Odds and ends number 115
Since I'm using the concept from monoblogue, I'm keeping the numbering system, too. Here are thinner slices of bloggy goodness.
I’m coming out of a holiday break, and as is often the case, my e-mail box filled up in an otherwise slow news period. I also found some social media posts worth sharing. So I’m easing back into things with a few items of interest.
By the way, the wind farm post I did Wednesday was meant to be item number two but I quickly realized it merited a promotion to full-length piece. It’s behind a paywall for now but I’ll spring it in time.
The top 10 list
One thing I love love LOVE about Substack is that I can finally see how individual posts do in the grand scheme of things: a concept WordPress didn’t ever get around to before I left. It’s allowed a lot of people to share their top posts of last year.
So, without further ado, here are my Top 10 posts for 2023:
In at Number 10 is an election post called “A tale of intrigue?” about the local city of Salisbury elections, posted shortly after their filing deadline on August 26.
At Number 8 because of a tie was a post I did June 4 entitled “Taking stock of our pride.” If you recall what June is pushed on us to be, you’ll know what the post was about.
Also checking in at Number 8 was the later of the two posts, a ditty I did July 22 on the so-called prevailing wage called “Prevailing waste.”
Lucky Number 7 is a post that’s tied to a piece higher up on my countdown and published May 3 called, “The more friendly gatherings.”
My Number 6 post, “The Rise and Fall, revisited” introduced the current serialization of my 2019 book The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party back on September 16.
Making into the top five at Number 5 is the latest entry from December 2, “Rearranging deck chairs.” It’s about how the state is giving busy work to a firm rebuilding a beach that was well enough left alone.
My Number 4 post was the most successful of those occasional Sunday religious-themed posts I do. “Thoughts on prayers” was a look at 2 Chronicles 7:14 and praying for America in general, posted on July 23.
Breaking into the top three at Number 3 is a post I heavily promoted using actual money called “Is it sunset in America?” Great question and something of a subscription driver (four subs) but not what I hoped seeing that it’s only third. It was the earliest in my top 10, published February 25.
My Number 2 post was a total shock to me. I do Monday Memory as a somewhat autobiographical occasional feature but the ode of “Monday Memory: my brother” really took off after I published it on his birthday, September 4.
And the Number One post is really no surprise: “An unfriendly gathering” ended up getting me nine subscriptions by itself as we all learned how certain elected officials of the city of Salisbury had a cow because Franklin Graham was coming. All because of a tip I got from a loyal reader and subscriber, Carol Frazier, published back on April 30.
As an added bonus: I don’t often promote my other baseball-related site, The Knothole, but by one reader its top post was called “An ode to the summer road trip.” It came out March 23 and set up a series of prospective road trip posts I did in April. Watch for those again in 2024!
Here’s some good news
The more that the Left whines about fundraising being down, the better I like it. Here’s a variation on the theme I had last time.
But I do try to be open and honest in these emails, and the truth is that Indivisible is facing a real fundraising shortfall this year. This isn’t unique to Indivisible -- you may have seen news across the progressive ecosystem that fundraising is down this year. Organizations are restructuring, cutting programs, and doing layoffs.
I don’t wish people to be out of work, but the world needs ditch diggers, too, and the fact that organizations like yours have run our nation in a direction straight down the tubes means you get to feel some pain as well. I shouldn’t say this, because the Levin/Greenberg family looks like a charming young clan - they send pictures with their e-mail appeals every so often - but I have to because they’re just oh-so-completely misguided in their aims.
Let’s face it: if there are people who need private funding out of your pocket, it’s those who run places like food banks, homeless shelters, pro-life pregnancy centers, and faith-based organizations of all sorts. And its not just charities: it’s also the wait staff who brings you a good meal, the struggling musician or band who just needs a place to do gigs and hone his/their craft, or the missionary couple trying to secure a support base before they spread the Gospel to far-flung places like the Book of Matthew says they should because they work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. (Those examples are just passions of mine; surely you can think of others.)
Demanding money to influence government policy is just too Bidenesque these days. Starve the beast.
Leaving from Delaware
The last time I did this odds and ends thing, I talked about people who came to Delaware by sharing a piece by the Caesar Rodney Institute, so it’s fitting that this time we discuss those who are leaving.
Some Delawareans could be retiring or moving to warmer climes; could they also be relocating for other reasons, like better economic opportunities? According to the most recent available data from the US Census Bureau, 31.5% of the outbound migration from Delaware is moving to these three Southeast states: Florida (19.3%), Texas (6.2%), and North Carolina (6.0%).
