Longer Posts
Today's phone message to Baumgartner
Subject for today’s phone message to Congressman Michael Baumgartner (R-WA): Funding cuts to food pantries
Hi, my name is Richard Rupp and I’m a constituent from Colton WA.
My wife and I volunteer at the Food Pantry in your hometown of Colton and also Uniontown. We supply much needed food to seniors on limited incomes and young working families. The majority of the food we give out comes either directly from the USDA or through federal grant programs. Today our monthly supply truck dropped off half the food supplies we usually receive. The grant funding to buy additional food like hamburger from local producers has been eliminated.
How does taking food away from children and seniors make America great?
Congress needs to act to make sure the money they lawfully appropriated is being spent on the designated programs and not being redirected into tax cuts for the president’s billionaire friends.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Blogging to Baumgartner
Since the beginning of the current U.S. presidential administration I have been emailing or calling my congressman about once a week on a variety of issues. My congressman is Michael Baumgartner of the fifth district of Washington State (the eastern third of the state). Mr. Baumgartner is a freshman Republican who I did not vote for. However, so far he is not as obnoxious as many MAGA Republicans. I subscribe to his weekly newsletter, and between that and issues raised by 5 Calls, I have plenty of material on which I need to share my opinion. Usually I am advising him to do the opposite of what I know he is going to do, but on rare occasions we agree and I let him know that also.
I don’t pretend that these messages are a two-way conversation. The first time I called his office I did get to speak to a staff person, but subsequent calls have gone directly to voice mail. I know my name is not popping up in his email inbox either. Reports are that congressional offices have been overwhelmed by the volume of calls and letters since DJT became president. My most hopeful guess is all these communication efforts result in a tick mark being placed in the appropriate “for” or “against” columns for each issue. As an aside, communications with an elected representative seem like an area where AI would be useful given the large volume of calls and written communication that have occurred.
I do like that these communications with my representative have made me think in detail why I support or oppose a given issue. Although I wish that there was a different person in that office, I probably would not attempt to communicate as frequently if they were someone whose opinions I largely shared. I am fortunate to live in a state with two talented Democratic senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, but I don’t feel the need to call them often.
Since I am putting some effort into my calls and emails I thought I may as well post these to my blog also. I don’t expect them to be read by anyone else, although if only one person takes the time to scan a post that would match or exceed the number of people reading it in Rep. Baumgartner’s office.
Here is today’s email to Rep. Michael Baumgartner:
Dear Rep. Baumgartner,
I read with interest in your most recent weekly newsletter that you are sponsoring legislation to reform college athletics. I wouldn’t have expected that this subject would have taken your valuable time when the country is experiencing a loss of civil and free speech rights, congressionally mandated programs are being eliminated by an unelected billionaire, and small businesses and farmers are facing financial ruin from reckless tariffs imposed at the whim of the president.
I also am surprised that your proposal is a rejection of capitalism in favor of a socialistic redistribution of income that would otherwise go to top athletes. You also seem to think that the federal government should be heavily regulating the college athletics industry including setting limits on executive (coaches) pay. This is a pretty refreshing attitude for a freshman Republican congressman. I would hope that you will continue on with further legislation that will apply these same principles to the tech industry. That would likely be the largest economic stimulus this country has ever seen.
You frequently open your weekly newsletters by writing that you are reporting to your “bosses”. This “boss” has caught you working on your tournament brackets instead of the job you were hired to do. Get back to work.
Regards, Richard Rupp Colton, WA
Mac or PC laptop?
This is an easy decision for most people reading this. I used a PC for my entire working career. The professional software I used for many of those years didn’t run on Macs. Later, when I moved on to open-source software alternatives, it still worked better on PCs than Macs.
I retired several years ago, and my old PC laptop gave out not long after. Digitally, I have been doing more consumption than creation. I’ve had an iPhone for years in large part to stay compatible with my wife (who just wants her tech to work with minimal involvement on her part). I bought an iPad after I retired, and that has been my primary digital device. The iPad is great for reading and watching, but frustrating to type more than a short email. I’ll save my experiences with the Apple Pencil for a future post. I do have a nice Windows 10 desktop, but it is older, and Microsoft has deemed it unworthy for upgrade. Support for Windows 10 is slated to end later this year.
So why do I want a laptop? I’m looking to dust off the web development and python skills I used to have. As a former data science person, I would like to investigate the pros and perils of AI on my own. If nothing else, I would like to compare notes on this with my grandkids.
