only money the government has is what it takes from the citizens. Government does not produce anything or earn any income. The only source of money the government has is the citizens of the nation.
Therefore, when the government offers a stimulus package it does it by taking the money from the citizens and then handing it back to them, wasting a big part of it in the process. It doesn’t take a genius to see why that isn’t going to work. The government can borrow the money but all that does is delay the consequences and put the burden on people who aren’t even born yet. The past stimulus packages have proven that some of the people who receive the stimulus money spend more for a short time while others merely use it to pay off debts or put it away to use later. The economy may get a slight boost in one area but the overall effect is negative because more money is taken than is given.
So what is the answer? The answer is to remove the shackles so business and industry can come home again to American shores. Give business and industry, large and small, more freedom and more incentive to produce. Then they will do what government can’t do and that is produce goods and produce wealth.
Government talks about creating jobs but government can only create jobs by taking money from the citizens to pay for those jobs; another negative result. If government will get out of the way, private enterprise will create the jobs and pay the salaries while, at the same time, providing revenue for the greedy, wasteful government.

PAUL RYAN HAS NOT READ MARTY'S TOWN

Paul Ryan has not read Marty’s Town, the fourth novel by Jim Fuller, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be a great vice president.  It wouldn’t be any help to him to know how to shear sheep or how to tromp wool but he might enjoy reading about how Wesley Taylor reacted when a dead man’s eyes opened and closed.   Or perhaps he would be amused at the way Cindy breaks up a fight between Wesley and her husband.  He might have some tense moments when a crazed man attacks Wes Shearer with a knife during a dark night. These and many other fascinating events can be found all through this enjoyable novel.

IS AMERICAN ENGLISH A LANGUAGE OR AN ENIGMA?

　

I said, "When I get tired of holding the bag I will set it down."

Well, I got tired of holding the bag so I sot it down. No, that isn’t right, I guess I must have setted it down. Wait a minute! The past tense of get is got so why isn’t the past tense of set sot? Okay, the past tense of net is netted so the past tense of set must be setted but my teacher would slap my hand with her ruler because she teached me to do things right. What? You say the past tense of teach is taught? Does that mean that the past tense of reach is raught? Don’t tell that teacher I made these mistakes because she was a moose and I’m afraid of her. Several of my teachers were mooses. Oh, oh, spell checker says mooses is wrong. Oh, sure, plural of goose is geese so the plural of moose must be meese. No? That reminds me, the plural for mouse is mice so if there is more than one house, are they hice? Oh boy, this is making me so tired I would like to go lie down but my mother always told me not to lie. I could go lay down but that moose told me that only hens lay. I guess she meant that they lay eggs but I knew a hen that cackled like she had layed (oops, I meant laid) but she staid on the nest and there wasn’t any egg so she hadn’t laid, she had lied!

Authorjim announces his latest novel

Authorjim announces his latest novel

authorjimat Authorjim's Blog- 2 days ago

The image displayed above shows the poster I designed to announce my new novel. The book went into print only a few days ago and my first shipment has just arrived and I will immediately begin shipping individual copies to readers. I have readers who have ordered copies and sent payment as soon as they knew [...]more »

HOW TO GET YOUR OWN COPYRIGHT AND SAVE MONEY

Yesterday I went on line and got a copyright for my new novel, Millers And Flies, and found the process to be uncomplicated.  I have never done this before so I had to proceed slowly but, even so, it only took me about an hour and I saved at least $30.00.  I began by going to www.copyright.gov  where I chose eCO which means electronic Copyright Office.  From there I followed the step by step process with several side trips to read instructions and information.  I paid the $35.00 fee with my credit card and finished by uploading my manuscript.  It will be a few weeks before I get my certificate but the copyright is effective as of July 10th.  I have paid $100.00 to have a publisher get a copyright and it would be $65.00 if I had done it by mail, besides having to mail a copy of the book to the copyright office.  The process can be more complicated and cost more for other types of projects such as a collection of works or works by multiple authors but for a single, unpublished work it is really quite simple.  One word of caution; be absolutely sure you have done everything exactly the way you want it to be before you take the final step because, once it is submitted, you cannot change it.  You can cancel it and make a new application but your fee will not be refunded.

Windows 7 is insidious and vicious

As I said in an earlier post, I had stopped all updates from windows because they were sabotaging my other software.  Recently, we got a new cel phone and I decided to load some pictures from it into my computer.  When I connected it to the computer, instead of doing the normal plug and play, Windows notified me that it would have to set up a driver first and, in order to do that, I would have to allow automatic updates.  I was very reluctant to allow that but eventually decided to go ahead and allow updates for a few minutes in order to have the camera and computer communicate.  A VERY FOOLISH DECISION !!  After a very long session of waiting on the installation process, Windows notified me that the installation had been unsuccessful.  Okay, so much for that, but the next time I used my greeting card software, my printer stopped printing in color right in the middle of printing a card.  First assumption — the color ink cartridge had run dry.  However, other things would print in color.   So, I uninstalled and reinstalled the greeting card program but it would still not print in color.  Fortunately, I had created a restore point for the computer about a week earlier and I did a system restore to that point, which was before I had allowed windows to sneak in with their malicious updates.  Well guess what??  My greeting cards printed in color again !!!
     It is frutrating and infuriating  to have to be constantly on guard against the operating system that is installed inside your own computer.   Every time I plug in a flash drive Windows wants to scan it for errors.  NEVER!!!  Why should windows care what is on my flash drive?  What has happened to Micrsoft?   Why are they trying to destroy their competition rather than outperforming them?

WINDOWS 7 IS A VIRUS

If you have a computer with Windows 7 as the operating system, you have a built-in virus that will destroy much of your other software. Windows does not like competition so Windows 7 has been designed to sysematically destroy any software that competes with it. Many of the other software programs are superior to what windows has to offer and windows doesn’t want them around. I had several reliable and easy to use programs that had performed flawlessly for years but when I got a new computer with Windows 7 I immediately began having problems.  First it was my Quartro pro 10 files.  The icons for activating Quarto pro disappeared from my desktop and from the start menu and when I would try to open one of my files I would get a message telling me that windows didn’t know what program had created the file and couldn’t open it.  I searched inside the program files until I found the initiating file for Quatro pro so I could open and print all of my Quatro pro files and I put shortcuts to Quatro pro on my desktop.  The next time I tried to open these same files they could not be opened.  I went into the program files again and tried to use the initiating part of the program again but nothing would work this time. Fortunately, I had printed the files, otherwise everything would have been lost.  Quatro pro has not worked since.
Next it was my HP image editor software that wouldn’t activate.  Again, I searched inside the program files and found the activating key so I could use the image editor again.  About the same time I had the same problem pop up with Word Perfect 10.  It was at this jpoint that I realized that all of these programs were in direct competition with Windows software and better quality.  The only thing I could think of to do was to stop accepting Windows updates.  That has been a couple of months ago and both HP image editor and Word Perfect are still working but not as smoothly as they used to.
Windows 7 is so convoluted that you can never depend on it doing the same thing twice.  There are times when it absolutely will not do what I ask it to do and I have to find a different way to get where I want to go.  If I were a beginner computer user I would be completely lost.  I guess the only way to get along with Windows 7 is to not try to use any software  that competes with window software.