I've been thinking a lot about how long America will be around. Seems like most superpowers last 600 to 1000 year and we are pretty young. But Rome is an interesting case about superpowers (which America is).
Like Rome, America is an empire, we have influence that reaches beyond out boundaries. America has a false economy based on cheap labor from overseas markets and sweat shops, Rome had cheap labor based on slaves.
We also have an economy based on raw materials from other lands (gas and so forth) that is not found our borders, Rome had booty from their wars.
Rome's economy was boosted up by external threats and had a huge military which helped the economy. America has a huge costly military which actually helps the economy as long as it's being used.
Rome was a solid and stable superpower as long as they continued to expand. When Rome stopped expanding the booty stopped and the slaves that had fueled the economy started to dry up. Their military became an economic drain and a political headache. America?? See any resemblance?
When a society reaches that point it has to do one of three things.
#1 Begin living within its means.
#2 Let the infrastructure degrade.
#3 Or delay the fall by building a huge deficit.
The hardest thing to do is #1. Rome opted for #2. America?
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I had been re-thinking my idea to skip art fairs early in the season. At first I felt that bang for buck I should skip the early art fairs but then recently I was regretting the idea. BUT, now I see why I wanted to skip the early fairs, weather instability.
My first fair will be Lake Mills July 20th. My big problem is that my canvas guy seems to have gone on an extended vacation to Honduras so my canvas has all of a sudden gone up 40% in price and my floater frames no longer fit the 1 1/2 inch wide spreader bars. Everything is now 1 3/4 inch.
grrrrrrr does not seem like a big deal but it's a freaking headache.
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Pretty good storms last night - Columbus received 0.64 inches of sideways rain (Madison about the same).
As one storm was approaching I looked at my radar and saw the green surrounded by red on the wind index. That meant some small rotation and it was directly to the south and close. I went to the deck and . . . there it was. Not even near tornado strength . . . . .
RAIN FALL GRAPH
How's YOUR lawn looking. Grass sure does like to grow doesn't it.
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Massive terra forming across the fairway. I'll have some before and after photos. The gravel pit will be a hill soon. Burying trees ALIVE! I never thought they could fill in a 60 foot deep hole but for two weeks straight there has been a steady stream of dump trucks filling in the crevice. Some serious hole filling.
Literally, every 5 minutes a new truck appears and dumps dirt. All I hear all day is the sound of a caterpillar, beeping and scraping. It's crazy. I have to find a before photo - you will be amazed.
Where is the dirt coming from? Enerpac - the second photo is only 1/3 of the entire construction.
First photo is a poor image of what Enerpac will look like. To ME it looks like a place I could get new tires at, but in reality this is 2+ stories tall. The flagship production facility of Enerpac - they manufacture the worlds largest hydraulics. REALLY REALLY big things.
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One last thing - I LOVE CAR-X. I don't trust Chet's anymore but CAR-X always does me well.
I had a muffler/tail pipe thing going on. I felt like ti was just a gasket or something. Went to Car-X and yup - BUT there was a problem. If they replace the gasket that rusty metal part COULD break.
So it will be $100 OR $600 as they would have to replace the cat converter.
Final price was $109 ish! WHEW!
Have a great weekend.
Rod
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