La Marseillaise below the fold. Continue reading
Category Archives: Real Life
How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange The well-to-do sure love their gas appliances!
This article title, “How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange” is one we have used thrice previously. In the first, we noted the PBS television series This Old House and its renovation of the Seaside Victorian Cottage, in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Those wealthy New Englanders didn’t choose electric heat pumps, but warm, dependable gas heating for the cold, Rhode Island winters. Their HVAC system appears to allow the large, new exterior condensers to be used for heating as well, but the gas furnace is new and in place. The homeowners had a new, fairly sizable gas fireplace installed, an oversized Wolf gas range, and three gas-fired instant hot water heaters. More, they had a gas fireplace installed outside, on their backyard patio. The series was filmed following the panicdemic[1]This is not a typographical error, but spelled exactly as I saw the whole thing, an exercise in pure, unreasoning panic. restrictions of 2020. Continue reading
References
| ↑1 | This is not a typographical error, but spelled exactly as I saw the whole thing, an exercise in pure, unreasoning panic. |
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It was -4.1º Fahrenheit on the farm this morning.
I have previously noted that we have backup heat here on the farm, with a propane fireplace, something we installed during our 2018 remodeling project, because our primary heat is an electric heat pump. The thermostat for the fireplace was set at 64º F, so that it would come on if the primary heat failed overnight, but shouldn’t come on as long as the heat pump was engaged. Guess what: even though the primary heat was on and working, the fireplace still came on, which tells me that the heat pump was unable to keep up! Heat pumps work by extracting heat from the atmosphere around the outside condenser, but when there’s not a lot of heat to extract, they lose efficiency. Continue reading
Philadelphia: nickel-and-diming people
After fifteen years in the Keystone State, my wife and I retired back to our home in Kentucky. Pennsylvania has an individual income tax rate of 3.07%, which is a fairly low rate among those states which have income taxes. Kentucky had an individual income tax rate of 5.0%, but this has been lowered to 4.5% for tax year 2023, and again to 4.0% for 2024.
But, unlike Pennsylvania, the Bluegrass State doesn’t try to nickel-and-dime people to death for every little thing. And thus we come to this, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:
A paper bag fee, new protections for building workers, and a send-off for Council President Darrell L. Clarke | Council roundup
The final meeting of Council’s four-year term included a flurry of legislation and speeches praising outgoing Council President Darrell L. Clarke.
by Sean Collins Walsh | Thursday, December 14, 2023 | 3:42 PM EST
Philadelphia City Council on Thursday approved a new 15-cent fee for consumers who need paper bags at retail stores.
The most important news this Saturday Yes, Liz Magill is gone, but Army beat Navy to win the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy.
I wrote, in a comment on one of Robert Stacy McCain’s articles, “The over/under on Dr Magill’s resignation date is Monday, December 11th. There’s a meeting of the Board of Trustees set for Sunday, Sunday! afternoon.” Well, the lovely Dr Magill didn’t make it to Sunday, resigning on Saturday.
Breaking: Penn’s Magil Resigns.
by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, December 9, 2023
Mere hours after I blogged about this (“‘Context Dependent’: Ivy League President Belatedly Realizes Maybe She Answered That Question About Genocide Wrong”), now the University of Pennsylvania’s embattled President Liz Magill has resigned:
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has resigned as president of the university in the wake of intense backlash over her failure during a recent congressional hearing on Capitol Hill to say whether advocating for the genocide of Jews is permissible on campus.
“Dear members of the Penn community,” the university began in its announcement. “I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania.” Continue reading
This is what’s wrong with Cracker Barrel!
Laying in bed this morning, I saw this story on my iPad news reader:
‘The over-65 group is particularly value-conscious’: Older Americans are losing their appetite for restaurants such as Cracker Barrel and Olive Garden — here’s what’s keeping them away
by Serah Louis | Thursday, October 12, 2023 | 8:00 AM EDT
Several fast-casual restaurant chains have reported declining foot traffic and sales following the COVID-19 pandemic — especially among their older clientele.
Company representatives at Cracker Barrel CBRL: (%) and Darden Restaurants — owner of Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse — have pointed to increased prices and ongoing health concerns alienating some of their over-65 customers.
“We just have not yet recovered the visits with that group [over 65 years old] to the extent we thought we would, really, since the pandemic,” Cracker Barrel CEO Sandra Cochran said during a September earnings call.
But while some of these eateries have taken these changes in spending in stride by appealing to different demographics, it’s possible that others are being held back by their original consumer base.
Well, Sandra Cochran, net worth $51 million, you need to pay attention to that last quoted paragraph. From further down in the article:
When the chain introduced plant-based breakfast sausage last year in an effort to accommodate more consumers, there was a mix of praise and backlash on social media.
“Stop pushing this woke garbage,” wrote one outraged user in response to a Cracker Barrel Facebook post promoting the new product. “We go to Cracker Barrel for Traditional Values and Traditional Country Cooking… If you want to serve Lefty food, open an alternative store.”
You know, I really don’t care if Cracker Barrel has a “plant-based breakfast sausage,” as long as they have their real breakfast sausage available as well. The far bigger problem is their biscuits and gravy. Southern-style biscuits and gravy uses a sausage gravy, but the restaurant replaced that with their “sawmill” gravy years ago, and it really should be named sawdust gravy, because they removed the sausage and replaced it with some combination of spices which they somehow believed would taste the same.
