An opinion on the housing market.....

 Some people think it’s a bubble because prices are rising so fast but there are so many other variables at play that I’d label it unhealthy rather than euphoric. . . . "While demand is strong, supply is short and constrained, the ability to actually build and deliver homes has been slowed by the supply chain that is all but broken, by the workforce that is short in supply, and the intense competition for scarce and titled land assets." . . .

Unfortunately, even if we wanted to build more houses right now, it’s basically impossible with all of the supply chain issues and worker shortages.

The supply chain is all but broken and maybe the housing market is too.

-Ben Carlson, from here

The hopeful birth..........................

 ..................of a sub-division:  Episode 18:  

The market may be broken, but we are doing our part to mend it.   

Thirty fully developed building lots sold to D. R. Horton, a production builder.  They are scheduled to buy 19 more next week.  Footers have been poured on about 15 lots, slabs poured on nine lots, framing of houses started on two lots.  In a perfect world, which you all know we live in, there will be thirty new houses, with new homeowners, in this sub-division by early summer.

Footers poured

slab poured

framing started

Unless provoked...................

 In the eighteenth century, the liberal idea aborning was that every person regardless of age or gender of ethnicity or position in the hierarchy should have equal rights.  Such an idea of equality was still to most people shocking.  About gender, for example, it was inconceivable even to the Founding Brothers.  In earlier centuries of agriculture and its accompanying hierarchy, topped by the stationary bandits in charge, a liberal equality was held in fact to be absurd and dangerous.  Justice was a matter of treating a duke as a duke and a plowman as a plowman, with the differing respect owed in justice to each—but certainly not equality.  You bowed low to a duke.  And you did not murder a plowman, unless provoked.

-Deidre Nansen McCloskey, Why Liberalism Works:  How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World For All

local knowledge.....................

 

     I spent ten days on the roof as we flowed through the migration and the migration flowed around us.  It was always amazing to watch Uncle John stop and film in the bush.  Camera crews from the BBC, the Disney Channel, National Geographic, and other networks were fighting for the best position at various crossing points so they could capture the tumult of thousands of wildebeests massing to plunge into croc-infested waters.  Uncle John was nowhere to be seen.  On the advice of some Masai friends, he'd be asleep under his frayed bush hat, half a mile from where the action was about to take place.  Sure enough, at the last moment, a single wildebeest would break rank, run the half-mile down to where Uncle John was parked, causing an avalanche of pounding hooves to follow suit.

     "Buddy, never follow the rules," he'd tell me.  "Stick with the local knowledge and build relationships—that's how you get the shots."  Then he'd offer up his trademark vampire smirk, having just canned to best high-action sequence of the day.  After the first wildebeest jumped, thousands of others likewise took the plunge, and they churned through the water, swimming nose to tail, battling the current.  Crocodiles began slipping off the banks in pursuit.  The water boiled, foaming white as the crocodiles' powerful tails thrashed back and forth.  Their jaws mashed down on wildebeests, pulling them beneath the surface.  The air shrilled with wildebeests' alarm calls as they disappeared from sight.  The ones who made it to the other side, heaving with exhaustion, found lions in wait.  After so many hours of sitting around, I found the scene unbelievably thrilling. 

-Boyd Varty, Cathedral of the Wild: An African Journey Home

Old-fashioned humor...............

      Another week we were reminiscing about how we'd started in vaudeville and had gone to Al Jolson to ask for a job.  Jolie mistakenly thought Gracie was a ventriloquist and I was her dummy.

     "But he's not a dummy," Gracie protested, "he's a real man.  He's George Burns."

     Jolson couldn't believe it.  "Are you trying to tell me that he has blood and muscles, and that he walks and talks and makes love like other men?"

     "No," Gracie explained, "I'm trying to tell you he's George Burns."

     On another show she decided to help Mickey Rooney; she wanted to adopt him because she was certain he hadn't gotten a proper education.  Mickey told her that he had received a degree in geometry and a degree in Latin.

     "Oh, yeah?" Gracie challenged.  "Say something in geometry."

     Mickey thought about that for a second, then stated, "Okay, Pi R square."

     "Ah ha!"  Gracie exclaimed.  "There's proof you haven't had a good education.  Everybody knows pie are round!"

-George Burns,  Gracie: A Love Story

Can I get an Amen...................?

 Normal people just want America to produce more energy. And maybe when it’s all said and done, that’s the most humanitarian thing we could do.

-Arnold Kling, from here

more fun here

In the background...........................

Robert Cray.........................................Take Your Shoes Off