Why I think national health care might be good for small businesses

There used to be several (& still are a few) family/mom&pop farm supply/feed store type places within just a few miles of our house. They carry a lot of the same stuff, which comes as no surprise I am sure, but horse feed distributors often require an exclusive contract with any retailers. So while there was a store actually just around the corner, the brand I feed my horses was carried by the father&son business on the other side of the stoplight downtown.

Still, I did an awful lot of business with the shop close by. First because they were close by, but also because of G******. She took care of the sales inside & printed the tickets for anything that needed to be picked up at any of the bays outside. She was almost the first person in town to learn my name. She remained one of the few to pronounce it correctly. She knew what brands of whatever everyone bought & how often. She could remind you of what you meant to get when you brought what you remembered to the counter. & when I first met her, she was a junior in high school.

Right around the time G***** graduated, a large chain built their first store in town. Let's call them Tractor Supply. In the first months they were open I went maybe twice. The shelves were stocked with stuff I would love to buy & the prices were lower than at the small local-owned stores . The drawback was (& remains) that you would be hard pressed to find someone who could help with anything. There were plenty of employees wandering around, talking on their walkie-talkies but most of the conversations went like this: Do you carry Cowboy Magic? If we did I think it would be over there; Can someone help me load these 50lb bags into the back of my truck? No ma'am I have a bad back & so does he; the list goes on.

Not long after graduation, G***** went to work for the big newcomer. I missed her terribly at the small mom&pop & told her so whenever I ran into her. She said it came down to one thing: health insurance. The small mom&pop would put her on their plan, but would not pay much towards her premium. She could not afford not to take the other job.

It will surprise no one that G***** is now long-gone from our local Tractor Supply. She moved quickly up the ladder & last I heard was assistant manager at a store about 30 miles from here. & I can guess the mom&pop are kicking themselves because within a month after she left, they started to go downhill. The rotating crew that worked behind the counter never did get a good idea of what anybody was likely to buy. I would often go in & find standard items out of stock for weeks at a time (livestock antibiotics, for example or dog food), I was often given a story about how suppliers were all out but as neither Tractor Supply nor the place I bought my horse feed seemed to be having the same problem, I never believed them.

After not walking through the door for well over a year, I recently tried to do business with them again. I called & asked if they had a particular horse grooming product in stock & was told, yes absolutely, a whole shelf of it. When I got there less than five minutes later, I could not find this "whole shelf" . When I asked (& was asked if I was the lady who called) I was shown to a shelf of an entirely different product & was told it was the same thing. I asked to speak to the manager; I was already speaking with the manager. I showed her the list of ingredients on the label & pointed to the one my horse is allergic to & said the other brand, the brand I asked if they carried, does not have that ingredient. Her response: "I don't know nothing about that, I just know they are the same thing".

Would G****** have stayed forever if health insurance concerns were off the table? Probably not. But the small business owner would be more competitive when it came to keeping people who are valuable to them if health care coverage was the same for everyone, no matter who they worked for.

Won't you be my neighbor?

Foreclosures have finally come to my little island. Not that I live on an island; I live in the only town in the county with no surface water & no water = no island. I also live in the state with one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, in a county with one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the country.

There has been a lot of speculation about why that is: Is it because so many university people live on soft-money renewed every year so they make large down payments & qualify only for smaller loans? Is it because the family farms here are smaller overall than in the mid-west so they have been able to hold on? Whatever the reason (or more likely reasons), it probably helped that we are effectively a mid-sized county in a state famous for having the most rural & the most urban counties. Everything is milder in the middle.

The house in question flew up a few years ago. It was OKay, but boring: white straight siding, no plantings except grass. We rarely saw anyone outside, they watered their lawn at strange times & aggressively. Seriously, they once watered for three straight days, 24 hours a day. Then nothing until all the grass was burned & brown. Then they watered non-stop & it came back. This was actually the first clue the house was a rental.

The second clue is inside. I have been told each bedroom has a complete bathroom, but the house itself has no 1/2 bath for guests. Neither does mine (have a 1/2 bath; we make guests use the yard), but then again our three bedrooms do not each have an en suite, either. This floor plan is typical of the student-rentals close to campus, but I really have no idea who thought there needed to be one out here.

Since the sign went up, a number of things have been done to make it look more like a home & less like an apartment block. I know some of the trees in front are new (I think there were only two before) & all of the flowers. I admit I am tempted every time a go by & see the door open &/or cars in the driveway to ask to have a look. & I am quite sure they would let me see all I want, I just have not had the time.

So it goes on the auction block in early-June. I am guessing it could be quite the financial coup for the person who wants to live there. Maybe with a couple roommates...? Maybe not.

When pollsters come calling

A has been aggravated by the volume of polls he receives via e-mail. He never answers & therefore seems to get the same one several dozen times. No amount of get-me-the-hell-off-your-list seems to work. & then we got to talking about a technique of mine that has been working very well.

Not long after we moved into this house, we started getting calls asking us what we were watching on television. What did we usually watch. How much did we watch. What would we like to see more of.

What made this all extra-special-stoopid was we always told the truth: we are not watching anything. Cable was not (still is not) offered on our rural road & we were (then) too cheap to spring for a satellite dish we did not have time to watch anyway. We got only one channel: the local public television station. So our morning news program was Teletubbies. Our evening news was McNeil-Lehrer Report. Our favorite Saturday night program; why re-runs of the old Lawrence Welk Show of course.