Well, it doesn’t taste the same, and doesn’t taste even remotely close. Sawdust gravy would be a far more accurate name for the stuff. That’s what you need to fix first! If you want the older customers, the ones you’ve lost since the panicdemic, to return, the best way is through returning to better food!
He’s ba-aaack!
Ocracoke Island Lighthouse, photo by D R Pico
My thanks to William Teach, a “modern day pirate (of ice cream),” and the distinguished host of The Pirate’s Cove, for filling in for me while Mrs Pico and I went vacationating on Ocracoke Island, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
The present-day Mr Teach is a graduate of East Carolina University, the athletic teams of which are the Pirates! Thus, we must consider, and accept, that the host of The Pirate’s Cove is indeed the worthy successor to his ancestor(?) of twelve generations past!
Finally, East Carolina’s colors are purple and gold, which speaks to me, as my alma mater, Mt Sterling High School had the same colors during its distinguished history!
Saturday morning
Polar Bear, a 125 to 150 lb male Great Pyrenees tried to move in with us this past spring, but he had a human of his own who lived ¾ mile away. We have two other dogs, and Bear just loved to come and visit them.
We first met Bear when our younger daughter was taking our two for a walk through the fields, down toward the river, and Bear, who was wandering through the fields himself, saw them and trotted up to join them. He’s so big that you don’t have to bend down to pet him; his head is high enough that it’s right at your hand when he’s walking beside you.
He also leans against your hip when he’s walking with you!
Sadly, Bear was killed when he was hit by a car. He usually walked back to his own home, because his human didn’t want us to feed him, or he’d stay with us forever, through the fields, but for whatever reason he had, he chose to walk down the road and was struck. But Polar Bear quickly made us love Great Pyrenees dogs!
Cotton Bear
Pamela, his human, was having to keep him in a kennel on her farm, and in her house, because she has a neighbor who might well be described as the slang term for the rectum, so it’s good that we’re getting him out of there. Pamela told me that she just sold her farm, so we’re heading there at just the right time; I just wish we could have brought him home earlier.
We have a fenced-in yard of maybe half an acre, plus 7½ acres more in which he can roam and play, though we’ll keep him inside the fence until he learns that this is his new home. Wish us luck!
28½ hours without power The patricians propose and enact, and the plebeians have to work and pay for it
The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source.
It’s the end of March, and spring, not winter. But losing electricity for thousands of rural customers in what was a windstorm, not snow, not ice, and not a tornado, points out once again that electricity service is our nation’s most vulnerable-to-the-weather utility. Imagine not eastern Kentucky and our relatively mild weather, but upstate New York in the winter:
Fact or fiction: Here’s what NY Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to do with gas stoves
by Jon Campbell | January 26, 2023
By now, you’ve probably seen the headlines, the cable news segments, the social media posts — all about the latest culture war to engulf New York and the nation: the future of gas stoves.
“Out-of-touch politicians and bureaucrats in Albany are moving forward with a BAN on gas cooking stoves,” read a petition from state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, a Republican.
Or on Fox News: “Gov. [Kathy] Hochul, Democrats, if you mess with my gas stove, you’ll get burned.”
The national debate was ignited earlier this month by comments from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which raised — and later walked back — the possibility of a ban on gas stoves amid growing concerns over research connecting them to childhood asthma. A day later, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a plan of her own to crack down on fossil fuels, including a ban on gas hookups in new buildings.
There’s more at the original, and it’s not behind a paywall.
Under Governor Hochul’s proposals, existing buildings with gas ranges and water heaters could keep them, and even replace them with gas appliances when they go bad. But here’s the real kicker:
The second proposal does not apply to gas stoves, according to the governor’s office. Hochul wants to phase in a ban on the sale of new fossil fuel-powered heating equipment in New York, beginning with smaller buildings in 2030 and larger buildings in 2035.
So, while the Governor would allow people to replace the smaller gas appliances with newer gas appliances, the heating equipment, the part which keeps New Yorkers alive during the Empire State’s brutal winters, could not be replaced with heating oil or gas furnaces. I’ve got a big mental picture of people using their gas ranges to keep from freezing, not exactly the wisest thing to do, but in extremis, people will do what they have to do.
When we lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, where winters can be tough, if not as bad as in New York, our heating system was a heating-oil powered steam boiler for radiators. Radiators meant pipes for the steam, as you can see when I was tiling our kitchen floor during a remodel, in the left corner, but the 1890 house did not have forced air heating ducts. If you have to replace your heating system with a heat pump based one, that means the installation of forced air heating ducts, not a fun thing, not an inexpensive thing, and not a nice thing at all in an older, Victorian home such as we had.
But that apparently doesn’t matter to the Governor; she has money and she’ll always be nice and toasty warm, but if you’re one of the working-class, paycheck-to-paycheck plebeians, it’s a big, big deal. Then, when the power fails during a heavy snowstorm in January, as happens with some frequency, well, too bad, so sad, must suck to be you!
Of course, your gas or heating oil furnace also requires electricity, but not as much as an electric heating system. Our heating oil boiler used a single 110-volt, 20 ampere circuit for the ignition and oil pump; a gas forced air system would have a similar demand for the blower motor and ignition. Those could be easily powered by a basic, gasoline-powered generator you can buy from Home Despot.
Our heat-pump based system in our new Kentucky home? It uses two 220-volt, 50 amp circuits, and if you need a backup generator to run that, it’s not going to be a smaller, home-owner type generator!
This is the difference between the patricians and the plebeians: the patricians propose and enact, and then the plebeians have to work and pay for it, and live with the added burdens Our Betters place on us.