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

 .............................of a sub-division:  Episode 5

Playing in the dirt/mud, also known as stripping the top soil:

the top soil level

building the top soil stockpile

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

 ..................................of a sub-divison:   Episode 4

The juggling mentioned at the end of Episode 2 involves all of the things that have to happen before the actual work begins.  We will revisit those things later. Let's start the actual development work:

A year ago the land was tilled and corn planted.  This growing season nothing was planted, we just let God have her way.  The very first step was to mow:

Once the mowing was completed, the second step was to call OUPS (Ohio Utilities Protection Service).  The "call before you dig" people come out an mark any underground utilities in the area being worked on.  Fortunately for us, the only thing we need to be careful of is the underground telephone/cable line - marked by OUPS in yellow -  out by the road. 

Technology is a wonderful thing.  Elevations are important in development.  Everything has its place and it needs to be in the right place.  GPS handles much of that work today.  The third step was for the engineers to set up the GPS system for the project:

One of the things that is required of developers is to establish erosion control.  Apparently it is considered bad form to allow soil for our project to end up in our neighbors' yards.  To be good neighbors and to keep that from happening, 1,650 lineal feet of silt fencing was installed:

Once the silt fence was installed, the process of removing all of the top soil commenced:

To Be Continued.............

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

..................................of a sub-division:   Episode 3:

Spoiler alert:

The land on July 15th:

The land yesterday:

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

 .............................of a sub-division:  Episode 2

Once a development idea surfaces we subject it to a "reasonableness" test.  This vetting is fairly simple.  It involves answering the questions: 1.  Are we capable of executing the idea?  2.  Is it a worthy project with broad benefits?  3.   Are the projected financial rewards sufficient to incur the risks, both known and unknown?  4.  Will it be fun?   It did not take us very long to decide that the answer to all four questions was "Yes".

Once we decide a development idea is "reasonable", the key next step is to get the property we want to develop under our control.  In this particular case, the land was owned by the Licking County Foundation.  It had been gifted to them back in 2009.  The donor's intent was that the Foundation would sell the land and use the sale proceeds to support academic scholarships.  The value of development ground was at a low ebb in 2009.  Rather than sell if for a fraction of its 2004 value, the Foundation just held the land and collected farm rents.

Knowing that the Foundation would ultimately sell the land, we submitted to them a fair and reasonable offer — at least we thought it was fair and reasonable.  They countered our offer at a number 35% higher than our offer.  Yeow!   Some context may be useful.  The property is +/- 55 acres.   Five of those acres are located in the North Fork of the Licking River.  Another nine acres are located well within the 100 year flood plain.  We did not expect to pay for those wet and unusable fourteen acres.  They just took our per acre price for the usable land and applied it to all of the land, usable or not.   After consulting with a prospective home builder for the lots we planned to develop, we were encouraged to go ahead and accept the Foundation's counter offer.   So we did.

Once the land was under our contractual control, the juggling began.

To be continued...........................................

The blue shaded area is the flood plain.  The area to the left of the flood plain is the floodway, and the river.

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

 .....................................of a sub-division.

Faithful readers may remember that we are sometimes in the real estate development business.  The significant economic melt-down of 2008-09 put a damper on some of our plans, and we left that part of our business on the shelf.   But, cycles cycle.  With our residential market turning red hot last year, in large part because of a supply/demand imbalance, it seemed like the right time to develop again.  It's hard to believe, but the last new residential sub-division in Newark happened in 2006.   Fifteen years is a long time between projects.

It would be nice if we could wave our magic wand and make finished building lots just appear.  The reality is it takes a bit of time.  The plan here is to share the process with you, one day at a time.

Everything starts with an idea.   This idea was, "I bet it would be fun to develop this piece of ground."

To be continued...............................

what time is for........................

 On the other hand, when you have enough confidence to take your own time, to take your time to be present, to do the work, to engage with what’s in front of you right now, it’s a gift.

-Seth Godin, from this post

Be careful what you wish for................

       We have seen the consequences of the totalitarian alternatives in which the collective is supposed to bear the burdens of life, lay out the proper pathway, and transform the terrible world into the promised utopia.  The communists produced a worldview that was attractive to fair-minded people, as well as those who were envious and cruel.  Perhaps communism may even have been a viable solution to the problems of the unequal distribution of wealth that characterized the industrial age, if all of the hypothetically oppressed were good people and all the evil was to be found, as hypothesized, in their bourgeoisie overlords.  Unfortunately for the communists, a substantial portion of the oppressed were incapable, unconscientious, unintelligent, licentious, power mad, violent, resentful, and jealous, while a substantial proportion of the oppressors were educated, able, creative, intelligent, honest, and caring.  When the dekulakization swept through the newly established Soviet Union, it was vengeful and jealous murderers who were redistributing property, while it was the competent and reliable farmers, for the most part, from whom it was violently taken.  One unintended consequence of that "redistribution" of good fortune was the starvation of six million Ukrainians in the 1930s, in the midst of some of the most fertile land in the world.

-Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Two gifts............................

 In this universe we are given two gifts:  the ability to love, and the ability to ask questions.  Which are, at the same time, the fires that warm us and the fires that scorch us.

-Mary Oliver, from her essay on Poe in Upstream

From the mind of Poe.......................................

 I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi."*

-Edgar Allan Poe, this being the opening paragraph to Eleonora

* [they ventured out against the sea of darkness to see what they would find]."

Nagging.......................

 What the hell?  Kelly frowned in frustration at the traffic because he didn't know the answer, but then there were a lot of questions to which he hadn't known the answers in the last six months.  He told his mind to be quiet and watched the traffic, even though it kept up its inquiries in a nagging sort of background noise.  One's mind, after all, rarely obeys its own commands.

-Tom Clancy,  Without Remorse

On orienting the world properly...............

 

As it is said, "Man shall not live by bread alone" (Matthew 4:4).  That is exactly right.  We live by beauty.  We live by literature.  We live by art.  We cannot live without some connection to the divine—and beauty is divine—because in its absence life is too short, too dismal, and too tragic.  And we must be sharp and awake and prepared so that we can survive properly, and orient the world properly, and not destroy things, including ourselves—and beauty can help us appreciate the wonder of Being and motivate us to seek gratitude when we might otherwise be prone to destructive resentment.

-Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Actually, he did..........................

 

Life its ownself...........................

 Take a risk. If there is no risk, there is no change. No one ever got anything different by doing the same thing. Write a new destination for your life and take a step toward it.

The greatest stories ever written and the greatest battles ever fought are those between our ears. Check your perspective and perception. Leave low living at the door. Strive to live with integrity and honor.

Life can be very hard. Life can be scary. But there are no champions without challenges and no victories without battles.

-Beth Bline, as culled from this column in the Newark Advocate

Checking in with Martin Gurri......................

At bottom, all discussion of freedom is really about its restraint.  Once we move beyond the Protean cult of personality, human life becomes a balancing act between consciousness and desire, private goals and public demands, the individual and his family, his profession, his country, his culture, his God.  In this matrix of possibilities, freedom means having the opportunity to choose when to surrender freedom.  Thus the husband chooses his wife while giving up the freedom to bed others.  Similarly, the athlete chooses a tyrannical training regime to achieve automatic (but consciously learned) behaviors like the overhead smash in tennis. 

-as culled from this post

Peony season is upon us...................

 

On the optimal amount of hassle.............

 The thing people miss is that there are bad things that become bigger problems when you try to eliminate them. I think the most successful people recognize when a certain amount of acceptance beats purity.

-Morgan Housel, from this read-worthy post

Well, yes.....................

 

much more fun here

Residential real estate for the past year or so......

  Remember:  what can't continue, won't.

    via

Just the facts..................................

 

Nature's way......................................

 

           via

On investing competition..........................

       Frankly, there's no substitute for limited competition.  You can be a genius, but if there's a lot of competition, it won't matter.  I've spent my career trying to avoid its destructive consequences.  Competition skews people's assessment; as buyer get competitive, the demand for assets inflates prices, often beyond reason.*

-Sam Zell, Am I Being Too Subtle:  Straight Talk From A Business Rebel

*Also known as "the winner's curse"

the pursuit.............................

"What is a truly reliable source of positive emotion?"  The answer is that people experience positive emotion in relationship to the pursuit of a valuable goal.  Imagine you have a goal.  You aim at something.  You develop a strategy in relationship to that aim, and then you implement it.  And then, as you implement the strategy, you observe that it is working.  That is what produces the most reliable positive emotion. . . .

     This implies something crucial:  no happiness in the absence of responsibility.  No valuable and valued goal, no positive emotion.

-Jordan B. Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Fifty years ago.........................

The Band...........................................Life Is A Carnival

 

the extraordinary.................

      No one has yet made a list of places where the extraordinary may happen and where it may not.  Still, there are indications.  Among crowds, in drawing rooms, among easements and comforts and pleasures, it is seldom seen.  It likes the out-of-doors.  It likes the concentrating mind.  It likes solitude.  It is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker.  It isn't that it would disparage comforts, or the set routines of the world, but that its concern is directed to another place.  Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.

