Author Archives: Ponderer

About Ponderer

Ponderer also writes science fiction and science-inspired rhyming poetry. Check her out at katerauner.wordpress.com/ She worked at Rocky Flats for 22 years - you may know her as Kathy London.

There’s No Place Like Home

Posted on by

joys of travelI recently heard an interview with Thomas Swick, a long-time travel writer who has a new book out – Joys of Travel. This isn’t a travel guide to finding restaurants and cathedrals; it’s about the experience of traveling.

Luckily my husband enjoys travel, which has allowed me to be a tag-along. Personally, I’m a home-body. The idea of a travel bucket list makes me envision racing through famous places. 1,000 Places See Before You Die tires me out just thinking about it, so I appreciated Swick’s opposite advice. He says, the less glamorous the location, the more rewarding it can be. Don’t simply be a tourist looking for the “best” hotels, restaurants, and museums. Try to live, if only briefly, the life of a local. He made one specific suggestion: go to the local post office, stand in line, hopefully chat with people, and buy stamps.

In Europe, 71% hold passports. Only 36% of Americans hold passports. That doesn’t count non-citizens, of course, who live in the US with their own country’s passport, so the total number of residents with passports is 42%, but that doesn’t mean many of us travel every year. William Chalmers figures that in 2009, just 5% of American residents traveled outside North America.

The size of the US must be considered – we can travel vast distances without ever “leaving home.” I’ve seen mountains, deserts, and oceans; museums and historical sites; bustling markets and live theater – all without leaving home. But none of the deep-seated cultural differences that world-travelers experience.

One of Swick’s “joys” is appreciating home. Whenever you travel, you’re learning about home. He says the multi-cultural make-up of the US is something he has come to appreciate.

Maybe that makes up a little for what this home-body has missed.

BTW – Swick’s seven joys of travel are: anticipation, movement, break from routine, novelty, discovery, emotional connection, and appreciation of home.

Flood Insurance Needs Tough Love

Posted on by

I’m going to say something that may sound heartless – it’s time to stop insuring properties that repeatedly flood.

This morning I listened to a report on NPR from Marketplace. The Federal flood insurance program is $20 billion in debt and Congress must take up reauthorization next year. It’s time for a change.

A mere 0.6% of properties have received 10% of payouts. These are properties that flood repeatedly – one property had flooded – and received payment – 40 times. It’s insane to keep paying owners to build in high risk flood plains. And taxpayers must also cover the costs of emergency responders and infrastructure repair.

Now I’ll sound a little less callous. There is a proposal for the Federal government to simply buy an insured flooded property at its pre-flood value. Demolish structures, remove expensive utilities, and return it to whatever sort of landscape nature intended – this last bit is from me. This would save money in the long term and keep faith with owners whom we – the government speaks for us – lured into building in flood plains with below-market-priced insurance.

I propose the buy-out and get-out approach be extended to all Federal flood insurance, and I’d include wildfires – allow private insurance companies to charge whatever they want to re-insure properties that burn. I say this as a person and volunteer firefighter living on the edge of the Gila National Forest, in the wildland-urban interface (the WUI or woo-e as it’s called.) I could be one of those people forced out if a wildfire sweeps through my area – though I do practice Defensible Space.

I can hear my liberal friends saying what I propose would destroy neighborhoods – it would be cruel to allow circumstances to force people away from the homes they love. I can hear my right-wing friends, too – the government wants your land – they want to force everyone into high density cities. I hear these concerns and an honest debate can address them. Just keep in mind that at some point nature will win, and it will be better for everyone if we plan ahead of disaster.

As sea levels rise and droughts intensify, marginal locations become more dangerous. Here’s where I’ll claim some moral high ground. Artificially low insurance premiums lure people into harm’s way. Recovering from a flood is painful and stressful as well as expensive. And people die in floods and fires.

We need to find a decent way to back out of the problem we’ve created.

BTW – There’s a second meaning of Defensible Space that has more to do with urban neighborhoods. It’s interesting enough that I have to mention it, even though it’s off topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory.

No One Wants to Look Like a Nazi

Posted on by

Today’s expression isn’t verbal, it’s a gesture. I ran across this in a Smithsonianmag piece:

“[America’s salute to the flag originally required you to] raise your right hand, flip your palm down, point it toward the flag in a salute and recite the words. These instructions might seem unthinkable today for obvious reasons—they’re reminiscent of rows of Nazis saluting their Fuhrer. But believe it or not, they date from the beginning of the Pledge itself.