I feel like I could do my development work on either platform. I do think that Microsoft’s vision for AI Is more developed than Apple’s. I’ve been satisfied with my Apple devices and will continue to use them. It is tempting to stay within Apple’s ecosystem. It is also clearly the environment of choice within the Micro.blog community where I spend a lot of time these days. It would be nice to be able to relate to the tech posts there.
On the other hand, I have 40 years of satisfied experience with Windows (and earlier DOS).
I think it will come down to a snap decision on the day I order.
Voting
My wife and I spent an enjoyable couple of hours sitting on our patio and discussing our choices for office on the Washington State primary ballot. There are a large number of candidates running for state and federal offices. In Washington the top two candidates in the primary for each office go on to the general election without regard to political affiliation. After our discussion we filled out our ballots and took them out to the mailbox. This is a relaxed and efficient way to vote.
Simple jig for hand sawing
Yesterday, I was hand-sawing some plywood panels when I had an idea for stabilizing the task. I started the cut and then clamped a scrap of wood across the cut. This stabilized the board, made it easier to cut straight , and there is no splintering at the end of the cut. I’m sure this is not an original idea, but I’m happy to have discovered it. 🪚🔨
Stories
My wife and I had dinner this past week with a couple who we had met recently. This was something that we hadn’t done for several years.
Why is it unusual? One reason is we are introverts. We do enjoy meeting people in small gatherings, but you will rarely find us in settings where there are lots of folks. We don’t have the opportunity to meet many new people, and we don’t make much of an effort to do so. We also live in a rural setting. It is easy for us to go several days without speaking with anyone other than each other. We’re not hermits. We have children, grandchildren, and close friends who we see often. We volunteer in nearby communities and attend a local exercise class where we met our new friends.
It was good to spend an evening with some genuinely nice people who we knew nothing about. We shared our story and listened with interest to theirs. We are all at a point in our lives where there are more milestones behind us than ahead. The stories were much more complete than when we met people in our younger days, and this made them more satisfying to me.
A Farm Mystery
We have a small flock of chickens, 15 hens and a rooster. The birds have a large fenced yard and a spacious coop. A month ago I noticed that one of the new hens we had purchased as a chick this year was missing. My wife and I searched the birds’ pen carefully, and then the area around the pen. Occasionally a chicken will fly over the fence, but they never go far. Our search was unsuccessful. We concluded the hen had fallen prey to a predator. This isn’t common but happens occasionally. In the past we have had problems with raccoons and weasels. We also have coyotes, and had watched a hawk make an aborted attack this past Spring. Attacks by any predator usually leave an explosion of feathers, which was missing in this case. We were disappointed as the hen had just started to lay, and produced eggs that were a dark brown. She was one of a trio of chicks we purchased this year. Even after they were big enough to be released into the general population, they hung out as a cohort separate from the rest of the flock. It was sad to see the trio reduced to a pair.
Several weeks went by and I was emptying the compost bucket into pen when I noticed the prodigal hen had returned. She seemed no worse for her absence, and immediately started contributing her dark brown eggs to the daily production. We are at a loss to come up with a logical explanation for her disappearance. Chickens are not solitary animals, and it seems unlikely that she could have been nearby without our notice. We are glad to have her back, and will have to let it go at that.
Is America Broken?
I just finished listening to The Gray Area podcast titled “Is America Broken? “. Sean Illing speaks with Alana Newhouse about an essay she published in Tablet magazine this past November. The discussion presents the idea that American society is breaking into two camps - those who believe America’s institutions are irreparably broken and need to be replaced with something new (Brokenists) and the Reformists. The latter believe that the institutions are still solid, and only need to be improved. The Brokenist / Reformist dichotomy doesn’t align with this country’s usual binary divisions. I found the conversation fascinating. It will color how I evaluate current events from now on.
Roof Socks
We have some heavy snow predicted for the next few days, so I decided it was time to refresh the “roof socks”. There are a couple of places on the roof where snow and ice accumulate forming ice dams. I’ve found that tube socks filled with eco-friendly ice melt help prevent the problem.
Three cheers for utility workers
We had several days of thick ice fog this past week. The power was out for 11 hours on one of the foggy days. We were fine. We have an emergency generator for just this reason. The outage affected twenty households, but in our sparsely populated corner of the world that meant many square miles needed to be searched to find the break. This is on a day when the visibility was less than 100 feet, and temperatures were in the low twenties. The ice had caused a pole to snap. The utility crews brought in and erected a new pole and by 10 pm power was restored. We are grateful to have such skilled and dedicated people working at our utility, Inland Power.