It turns out that these three states (FL, TX, NC) have had significantly stronger economies over the last 25 years than Delaware. As a result, their residents have gained on and/or surpassed Delaware’s average wages, keeping more of their money due to lower taxes, and have far better public schools.
I’ll cut to the chase: in most of the areas CRI tests we lag behind our friends to the south.
Delaware’s per capita GDP lost ground quickly to Texas following the Great Recession, and Florida and North Carolina left us in the dust beginning around 2015.
Delaware used to lead the pack in per capita income, but in the last decade has lost its lead over Texas and Florida, leading only the Tar Heel State.
Delaware ranks near the bottom in both corporate and individual income tax, which is something its lack of a sales tax doesn’t completely overcome. The other three states are top 10 ranked in at least one of those categories, Florida is a leader in both.
Finally, as CRI notes: “Delaware’s failing public school system, as graded by the federal government, means that families could choose to move to FL, TX, and NC due to the better schools there.”
Delaware is becoming a northern extension of Florida with all of the retirees moving here, but those who want to stake out their own claim are moving to where the opportunities are. Rather than concede that we should be happy to be a geezers’ paradise, I want growth and young people here to take over when we’re gone. The trick is getting our state to be more attractive to them, and to me that means good-paying jobs (not government-supported boondoggles) that add value, not push paper.
Arguing with a meteorologist
Alex Seymore is something of a legend around these parts. As a teenager he began a social media page called Delmar Weather and we quickly learned he knew his stuff at a young age. Fast forward a few years and he’s secured a job at a local television station, WRDE-TV (known locally as Coast TV.)
Unfortunately, while he is well-educated, he’s also indoctrinated and perhaps lacks a bit of life experience. So we had a nice little back-and-forth online when he remarked that some local flooding we’ve had lately was caused by climate change. (Specifically, he said “likely played a role.”)
So I made my own assertion, based on his claim we had temperature data going back 800,000 years:
So if you have temperature data going back that far, you surely know we have had both glacial periods and warm periods. By that same token, we've likely had really wet eras and dry eras, too.
Your implication seems to be that of anthropogenic climate change, which is a farce that seems to be an excuse for a lot of actions government wants to take, like forcing electric cars on us.
Indeed, we had a ten-year storm the weekend after a two-year storm. But prior to that a lot of the streams looked low and there were a lot of muddy spots where water should have been. Nature has a way of evening itself out given enough time so now the ponds and streams are back to normal once the land drains as it is supposed to.
When Alex protested that global warming wasn’t a “farce,” and protested that, “It’s a scientific fact that we are seeing a rapid rise in temperatures due to increases in CO2 from human causes,” I added:
But we have been industrializing for 300 years or so, belching out smoke and emissions. Cars are 90% cleaner than they were a generation or so ago, even before EVs, which on balance are more destructive to the environment.
But let's say you are correct in your theory, which I can't subscribe to based on factors like volcanic eruptions and other natural occurrences. China laughs at emission standards and puts up two new coal plants a week, with India not far behind. But we're supposed to make the sacrifices?
Humans (and nature) can adapt quite well regardless. Just make us aware of when these extreme weather conditions may strike and we will act accordingly.
Seymore also believes that China is “one of the leaders in moving towards clean energy” despite the two coal plants a week. Maybe it’s all the slave labor putting together those solar panels?
Anyway, I also had a lady who said these “climate change deniers are in full force ignorance…and they laugh at your post and my comment. We see who they are.” So here I was:
I'll tell you who I am, but here's your misunderstanding. People like us don't deny climate change exists, as it has for thousands of years. We are well aware of phenomena such as the Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period that lasted decades. Heck, I'm old enough to remember how cold and snowy winters were in the 1970's back home in the Midwest.
Where we depart is, instead of letting us decide how best to adapt to these conditions on a local or regional level, national and international governments believe only they have the solution and it generally involves more control for them.
And their predictions have always, always been wrong - often spectacularly so.
I still think Alex is pretty good on the weather (although some of his younger online cohorts who are also weather geeks also put the local, more senior meteorologist - who has his head full of global warming propaganda as well - to shame.) But we need to remember that we have a hard time predicting a hurricane season that’s a few months long, let alone the weather when our grandkids have crumbcrunchers of their own.
By the way, the feds predicted 12 to 17 named storms this year, with 5 to 9 becoming hurricanes and 1 to 4 major storms. (Way to be specific there.) Midway through they covered their tracks and upped their prediction to 14 to 21 named storms, 6-11 hurricanes, and 2 to 5 major hurricanes. (Actual numbers were 20, 7, and 3. A lot of those were “fish storms” that never made significant landfall, but they could say it was an “active” above-normal year.)