Mary Oliver, Upstream

 

playground lessons..............................

 It was the classic new-boy situation.  I was teased and taunted, and the hazing went on during most of the day.  I finally turned to the biggest of my tormentors and said, "All right, meet me outside."  Everybody knew there was going to be a fight.  When school was dismissed, a gang of kids was milling around by the steps of the back yard, waiting.  My opponent was waiting too.  I was frightened, but there was nothing to do about it.  I took off my coat and started running down the stairs at my enemy.  My seeming eagerness must have startled him, for I noticed that he wilted just a bit.  The fact is, I was expecting to get knocked down and was rushing in to get it over with, but when I saw him flinch, I gained new courage.  He gave up after one or two punches.  This minor incident was soon forgotten by almost everyone but me; it taught me a lesson that later applied in business every bit as  much as it did on a high-school playground:  If you show hesitancy or fear, you may already be half-defeated.  If you put on a bold front, and fight with everything you have, you can win.  Moreover, once you have won a few battles, you are usually left alone:  in the jungle, no animal thoughtlessly attacks the lion.

-William Zeckendorf, Zeckendorf; The autobiography of the man who played a real-life game of Monopoly and won the largest real estate empire in history

the adoption of responsibility...........................

      If you want to become invaluable in the workplace—in any community—just do the useful things no one else is doing. . . .

      You might object, "Well, I could not manage to take on something that important."  What if you began to build yourself into a person who could?  You could start by trying to solve a small problem—something that is bothering you, that you think you could fix.  You could start by confronting the dragon of just the size that you are likely to defeat.  A tiny serpent might not have had the time to hoard a lot of gold, but there might still be some treasure to be won, along with a reasonable probability of succeeding in such a quest (and not too much chance of a fiery or toothsome death).  Under reasonable circumstances, picking up the excess responsibility is an opportunity to become truly invaluable.  An then, if you want to negotiate for a raise, or more autonomy—or more free time, for that matter—you can go to your boss and say, "Here are ten things that were crying out to be done, each of them vital, and I am now doing all of them.  If you help me out a bit, I will continue.  I might even improve.  And everything, including your life, will improve along with me."  And then, if your boss has any sense—and sometimes bosses do—then your negotiation will be successful.  This is how such things work.  And do not forget that there is no shortage of genuinely good people who are thrilled if they can give someone useful and trustworthy a hand up.  It is one of the truly altruistic pleasures of life, and its depth is not to be underestimated, or to be disregarded with cheap cynicism that masks itself as world weary wisdom.

    It appears that the meaning that most effectively sustains life is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.

-Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order:  12 More Rules For Life

Watching, always watching.......................

       If you want to get better at what you do, if you want to get better at this thing called life, you have to pay attention.  When you pay attention, you can remember what really matters, what is real and enduring, versus what is false and fleeting.  Thinking of an impartial spectator can help you know yourself and help you become a better boss, a better spouse, a better parent, a better friend.

-Russ Roberts, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life:  An Unexpected Guide To Human Nature And Happiness

The fun of having a card trick............

 .................................................explained.

a flaw................................

      This has always been a fatal flaw in the U. S. real estate:  the volume of development has been related to the availability of funds, not to demand.  The industry has a long history of overbuilding when there's easy money, without regard for who will occupy those spaces once they're built.

-Sam Zell,  Am I Being Too Subtle:  Straight Talk From A Business Rebel

Choose wisely.........................

      Economics helps you understand that money isn't the only thing that matters in life.  Economics teaches you that making a choice means giving up something.  And economics can help you appreciate complexity and how seemingly unrelated actions and people can become entangled. . . . But life is about choices.  Getting the most out of life means choosing wisely and well.  And making choices—being aware of how choosing one road means not taking another.

-Russ Roberts, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life:  An Unexpected Guide To Human Nature And Happiness

Created.......................

 (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

-Anne Lamott, Bird By Bird:  Some Instructions On Writing And Life

Acceptance............................

 One is acceptance that an insane market doesn’t mean a broken market. Crazy is normal; beyond the point of crazy is normal. Every few years there seems to be a declaration that markets don’t work anymore – that they’re all speculation or detached from fundamentals. But it’s always been that way. People haven’t lost their minds; they’re just searching for the boundaries of what other investors are willing to believe.

-Morgan Housel, from this blog post

Nevermore.................................

 

the essence............................

