Shoveling Taxpayer Money Into the Sea
10:08 Thursday, 6 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 85.41°F Pressure: 1008hPa Humidity: 76% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 136
Florida is a joke, and it's on Floridians. They keep electing "leaders" who view reality through an ideological lens that focuses exclusively on zero-sum, partisan politics.
Meanwhile, sea level rises, hurricanes get stronger, and Florida passes legislation that removes the words "climate change" from the state's vocabulary.
This report is hysterical. I actually love it. Rich people with private property built too close to the ocean are refusing to sign easements that the Army Corps of Engineers requires in order to shovel taxpayer money into the sea to temporarily protect their expensive homes.
Hey, more power to 'em! I love it. It's a waste of money that creates a moral hazard, forestalling the actual action necessary to deal with the reality that is before us. I'll shed no tears if their houses get washed away.
✍️ Reply by emailTom Hanks
17:38 Thursday, 6 June 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 88.77°F Pressure: 1005hPa Humidity: 73% Wind: 11.5mph
Words: 49
Great interview with Tom Hanks by Christian Amanpour.
✍️ Reply by emailBetween Here and Gone
10:50 Friday, 6 June 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 85.51°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 75% Wind: 10.36mph
Words: 541
Great song by Mary Chapin Carpenter, for which I cannot find a decent recording at YouTube. Anyway, the title describes my present state of mind.
Just got back from the post office. I dropped off three boxes to be shipped up to Burdett. Stuff that I'd prefer to have right away, but won't fit in the RAV4 on Tuesday. Most of the space in the RAV4 is going to Mitzi's stuff and some food she wants to bring up. I'm going to be looking for little corners to squirrel away some small items.
The post office offers tracking, but I stuck an AirTag in each of the boxes. I'll be interested to see how well they perform in keeping track of their progress north.
Tonight we're having a little family get-together to say goodbye. I'll be passing along some things that I don't wish to keep carrying with me, and that they're welcome to either keep or dispose of as they wish. In some ways, I think losing everything in a hurricane can be a cleansing event. Traumatic, to be sure; but liberating in a way too.
Mitzi and I went out to dinner the other night, to use up another set of gift cards. We talked about the future of the place up in New York. I was somewhat surprised at what she had in mind. This was a conversation that I hoped to begin once we started making serious plans about the new house we hope to build.
We're in different situations, financially. We're nearly equal in some ways. If I keep breathing for another 20 years, then the future value of my pension and Social Security likely equals her retirement assets, or close enough to it. But there's an open question of whether I'll live that long, or even if my pension and Social Security will endure. So in the near-term, there's an asymmetry in our financial situation, where she's much better situated liquidity-wise.
We decided when we bought this place, assuming we lived here that long, that upon our deaths the house would be sold and the proceeds divided five ways among our surviving children. It's a house in an over-55 community, it's never going to be something that has any special "family value."
She has something different in mind for Winterfell, and something that I welcome. It's not like it's an "estate" with acres of land, but we're hoping to build something that the kids will enjoy visiting and making memories at. And her idea is that it's something that will continue to do so after we're gone.
It'll take some fancy lawyering to draw up the mechanism, a trust of some kind, I imagine; and the structure that will govern it. There are probably some pitfalls we'll have to be alert to plan for, but I'm hopeful we can figure all that out.
The kids won't be equally able to access the place, we both have daughters in California for example. But over time, that could change.
It's an idea that pleases me, and one that I hadn't really envisioned when we decided to leave Florida. I think we're going to share a bit of that vision with the kids tonight.
✍️ Reply by emailThe Painted Ponies Go Up and Down
Current Wx: Temp: 69.12°F Pressure: 1011hPa Humidity: 71% Wind: 6.24mphWords: 297
Montour Falls is having its annual fireman's field days this weekend. Mitzi and I went yesterday evening to check it out.
When I was a kid, we used to look forward to the fireman's field days. They're fundraisers for volunteer fire departments, and they're like small carnivals. I recall that the food was prepared by local civic organizations, and I loved the sweet Italian sausage with peppers and onions on a hard roll with a side of marinara. They did have that here yesterday, but it was a commercial outfit, the roll was soft and there was no marinara, alas.
But the energy felt the same, which was nice.
We entered a raffle for a new lawn mower because we need one!
I'm volunteering this afternoon at the Hector Swap Meet and Dumpster Day. People bring things to trade or dispose of. The Hector Sustainability Committee is one of the sponsors, and I've become a member to get more engaged in the community.
Tomorrow I'm going to Syracuse to sub for the Naval Academy Class of 1980 at their Another Link in the Chain event for prospective plebes. Apparently there aren't any 1980 alumni in the region, so there was a call for any members of '79 who might be able to fill in. There were three of us, but I didn't raise my hand immediately. I figured if nobody volunteered by Memorial Day then I would, and that's how it went.
I may go a couple of hours early and visit my brother who lives nearby, and we can FaceTime with Mom together from his place. She'll probably enjoy that.
We're hoping to get the plans by mid-week, and at least submit the permit application by the end of the week.
The beat goes on...
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