We have talked about this open carry thing before. The law says that you can carry a loaded firearm down Main Street as long as you don't conceal it. Just try it once, though, and see how far you get. Some time ago there were some people who were trying to prove that point, but I haven't heard about them lately, and I don't know if they gained anything for all their efforts. Last I heard, the Michigan legislature was trying to define the word "brandishing" because brandishing a firearm is illegal in this state, but the law did not say exactly what that means. I haven't heard how that one came out, or even if it came out. Maybe they're still working on it.
I didn't know that Michigan was the eighth most populous state in the U.S. but, when I think about it, it makes sense. Some of the states on the East Coast must have more people per square mile, but they have less square miles. California has lots of people and lots of square miles, but the population in most of the large Western states is spread out pretty thin. I seem to remember that Michigan lost some population in the last census, and we now have one less electoral vote than we used to. The southern half of the Lower Peninsula has the densest population in Michigan, the northern half is much less dense, and the U.P. is the least densest of all three.
When the paper mill was closing down, we were all racking our brains trying to figure out how we could turn one of our hobbies into a paying job. Some of them were already doing that, they considered the paper mill to be a second job that they took 20 or 30 years ago to help make ends meet, just till they could get their business up and running. I don't know how it turned out for most of them, but my experience was that you were further ahead to put your money in a mutual fund than to invest it in a small business. I imagine that artistic endeavors are not all that much different. You still have a product that you need to sell and, if your production costs exceed the market price of your product, you will lose money. Most professional musicians travel a lot, and they don't let you ride in railroad freight cars anymore, even if you tell them you are a genuine folk singer who needs the experience so you can write songs about it. I don't think artists need to travel as much, but they still need to market their product. You guys would know more about that than me.
Then you have to calculate what your time is worth. Some say that you can't count your time when you're self employed, but I don't think that's true. If you can make more per hour working at minimum wage, then every hour you spend on your art is a losing proposition. I suppose that's not as important for retired people like us, but you still need to figure what else you could be doing with your time that might be more productive, or at least less costly. For instance, do I mow my own lawn, or do I pay somebody else to do it while I paint? Okay, you city slickers don't have lawns, but you get the idea.
Then there's the fun part. You take something that's fun and make work out of it, and it's not as much fun anymore. I have done a little farm butchering in my day, and it was fun. You guys wouldn't like it, but I'm an earthy kind of guy who enjoys natural stuff like that, so I took a job working in a small slaughter house. Now it seems logical that, if butchering one pig is fun, then butchering 35 pigs would be even more fun, but it's not. After the third or fourth pig, I was getting tired of it and, by the end of the day, I swore that I would never butcher another pig again, and I never have.
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