The stiff-armed salute came from the 1890s along with the words to the US Pledge as part of an effort to heal the wounds of the Civil War with a shared ritual in schools, and to assimilate immigrant children. But when Nazi’s adopted the same gesture, in 1942 Americans dumped their 50-year tradition (along with other symbols ruined by Nazis.) The US Flag Code was adopted because every American needed instruction in the new salute, though it can’t be enforced as a law.

The Pledge, by the way, was originally

“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one nation indivisible—with liberty and justice for all.” Francis Bellamy reportedly wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in two hours.

Congress added words including “under God” in 1954 to distinguish the United States from “godless Communism.” So both the words and gesture of the Pledge were modified in response to America’s enemies. I could accept going back to the original words, but I must admit my skin crawls at the original gesture.

Law and Order – something we’ve wanted for a long time

Posted on by

Before this phrase was a TV series, it was a political demand for stricter criminal penalties, especially for violent crimes. Since the 1960s it has been a reoccurring theme in American politics whether crimes rates were rising or falling. Wikipedia says the phrase was introduced by Barry Goldwater in his run for president in 1964.

But dictionary.com says the concept was stated by Aristotle and that the phrase has been used since the late 1500s – though they offer no citation. I wouldn’t be at all surprised – legal terms seem to get fossilized into out language.

Decline or Rise of a New Prosperity?

Posted on by

Manufacturing is dying in America, and the middle class that was built on post-WWII GI bill education and manufacturing is going with it. Jobs move overseas to cheap labor markets thanks to trade deals that favor a powerful elite. Millions around the world are rising from extreme poverty at the price of the Western World’s middle class – which might look like a good tradeoff to aliens watching from space, but isn’t so good if you happen to be losing. We should all be sad and angry.

I’ve heard that a lot and I guess I believe it. Just look at the tags in my tee shirts – all manufactured overseas.

I also tend to think of the Christian Science Monitor as a reputable news source, so I read their recent article carefully.

The surprising truth about American manufacturing

“United States manufacturing output is at an all-time high, worth $2.2 trillion in 2015, up from $1.7 trillion in 2009. And while total employment has fallen by nearly a third since 1970, the jobs that remain are increasingly skilled.

“Across the country, factory owners are now grappling with a new challenge: Instead of having too many workers, as they did during the Great Recession, they may end up with too few…

“In western Michigan… unemployment here is low (around 3 percent)… For factory owners, it all adds up to stiff competition for workers – and upward pressure on wages.” CSM

The situation isn’t all rosy: “Employment in manufacturing has fallen from 17 million in 1970 to 12 million in 2015. The steepest declines came after 2001, when China gained entry to the World Trade Organization and ramped up exports… In areas exposed to foreign trade [like my tee shirts], every additional $1,000 of imports per worker meant a $550 annual drop in household income per working-age adult.” CSM

Despite job openings, lots of young workers don’t want to work in manufacturing. They watched their parents shoulder large amounts of overtime only to get laid off in the Great Recession, see the overall downward trend, and are being pushed into college instead of trades by parents, schools, and the government.

I checked Wikipedia, which seems like a decent place to get an overview.

“In 1990, services surpassed manufacturing as the largest contributor to overall private industry production, and then the finance, insurance and real estate sector surpassed manufacturing in 1991. Since the beginning of the current economic downturn in 2007, only computer and electronic products, aerospace, and transportation have seen increasing production levels…

“A total of 3.2 million – one in six U.S. factory jobs – have disappeared since the start of 2000. The manufacturing sector of the U.S. economy has experienced substantial job losses over the past several years.” Wikipedia

Continue reading →

Sabotage comes from wooden shoes, but not the way you’ve heard

Posted on by

I was delighted when Star Trek informed me that French workers once threw their wooden shows, called sabos, into new machinery to stop mechanization – hence the word sabotage.

But is the tale a language myth?

Grammarphobia says the word “didn’t originate in the practice of workers tossing their sabots into machinery to botch up the works. In fact, there’s no evidence that any sabots were ever tossed into any machinery.” The word first appeared in an anarchist report sent to the 1897 congress of the Confédération Générale du Travail in Toulouse. The report advocated work slowdowns and used the word because “it has long been the custom to liken the slow and clumsy worker to one wearing wooden shoes, called ‘sabots.’ ”

Word Detective agrees.

Star Trek! How could you let me down?