      To me, that is the essence of being an entrepreneur—to not just recognize problems but to provide solutions.

-Sam Zell

accept the strangeness...........................

      Life, for many, is a futile attempt to become secure in a dimension that is intrinsically insecure.  People constantly fight that, rather than accept the strangeness of the human lesson as a beautiful thing.  God must have a marvelous sense of humor—the contradictions of life are awesome and funny and very appealing.  I find them heroic. . . .

      Life is mostly guesswork.  You will usually guess more or less right, and sometimes you'll guess wrong.  When you guess wrong, don't react—love your mistakes and don't beat yourself up.

-Stuart Wilde, Weight Loss for the Mind

Live music is back............................

The Reissues recently presented Eric Clapton unplugged:

oh clever one................................

 When the chesty, fierce-furred bear becomes sick, he travels the mountainsides and the fields, searching for certain grasses, flowers, leaves and herbs, that hold within themselves the power of healing.  He eats, he grows stronger.  Could you, oh clever one, do this?  Do you know anything about where you live, what it offers?  Have you ever said, "Sir Bear, teach me.  I am a customer of death coming, and would give you a pot of honey and my home on the western hills to know what you know."

-Mary Oliver, Upstream

Much to be grateful for............................

 

the basics...................................

 I realized that the basics of business are straightforward.  It's largely about risk.  If you have a big downside and a small upside, run the other way. If you've got a big upside and a small downside, do the deal.  Always make sure you're getting paid for the risk you take, and never risk what you cannot afford to lose,   Keep it simple. . . . Opportunity is very often embedded in the imbalance between supply and demand.

-Sam Zell,  Am I Being Too Subtle:  Straight Talk From A Business Rebel

Opening paragraphs................................

 Five years earlier, the high school guidance counselor sat Barney Hall down and said, "Barney, you're bright enough, but you're not college material.  Not yet."  He was looking over Hall's standard test scores and other accumulated records from thirteen years in the Lower Cape May Regional School District.  "You're not mature for your age.  If you hadn't been sent to detention once a week, you wouldn't have done any studying at all."

-John Sanford, Ocean Prey

I'd have made it sixty............................

 

A few musts................................

 You must never stop being whimsical.

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

-Mary Oliver

One at a time...............................

   One of the most tempting questions to ask when we first learn the QBQ is "What can we do?"  The problem is "we" don't change.  Teams, departments, and organizations don't change.  People change, one at a time, through their own choices.

    I'm a firm believer in the team concept, but if we're not careful, we can end up substituting the language of teams ("we" and "us") for the language of personal accountability. . . .

     Personal accountability is not about changing others.  It's about making a difference by changing ourselves.

     Personal accountability.  The power of one.

-John G. Miller, QBQ!:  The Question Behind The Question

On changing your mind...........................

"People who are right a lot listen a lot, and they change their mind a lot.  If you don't change your mind frequently, you're going to be wrong a lot."

-Jeff Bezos

And there is a lot to be amused about...........

      If we are insecure, we make fun of others.  If we're comfortable being wrong, we're not afraid to poke fun at ourselves.  Laughing at ourselves reminds us that although we might take our decisions seriously, we don't take ourselves seriously.  Research suggests that the more frequently we make fun of ourselves, the happier we tend to be.  Instead of beating ourselves up about our mistakes, we can turn some of our past misconceptions into sources of present amusement.

-Adam Grant, Think Again

Highly recommended......................

 

Pursuit............................

 In the United State, the pursuit of happiness is so prized that it's one of the three unalienable rights in our Declaration of Independence.  If we are not careful, though, the pursuit of happiness can become a recipe for misery. . . .

      Still, when it comes to careers, instead of searching for the job where we'll be happiest, we might be better off pursuing the job where we expect to learn and contribute the most.

-Adam Grant,  Think Again:  The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

The trifecta........................

 

Us pesky humans.........................

 .........always coming up with new ideas and solving the world's problems.  If the TV news leaves you fearful, turn it off.   Our lives today are far better than our ancestors could ever have hoped for.  All because of people like Angel Leon.  Remember:  always bet on the optimist.

Thanks Chris

Ah, history..........................................

 A lot of history is just gawking at how wrong, how blind, people can be. Disastrously wrong, embarrassingly blind. Millions of people, all at the same time. When you then realize that today will be considered history in a few generations … oh dear. It’s unpleasant. But also fascinating.

-Morgan Housel, from here

Meanwhile, at the library...................

       more fun here 

As apocalypses go..........................

 

             more fun here

it has worked out............................