Speed trap central
It’s been a few years since I have been to Eastville, Virginia, as once in awhile one of my old jobs would take me through there on the way to Cape Charles at the southern tip of the Delmarva Penninsula. Eastville’s claim to fame is that it has the oldest court records in North America as the seat of Northampton County on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. I also know a conservative activist and old friend who lives in the area, so my attention on what was otherwise just a social media time suck perked up when I saw this story about the town being a glorified speed trap.
The town has just enough of U.S. 13 to be a nuisance for drivers in a hurry to head south to the Chesapeake Bridge-Tunnel or north to resorts like Chincoteague or Ocean City, Maryland, not to mention the big cities of the East Coast. From WTKR-TV in Norfolk via the Shore Daily News:
The News 3 Investigative Team looked at data gathered from July 1, 2022, until Nov. 22, 2023.
With a population of about half a million, the Virginia Beach Police had 33,829 traffic violation stops during this time. In 29,134 of those cases, at least one citation was written, and 15,582 warnings were given out, according to the website.
Meanwhile, in the town of Eastville with a population of about 350 people, the Eastville Police Department had 20,104 traffic stops, 19,928 citations given out, and 161 warnings issued. Approximately one mile of Rt. 13 is within the town limits of Eastville.
There’s a town near me in Delaware (also on U.S. 13 but about 100 miles or so north of Eastville) called Greenwood, with that same sort of reputation. Neither town is really very large, but Eastville is puny at just 300 or so souls compared to almost 1,000 for Greenwood. But they have a commonality, as the corporate limits of both towns extend well east of the town center to take in the highway and extra (some would say ill-gotten) revenue - in the case of Eastville, about $1.3 million. That will definitely support its half-dozen cops.
So if your path takes you through a small town, take it slow. Make the towns work to succeed instead of policing for profit.
Don’t try this in a small town, either. Really, just don’t.
I’ve discussed the community of Oxford, Maryland recently thanks to their ill-fated excursion into combatting global warming.
But this portion is about the yeoman’s research done by
in chronicling the recent demise of her 600-person strong hometown, which happens to also be that of my wife’s family. As Greenhawk writes in her recent look at the tumultuous 2023 Oxford endured:In the beginning, the town was built around shipping and the seafood industry. Its population was working class watermen, people working in seafood processing and shipping etc. The population remained mainly working class until the mid-60's when the town's quiet, non-commercial beauty (and a new Bay Bridge) brought people to Oxford from the other side of the Bay.
My late mother-in-law (and her husband, who passed before I met my wife) were among those working-class people. They raised their family, served in the town’s fire company and auxiliary, and made Oxford attractive to all the newcomers.
The problem is that Oxford has retained a Peyton Place vibe when it comes to local government, and Jan is a loud objector, hence the moniker Radio Free Oxford. Hopefully 2024 will begin to bring about some positive changes, at least on a local level - as Jan revealed Wednesday, one of those positions heretofore thought to be fraught with nepotism has opened up.
Leave the movie behind
I haven’t watched the Netflix flick Leave The World Behind for two reasons, the less important of which being that it was produced by Michelle and Barack Obama. The more important reason is that I don’t have 140 minutes to waste on what would probably be a mind-numbing time suck anyway like most current network and on-demand programming. TL:DW, anyone?
In fact, I didn’t even think about LTWB until I read this piece by Evita Duffy-Alfonzo at The Federalist. (The article was linked by ammo.com in their regular sale mailing I receive.) While the message of the movie and related book seems to be that of a world spiraling out of control, it’s important to realize we are still talking about fiction here. For example, people freaked out for awhile about shark attacks in the wake of Jaws but eventually made their way back to the beach.
What I wanted to focus on was her conclusion:
In these uniquely uncertain times, it’s fair to assume that we’ll all face hardships outside of our control. That’s the point of “Leave the World Behind” — to make us feel afraid and helpless. But we actually do have control over a few key things. We don’t have to be like the Sanfords. We can cultivate a loving, cohesive family by spending time with one another, being patient with one another, and recognizing the value each member brings to the family. We also don’t need to surrender to the fear porn, especially if we have faith in Christ and know that this world is not our final destination.
So don’t relinquish your liberties, and try and be prepared as best as possible. We may not have that same scenario, but in case of another 9/11 or 10/7, it’s worth having a backup plan and some spare supplies just in case. And never forget that God is in control.
Until my next edition of odds and ends - which hopefully won’t come after a long holiday - remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.
Nice inspiration. I have a similar thing in the works but a different approach. Stay tuned.