the lost city of Winona

 Oh C'mon Beagles I know the story about the goose and the golden egg.  I mean doesn't everybody?  What I was asking was who was the goose and what was the golden egg, and it turns out that Uncle Sugar, as some call him, is the goose and trade with us is the golden egg.  I had forgotten that by buying pretty good goods at a pretty good price we were falling into their trap and that was how they were able to buy up our debt and if only we had refused to trade with them, why we would be sitting pretty, and they would be sitting not so pretty.

Well I don't know, it seems like it is probably more complicated than that, but I don't fully understand the dismal science.  Took a course in it once.  I recall that there were guns and there was butter, but I don't remember much else.  I don't really understand these sanctions.  I guess we and western Europe have all the marbles and we can use that to fuck with countries we don't like.  Well countries that don't have such robust economies, so I don't know about China because I think it has some marbles itself.

Russia had their revolution in the teens of the last century and China had hers in the mid-fifties.  Were they friends of ours before that?  Certainly no friends of ours throughout the cold war which brought us the Vietnam war which was us and the Russkies while China stood on the sidelines.  They both stopped being commies maybe twenty years ago, but now they seem to be even worse enemies than when they were red.  Would they have been our enemies even if they had never been commies?

Seems to me the common consensus is that the Russkies went off half-cocked because Putin is off his rocker, and likely he will never completely take Ukraine though he will kill a lot of people and destroy a lot of property before that happens.

And what then?  Hopefully the Russian people with the help of some band of disgruntled generals will rise up and hang him by his feet.  And that would all be good.  I suppose then we could all join hands and sing Kumbaya and turn to face RedNoMore China.

I am glad you enjoyed my tale of the man who put Cheboygan on the tourist gravy train.  I was indeed trying to be witty.  I guess to some that makes me a condescending dipshit, make that dipstick, well as my favorite philosopher, who I have quoted frequently on this subject, Ricky Nelson, sang to the world, "You can't please everybody, you gotta please yourself."

I was up in Mackinaw myself, the first summer after we bought our first family car, the pea green 1953 Customline, when we drove clear around Lake Michigan with that 50's spirit of seeing the USA even with a Ford. 

Being as how I was only eight or nine my memories are vague, but maybe ten years ago Ruby Dew and I, on one of our Louis Sullivan bank trips were skirting the southern edge of Minnesota when we took a turn northwards and stumbled upon the lost city of Winona.  Well not lost really, but I had never heard of it which I thought was surprising considering its size.  I remember 100,000, but looking it up now I see it is only 25,000, but that's still sizable isn't it?  It is not as far north as Mackinaw but it is right on the Mississippi and the land around it is hilly and full of trees, and there is some kind of state or national forest and I saw hunting lodges, and even though we were not on a motorcycle the air felt abnormally clean, brisk, and fresh.

The town itself is on the southwest side of the Mississippi and just southwest of the town is a big narrow lake so the town is like on a peninsula and kind of squashed together and most of the grand old buildings are still standing in their art nouveau glory so you are taken a bit back in time.  Oh, and Winona Rider was named for the town,

Well I just wanted to talk about Winona.  It has been so long since I have been anywhere besides the Greyhound bus to Champaign.

And I was shocked at last evening's news that the senate had voted unanimously to extend daylight savings time into eternity.  I had not even known there was such a bill advancing, and unanimously?  Surely Ted Cruz would have voted against it just to be a prick, and Rand Paul, how can he not have objected to something that so many others were for?  Anyway on to the house, news at eleven.