This went on for years. Every couple months (or weeks) we got a call & they called & called & called until we gave them some kind of answer (this is in the days before Do Not Call). Until one day, I snapped. What are we watching: Gay Porn. In fact that is all we ever want to see. Our family wants nothing but man-on-man action preferably during the family hour. They have not called since.

A few people have suggested my hostile tone was the reason for the shut-off, but I swear I had been much more hostile many times before. I had hung up, I has asked that they stop calling, I had requested their home numbers, I had wondered if they were not just the teeniest bit embarrassed to be somewhere below telephone sex workers & dial-a-psychics. I was already plenty hostile. But call & call & call again, nothing seemed to work. Until I queered their data. & yes I do mean that sentence to go both ways.

This understanding has come in handy since. Most recently we somehow got put on a conservative christian phone-tree clearly drumming up votes for McCain/Palin. I am almost convinced that someone sold them the wrong list because there is nothing in our activities, spending habits, etc. that would give anyone the idea we were either conservative or christian.

The first time I laughed out loud & hung up. The next time I said I did not support the Republican ticket & could they please stop calling. Then I stopped answering when the caller id could remotely-possibly be them. Finally I decided to answer their questionnaire. Question one: have I made up my mind about how I will vote- yes I have. Question two: what was the most important influence in my choosing a candidate- choosing of Sarah Palin as a running mate. Question three: have I campaigned for my candidate- yes, absolutely. Question four: can they count on my vote for McCain/Palin in November- not a chance, I was always going to vote for Obama (a white lie: I was really going to vote for Hilary Clinton, but it was moot by then), adding Palin to the ticket just got me off the couch campaigning for the other side. I actually heard his busy little typing fingers stop & the guy sighed. Final question: what would I say was the likelihood I would not vote for McCain/Palin. & so I told him it was 300%. If I should die before the election I planned to rise from the dead & cast my vote for Obama/Biden. & that was the end of it, no more republicans-in-disguise calls.

I think it is just too disheartening for them to record a statistics so far from their own agenda. I not mean to single out political parties, I think we would all like to makeup our minds & then find that data to prove it. So when it comes to polls that just will not go away, if you can figure out what they really do not want to hear , you can get yourself off the list.

//A reminded me of my gay-porn solution while we were watching commercials during the Science channel's Geek Pride week-end programing. The actual program on the screen at the time was about six degrees of separation & well worth watching. If A had received one of the letters though, he is not sure he would have forwarded it. I, on the other hand, live for that crap. & I am almost certain I would not have deliberately mailed the letter as far away from the destination as possible. Not the first one anyhow.

Meet Newt

This is the new man in my life. His name is Newt. His dad is in Iraq until ?November? & Newt's original (post-dad's-deployment) living arrangement was not working out. So he is staying with us while an alternative arrangement is made. Yeah, we expect to have him right up until Thanksgiving.

Today, we are celebrating Memorial Day trying to help a future veteran not lose someone he loves while he is away. It does not have quite the same patriotic fervor as buying new appliances, but the fact is, all my appliances work fine. & I do not need any more sheets. & we just painted the house last year.

The end of a good thing

For a while a while ago, I used to volunteer a good chunk of my time here. & here is still there, but the part I saw grow will soon be gone. I am not entirely sure when S** got the idea but she decided/thought/reasoned that a small cottage industry-type arrangement right there at the house to occupy the residents, might make a little cash maybe, but more important it would give everyone involved the general idea of what it was to show up for work, organize your schedule & take pride in what you can do & that this was a good thing. & while she was there it was a wonderful thriving thing.

But on her leaving, things changed. The person that replaced her understood S**'s concept, but somehow someone else in the organization looked at the little sewing space & saw dollar signs. & all the trying to convince her that I am actually pretty good at this & I could not support a dog on what I would make versus how does she think complete novices to the concept of work are going to do it made any difference. Actually it did: it made her tell me I was too negative. & I took my contrary ass home.

I know it is useless going to the board & showing up this folly. In December '07 I got an earful from one of the board members on how he thought the CI should set aside time for Quilts of Valor. Do not get me wrong, QoV is a wonderful program. & the people who send quilts in win awards for their work; they did not learn to sew last week. I could not tell if I should be insulted on behalf of the truly outstanding pieces donated to QoV, or invite him to CI to see what kind of work a new sewer can actual handle (& how many years it would take to piece the quilt top he proposed). In the end I just sat there with my mouth hanging open & a "you are f*cking with me, right?" look in my eye.

I think my favorite part of this whole story is this same manager is actively pursuing opening a restaurant under the AH/CI umbrella. She knows nothing about the food business (or she would know the odds of an experienced willing-to-work restaurateur failing) & she knows what the residents are capable of in terms of cooking ...& hygiene. I am telling everyone who tells me that she should be encouraged in this. Complete catastrophic failure might be the only thing that saves the rest of the organization.

Sooooo, anyone who has been holding onto orphans for the Dali bags, or scraps you have leftover or fabric you bought when you were drunk, you can keep hanging on to it I am not going back. & before anyone calls me & says they are sure the CI is still there, I know it is. & I know it will not be for long, no matter what the plan is.

& no, I am not bitter.