New View Askew

After a bit of holiday cheer (okay, quite a bit), I thought I should share these thoughts with you. I apologize in advance. Children of the northern hemisphere rejoice - it is the most wonderful time of the year! I’m speaking of course of the winter solstice. Anyone who knows me well knows that it is the one day of the year that I am guaranteed to be my most optimistic and cheerful. (Although generally cheerful, seldom have I been optimistic lately.) Ah, the solstice, that specific, singular point in earth orbital time when mundane planetary movements take on a special meaning to our species. Okay, maybe not all of us but at least those of us that are prone to depression in winter. Join me now as we go back in time. It is not hard to imagine the Druids prancing around and peering into the deep December dusk as the sun disappears below the horizon exactly where it should between the mammoth stones. Then enduring the darkness and hoping that it reappears j

Healthcare as the Moai A recent article in the Strib said the annual cost of healthcare that a company pays for a family is now about $20,000/yr - which somehow reminded me of something totally different, the Moai. Are you familiar with the Moai?   They are those statues with giant heads that made Easter Island famous. It seems that the early Eastern Islanders were so fascinated with them – inexplicably – that everyone on the island did nothing but build statues. Perpetually. What, you may ask, does this have to do with healthcare and, more importantly, you? Bear with me. In addition to the company's $20,000 the employee is on the hook for about $10,000. Wrap your head around that!  Along with Medicare, Medicaid and VA it all adds up to about $3.8 TRILLION/yr or almost 18% of the entire economy – and growing 5% or more each year (while the economy is growing around 2%.) That's about 50% more than the whole manufacturing industry and equal to the entire housin

July 20th 1969 and the City on the Hill Despite my general optimism about the future when I look at our youth, a special day like this causes me a certain sense of loss and melancholy. You see, it reminds me that there was a time when there was glittering city on the hill. I mean it wasn’t perfect, nothing is, and it didn’t glitter for everyone but it was there nonetheless. It was a city that made and kept great promises, promises like putting a man on the moon. I remember that night very clearly even though it was fifty years ago, July 20 th , 1969. I was a 21 year old dude working at Donaldson’s department store between my junior and senior years in college. Life was pretty simple and living really was easy – and girls smiled often! There was also a war raging far from home and I was headed there in a year or so when I graduated since I was in ROTC. But that was okay because on that night, watching on a tv sitting on a picnic table outside a friend’s house in south Minneapo

Big Government? Blame James Watt. A lot of people wonder how in the world we have come to have such big governments - federal, state, local, you name it. I, for one, blame James Watt the guy who invented the steam engine. To explain I need to start even earlier in time. I recently finished a book called “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Harari. It’s a very intriguing book with a lot of concepts and theories that will make you really think about us as a species, the good and the bad. One particular claim he makes made me sit back and say “whoa!” He suggests that we were all probably better off as hunter gatherers or farmers. That’s right, in his opinion we gave up the natural life that humans had led for thousands of years; we just had to go get food then enjoy the simple pleasures of family and friends. Perhaps he had read Thomas Jefferson, noted urban hater, who said, “ Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real