Joe Tex...................................................................Skinny Legs

    

As Joe Tex, one the most extroverted philosophers I have ever met, cheerfully declared, "I've enjoyed this life.  I was glad that I was able to come up out of creation and look all around and see a little bit, grass and trees and cars, fish and steaks, potatoes.  Everywhere I've gone, I can always go back, and I can always find a friend.  I don't go trying to make somebody like me, I just be me, you know, and it has worked out."

-Peter Guralnick, Looking To Get Lost:  Adventures In Music & Writing

Priorities...........................

      There is a subtle art to not giving a fuck.  And though the concept may sound ridiculous and I may sound like an asshole, what I'm talking about here is essentially learning how to focus and prioritize your thoughts effectively—how to pick and choose what matters to you and what does not matter to you based on finely honed personal values.  This is incredibly difficult.  It takes a lifetime of practice and discipline to achieve.  And you will regularly fail.  But it is perhaps the most worthy struggle one can undertake in one's life.  It is perhaps the only struggle in one's life.

-Mark Manson, The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*uck:  A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life

The balance between supply and demand actually counts for something.................

 Just because prices are rising does not automatically make something a bubble.

-Ben Carlson, from this post on the current red-hot real estate market

a notion...........................

       There is a notion that creative people are absentminded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations.  It is, hopefully, true.

-Mary Oliver

The one unbreakable law.......................

 If you find yourself saying ' __________ is always good' or '_________ is always bad', you may be a member of an idea cult.  Appreciating complexity reminds us that no behavior is always effective and that all cures have unintended consequences.

-Adam Grant,  Think Again

Opening paragraphs............................

 The central premise of this book is that impossible has a formula.  Whenever we see the impossible become possible, we are witnessing the end result of a quartet of skills—motivation, learning, creativity, and flow—expertly applies and significantly amplified.

-Steven Kotler,  The Art Of Impossible

an inextricable thread.......................

Everything worthwhile in life is won through surmounting the associated negative experience.  Any attempt to escape the negative, to avoid it, to squash it, or silence it, only backfires.  The avoidance of suffering is a struggle.  The denial of failure is a failure.  Hiding what is shameful is itself a form of shame.

     Pain is an inextricable thread in the fabric of life, and to tear it out unravels everything else with it.  To try to avoid pain is to give too many fucks about pain.  In contrast, if you're able to not give a fuck about pain, you become unstoppable.

     In my life, I have given a fuck about many things.  I have also not given a fuck about many things.  And like the road not taken, it was the fucks not given that made all the difference.

-Mark Manson, The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*uck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life

History and human nature........................

 That’s usually how it works. Look at virtually any decade and you’ll see that the most important news story was something no one was talking about until the moment it occurred.

---------------------------------

It is too easy to assume that when faced with terrible circumstances people will only muster a normal response. But it’s never like that. Expectations reset, survival instincts unleash new creative juices, and people start thinking and acting in ways they wouldn’t have contemplated before the crisis.

-Morgan Housel, from this post

Action too...................................

 "Long-range vision and strategic planning are great tools, but we need to get some things done before lunch!"

-culled from John G. Miller's QBQ!: The Question Behind The Question

Leadership............................

     The U-2 program was the game changer.   It revealed that the USSR was testing missiles but was not able yet to deploy them.

     The political problem for the administration that attached to the Sputnick "shock" rested with the fact that Eisenhower, and only a handful of other key officials, knew about the top-secret U-2 program that was capable of providing aerial surveillance of the USSR's missile installations and other military capability.

      Numerous U-2 flights since 1956 has shown Eisenhower and his small team that the Soviet Union was by no means ahead of the United States in any major category.  Given this knowledge, the president fought back attempts to remedy our vulnerabilities with crash military programs—and expenditure of more money—as the primary way to salve the nation's bruised ego.

      As Eisenhower thought about how to manage the valuable U-2 program, he was convinced that it would be a more effective means of intelligence gathering if it remained secret.  Nevertheless, the information could have removed much of the political heat the president faced; even Secretary of State John Foster Dulles encouraged him to use the U-2 information as a way to reassure the public.  But as Barry Goldwater later observed, "Ike took the heat, grinned, and kept his mouth shut."

-Susan Eisenhower, How Ike Led:  The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions

      

Superpowers................................

 

more fun here

Listen...................................

 When we try to convince people to think again, our first instinct is usually to start talking.  Yet the most effective way to help others open their minds is often to listen.

-Adam Grant,  Think Again:  The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Unplugged..................

 

     more fun here