Things develop

When we made the great boat trip last week, we could not but notice all the many lots platted along the Intracoastal. Big ole expensive palm trees stand lonely against the sky when you look in from the water. There are about a brazillion lots platted along here, and they look blessedly unsold. By chance, I fell into a conversation with a woman who peddles real estate down here. She told me that not even the cheaper lots are moving in those developments. She also told me that house deals for buyers who look rock solid, with high down payments and good credit, are often blowing up because of financing problems. We may have to wait a bit for the total devastation of our scruffy little paradise.

Gummint giveth, gummint taketh

I learn from the pubic prints that the US gummint, grateful for my more or less 45 years of faithful labor, is going to give me $250 in the next little while in the hope that I will give the economy a goose with it. In the meantime I learn from my cigar dealers that the US gummint is going to fund part of the health program for children by raising the tax I pay on stogies by about 40¢/each, raising the cost of a bundle of 25 smokes by $10. I intend to order nine bundles before the tax increase goes into effect on April 1, so I will probably do more to goose the economy of Nicaragua than the economy of the US. That is a big enough raise in price to make a guy cut back to no more than a couple of cigars a day … not a happy prospect, but pore folks have pore ways, and I feel pore enough to have taken a temporary job with the Census.

& more carnage in the trade

Steve Olafson writing in HoustonPress blog about staff cuts at the Chronicle that were covered only minimally in that paper's pages:

The layoffs at the Houston Chronicle cut much deeper into the editorial side of the newspaper than the announced company-wide 12 percent reduction that was announced by publisher Jack Sweeney. By the count of newsroom workers who survived, 27 percent of the paper's editorial staffers were let go yesterday.

Read all here. A week ago Sunday in the San Antonio paper, the editor had a column bidding farewell to more of the departing newsroomers. Irreplaceable talent and experience are being mindlessly discarded; they will not be replaced by "citizen journalists," no matter what the more deluded Web denizens believe.

Journalistic cavils

A guy who sends me stuff, guy who knows a thing or two about newspapers hisownsself, sends me a cogent blog post on redesigning newspapers as an exercise in futility. It was written by Joel Achenbach for the WaPo Web site. In part:

I am loathe to criticize the hard work of colleagues in this beleaguered newspaper industry, but it would seem to me … that they think newspapers no longer need words. … There's a vow to rid the paper of long and dense stories. But let me pose a question: Is there any evidence that any format change at any newspaper has made a difference in the bottom line?

The post was prompted by a redo of the Orlando paper. You can read the whole thing here, and it is worth reading. I am in complete agreement with all of it. One of my many quarrels with the Vicad these days is their pages filled with meaningless graphics wrapped around nine-inch stories. Sometimes a thousand words is worth more than a picture. Got a story about finance? Go to a stock photo site and lift a photo of a stack of $100 bills. Got a story about the Middle East? Go to a stock photo site and pick up a pic of a camel crossing a sand dune. Hackneyed is hackneyed, verbal or visual, and that is hackneyed. I would sooner read a 19th-Century paper that was a pure mass of solid eight-point type than try to find the real information on the frothy pages of a modern newspaper.

Huckleberry Finn adventures

Tuesday night a friend called with a short-notice offer of an adventure the next day: He had to deliver a boat down the coast and would I be interested in coming along?
Not only Yes but Hell, yes, I would be interested.
He picked me up early Wednesday, we met the rest of the party, and drove over to the embarkation dock at Point Comfort. The boat was to go to Rockport for a diving job, so the route was south down Matagorda Bay, then a right at Port O, and south, or more westerish really, on the Intracoastal Canal. A phone call en route changed the destination to **Adrift.
It was a fine trip, with lessons in Bay Rat history and folklore, the idiosyncrasies of the waters along the way, and a chance to wonder at the marvels of modern technology, as a GSP mounted above the wheel drew a line down the path. A boy of about twelve would probably make a good boat driver if they outfitted the boat with thumb controls. The alternate pilot was an old waterman, raised in Port Isabel, and one of those natural engineers who are so entertaining to listen to.
An excellent adventure and one I would happily repeat. I would bet that very few people got to see a whooping crane yesterday. Just another reason for life in paradise.



My pilot was a piratical character with long history on the bays.
Every few miles there was an osprey sitting on a post, watching the water for dining opportunities.
Rara avis … we saw two whoopers working the grass on the shoreline of Welder Ranch.

Distraction, depression

Sorry i have written nothing lately. Been distracted.
This bit of G&D from our very own Ron Paul, quoted in the Financial Times:

At some stage – Mr Paul estimates it will be between one and four years – the dollar will implode. “The dollar as a reserve standard is done,” he says. He sees little hope for other currencies where central banks have also created too much liquidity dating right back to the early 1970s.

Read the whole thing here.
Forget the second-half recovery if you believe our guy Ron.

Border madness of a different sort

David Burge, the man who writes the hilarious and non-PC IowaHawk blog, posts a story he wrote for Garage Magazine about a journey into the dangerous borderlands on a quest for a legendary Big Daddy Roth custom car reported to exist outside a sex shop in Cd. Juárez. It sounds like quests all border hands have all made into the maw of the monster. Like any good quest story, it involves dangers overcome and a goal reached. He writes:

From the crest of the bridge I can see the Rio Grande. Physically, it’s a muddy concrete ditch with an extravagant name. It’s the army of uniformed agents on either side that indicate its real significance: it defines an imaginary line, separating two worlds, creating big risks and even bigger opportunities. Opportunities for treasure hunters and smugglers, for immigrants, for gringos seeking a little high-quality debauchery.

Read the whole thing here. Guy catches the Hunter-Thompson-style craziness mode.