Amish - EV Melotte

OH OH - I'm running short of the typed pages of my moms words.  I need to get DJ back to transcribing her hand written stuff.

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ANYWAY - remember!  Mullins, Columbus's best outdoor eating venue closes Wednesday for THE DARK TIMES ahead of us (no! not the election) as winter nears.  We should have a nice fall but once the new year hits it gets cold and snowy.  At least NOAA says there is an elevated chance.

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School starts this week and America is having a teacher shortage.  There are fewer teachers and on average the teachers are making less money and school systems are receiving less money from the taxes you are paying  . . to help schools.  

I know a few teachers and they use their own money from their paychecks to buy needed things for their students.  Is that right?  When you go to work do you buy things out of your own pocket to do your job?

America has 1 million more school kids this year but lost 200,000 teachers.  The teacher/student ratio is the highest since 1990.  School funding is 6.6% LESS then 2008.

The good news is that cuts have stopped and some states (not Wisconsin who continues to cut) have increased spending on schools but the real problem is finding teachers.

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Then there is Obamacare and it's problems.

Obamacare has allowed millions to finally get insurance and in that regard it's working.  America is a much healthier place. The problem is that all of a sudden insurance companies are being forced to actually DO THEIR JOBS and are losing money at an alarming rate.

UnitedHealthCare will lose $500 million this year.  Why?  Because they are actually doing their jobs.

Before they would just take money from healthy people who never needed doctors.  NOW - they are forced to pay for low income people and people that had preexisting illnesses.   OUCH - they need to pay doctors?  THAT! was not in the fine print.

So while the GOP wants to block fixing Obamacare and just get rid of it.  Why not try FIXING it. Instead of throwing your hands in the air saying the sky is falling, sit your ass down and fix it.

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OH - shot a 47 last week in the Championship rounds.  Actually had a birdie/par back to back on 11 and 12 in Door Creek.  My problem is I need to stay away from the nightmare holes.  each round I have one or two holes where I bust out a 7 or a 9.  I need better course management and to stop trying to be a hero.  
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OH OH - last night - what was that hatching that took place. Tiny flying bugs everywhere - I mentioned it on Facebook and even people in Green Bay were commenting.
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This spring 6.2 million (7%) Monarch butterfly's were killed in Mexico because of storms  The good news is they covered 10 acres of land which was up from 1.7 acres in 2013 but down from 44 acres 20 years ago.

The Monarchs that you see in Columbus are either the 7th generation that started in Mexico this spring and have flown up from Mexico.  They go to the same plants their late ancestors went to last year - OR - are young and about to fly a few thousand miles to Mexico.  What started in spring and took 7 generations to get here - they have to make it all on their own.  Amazing.

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The emerald ash borer has killed 130 million ash trees which is starting to have an effect on major league baseball as 25% of the bats are made of Ash.  Most are made of Maple.

BTW - my Autumn Blaze Maple tree turned bright red late July.  Totally red.  It still grows and will be one of the last trees to lose it's leaves. WEIRD.  I would worry but it seems healthy and even with full color in July will not drop one leaf early and still has grown a few more feet this year. It's been averaging about 4 feet a year since we planted it.  

I never raked last year, it never dropped it's leaves like a normal tree.  Like 1 leaf a day over 3 months!

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Amish - EV Melotte

 In Holway the area we lived in was almost entirely Old Order Amish. Of the thirty or so pupils attending Lincoln School there were only eight who weren't Amish. They called us the "English."

I was entranced with the Amish people. I loved everything about them, their strange but so becoming clothes, their clean, fat farms, their clip-clop footed horses and secretive black buggies, the way they talked, and most of all their unfailing courtesy. Once in a fast and wild game during noon hour a smaller boy slammed into me and knocked me down. Instantly the game stopped. Instantly the boy was leaning over me anxiously saying, "I'm so sorry! Is thee hurt?" and an older boy was helping me to my feet and telling him, "Learn to look where thee's going, William." and a girl was exclaiming over my slightly scraped elbow and leading me by the hand to the teacher, Miss Bergman, for cleaning and a bandage. The fall hadn't shaken me, but the concern did. At Washington School the whole pack would have tromped right over me.

There were two things that made Lincoln School special for me. One was that for the first time in my life I had friends. They were Amish, and we weren't allowed to visit in each other's homes, but from the time we met on the way to school until we parted on the way home, we were friends. The other special thing was that for the first time I had a classmate, non-Amish, who was accustomed to getting straight "A''s without a struggle. Since we both wanted, and expected, to stay Top Dog, Eugene and I both threw ourselves into a brain-battle and became learnaholics. At the end of the year Miss Bergman  insisted, with report cards to prove it, that we finished in an exact tie. I've never believed that. I've always wondered if she was kind enough to not want either of us to lose or wise enough to not want either of us to win.

Miss Bergman is a shadowy figure in my memory. She may have been a much better teacher than I realized at the time. She had to prepare eight of us for High School, while not offending the Amish parents who wanted their children to learn nothing of "the world" beyond reading, writing and arithmetic. It's significant of the problem that no books except textbooks were ever allowed in Lincoln School.

   -EV Melotte